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I realized I was a lesbian when I was a mere twelve years old. It wasn’t a huge moment. I remember sitting on the couch and suddenly thinking “I like girls”. I’ve been lucky enough to grow up in an environment where being LGBT is accepted. My parents are accepting, my friends are accepting, and my community is accepting. My story isn’t dramatic, but it’s a piece of me.
I grew up in a very traditional filipino family. My parents had me 6 months after they were married at 18. I grew up with boys in the family. Being the only the child, I grew close to my male cousins who were around the same age as me. I believe that I knew I was gay since I was little because I was such a tomboy and I would find other females attractive. It got to the point where I made myself believe that I wasn’t gay and that I’m attracted to these beautiful women because I want to be like them but deep inside I knew that I was attracted to them because I liked them. So growing up for me was tough because knowing that I was gay then made it impossible for me to really be myself. I was born in 1996 so when it was around my Junior high/High School Era, I was struggling with my sexuality. I still chose to deny that I wasn’t a lesbian or bi, or gay. It wasn’t until the end of grade 9 when I met someone. She was one of the reasons why I chose to go to. certain High School because I genuinely wanted to get to know her. Soon enough we went to the same high school and we became best of friends. I knew deep down inside that I had a crush on her and that I really really liked her. She was dating a boy throughout all of high school and I chose to be strong and be her best friend because I’d rather have her as a friend than nothing at all. That’s when some people started to question my sexuality more. I played a lot of sports in high school so I dressed like a jock almost everyday. Oh and to be clear, I find men attractive too. The first boy I kissed was in gr10. I dated 2 guys in a span of those 3 years in high school but deep down I knew it was always her. I guess you can say that I was trying to cover my feelings for her by being with someone else (mainly a guy). Anyways, long story short. after our first 3 years of College, I realized that my feelings for her got stronger and stronger to the point where I wasn’t sure if I could be friends with her anymore because it hurt me alot seeing her dating someone else. One night we went to celebrate finishing exams for that semester. She got drunk, I wasn’t drinking. She took me to the bathroom stall at the bar and cried and asked me why I have been so distant. So then after 6 years of hiding my feelings I told her that I was in love with her. 1 month later, we got together. Then at that moment I felt like I was invincible and that I was strong enough to come out to my friends and family. And so I did and so did she. We came out together and it was a scary but a beautiful moment for us. However, my parents did not take it well. Considering that I am the only child and in a traditional filipino family, it was a tough time for my parents and myself. But without my support system (my friends and my GF at the time) I wouldn’t have had the guts to come out to my parents. In conclusion, we broke up, and its about a year and a half since we broke up, even though I am still madly in love with her and she’s moved on, I have found some light to get me through. I am embracing my sexuality more than ever. But to this day, I am still afraid to come out to certain people because I guess I am still scared of how they will treat or look at me after. I am just glad that I am out to my parents and my friends because they mean the most to me. I apologize for this long story. There are tons more of details but I didn’t want to bore anyone any longer. But here I am, out. Gay as I would like to identify myself. I love men and women all the same, but I would say that I am attracted more to women as I am able to find deeper emotional connections with them.
Forgive me but I don’t speak English very well.
Since I was a little girl I had attitudes that couldn’t tell you otherwise, like playing with children and despising “little girl” games, like getting away from soccer or toy cars just to go with the most beautiful little girl in the neighborhood! Of course at that age I didn’t realize anything and didn’t pay attention to it but now I remember that I really thought that little girl was beautiful and that’s why I wanted to be near her.
Growing up, I was always the little girl who defended her friends, who took care of them, who did the heavy work for them like carrying the heaviest backpack or opening jars, who accompanied all of them to their homes and then came back alone… But yet I was getting engaged to boys, admiring the billboards of shirtless boys…why? Because it had to be that way!
I slept with a few guys and every time I was disappointed with the feelings I was feeling, I thought he wasn’t the one… I would try again to be with another guy but nothing!
At the age of 17 I realize that I feel a strong attraction towards a friend of mine, to be jealous in an abnormal way for a friendship! So I decide to try to understand more by surfing the internet… and at the vision of two girls kissing I feel much more sensations than those experienced in bed with a man… so I understand that I am a lesbian!
My coming out happened only after I suffered from panic attacks, every time I talked about myself… I remember that, one day I got so strong, that I called the ambulance and, the paramedic, after giving me an IV of tranquilizer, told me that the only cure was to talk about what I had inside with someone. After that day, I decided I had to do that starting with my friends…. I remember when I told my best friend… it took me half an hour just to be able to say “I like girls”… she burst into tears and called me an idiot because I had made her worry and she had come to think of serious things such as having suffered violence! I had taken a huge weight off my shoulders… so, if my best friend didn’t see anything wrong with it, I wouldn’t have minded anyone else’s judgment! I decided not to hide it anymore and to admit my homosexuality!
Fortunately I have parents who have never given me any problems… my mother, when I told her, made me understand that she thought it was just a phase, but she has always known the girls I have been with, treating them not as my friends but for what they were: my girlfriends! Now, after having brought a lot of them home, seven years later, I think she has understood that it is not just a phase 😅!
I have always been free to be myself thankfully!
However, I too have been through horrible situations recently… i.e. not being accepted by my current girlfriend’s family, being insulted by her mother and sister with phrases like “what is this crap?!” “if you are like this it’s because your mother wasn’t close to you but I was close to my daughter so I don’t accept this crap!”… or, something even more painful, that even now, a year and a half later still hurts so much, being beaten by her father claiming that I was ruining his life and family! Or, when they sent my girlfriend to the other side of the country to try to get her away from me … but I, after a month, I went to her, making her a surprise and I found the aunt angry that did not stop insulting me … who told me “but look in the mirror … do not you disgust you?!” “I’m going to slap you” “who knows what kind of person you are”… instead she should thank me because I was too respectful and polite, unlike her… if I were not a good person, I would have slapped her!
In this whole situation I have suffered too much… even going against my principles, when I didn’t denounce them!
Now we have been engaged for a year and nine months… they haven’t made any more scenes like that but they don’t want to have any kind of relationship with me… and this hurts me so much every day because I don’t understand how they don’t want to know the person who makes their daughter happy and I don’t understand how they can’t give me the chance to show that I am a respectful, polite person with great values.
Forgive me if in the end instead of telling I ended up venting….
I knew for quite a while that I had weird feelings for girls that I felt like I shouldn’t be having. In middle school, I was having the hardest time feeling normal. I wasn’t having the same feelings towards boys that all my friends were having, during lunch my friends would talk about all the boys they liked, and I was making stuff up because I didn’t want to seem weird. This made me very depressed because I was unsure what was wrong with me. I would come home and watch ‘Friends’ and I always had a crush on Rachel, but I would just tell myself that every girl thinks other girls are pretty, it’s just being nice right?! Every gay character I seen on television growing up was a background character who rarely came on. High school came around and I became more depressed keeping all of my feelings in, I did not like the person I seen in the mirror. I wanted to cut my hair and wear clothes that I felt more comfortable in. During my junior year of high school, I came out to my close friend who was a boy. After I came out to him, he was very supportive. I started going over to his house a lot, because of this my mother thought I had a crush on him. She would always bring it up that we should date. My mother had gay friends and was a very supportive parent all around but it’s still very overwhelming coming out to your parents. I was lucky to have supportive parents who loved me no matter what because I know a lot of queer kids do not have that. I was still very nervous of coming out, we ended up going to an amusement park and she kept talking to me about my close friend. While we ate lunch at the park, I told her I had to tell her something important, I then proceeded to cry a lot that I couldn’t speak. She guessed “what is it, are you a lesbian?” I shook my head yes, and she then told me that she loved and will always love me no matter who I love. It was nice to have that kind of love and support from someone. After that, she made sure I was comfortable with myself, she let me cut my hair, she bought me a pride flag, I shopped in the boy’s section for clothes. I felt more confident in myself just by having that love and support and I was happy to be in the LGBTQ community. With having that lack of LGBTQ representation growing up, I am so inspired by shows like ‘Wynonna Earp’ and can’t wait to grow my career in the film industry and add more queer representation that I didn’t have growing up. It is such a positive message to see people on a big screen coming out and being authentically themselves because it shows that everyone is valid, and everyone is beautiful. I think start the wave shows so many positive messages to be kind, and be the best you, you can possibly be.
Not much of a story, but have always felt different in a way. And when I tried dating a boy it felt so wrong. I’ve never felt those feelings you are supposed to feel when I was with a guy but would be attracted to woman or at that stage girls, and would only feel the butterflies with them.
Because of the way I grew up and the kind of people my family were I didn’t want to accept it and couldn’t accept what I was. Found my sell falling deeper and deeper into a hole and losing myself. When my sister found out, she was supportive and helped me thru it. Finally learned to accept who I was and when I did I felt tons lighter
It was a struggle and still learning what this all is but now I don’t apologize for who I am.
I knew I was gay when I was in 5th/6th grade. A year later I came out to my best friend, the same month I got in to psychiatry because of depression. There they forced me to come out to my mother because “it would help me”, she just said its just a phase and she didn’t believe me, while I sat next to her crying. 2018 I was on my first CSD and my stepsister picked me up. As she saw me she was like “oh but you’re not one of them, right?” and I just started giggling. Thats how I came out to her. 3 Months later my stepsis, stepmom an my dad sit in our garden and my sis told them I wanted to tell them something, which I definitely didn’t because I wasn’t ready yet, I was the whole time like “no I don’t” so my stepmom starts to ask “did you smoke” “hell no” I replied, “did you got a tattoo?” “no” are you a lesbian?” and I instantly started to cry. Thats how I came out to my Papa. One and a half year later on new years eve 2019/2020 I came out to my mom(again) my stepdad, my foster mom and dad, friends of them. Now I am OUT AND PROUD 🙂
I realised when I was 29. But this was a cognitive type of realising as my heart already knew for a long time. I grew up watching straight couples in movies and tv-shows. These were the characters the viewer was supposed to identify with. I tried dating men and everybody around me just assumed I was heterosexual. I dated men who I thought were intelligent, attractive and kind. But my heart always said NO. One day a bisexual woman told me about her journey. Her story liberated something inside of me. I opened up… to myself, to the world and to new ideas. How could I not have seen that I was into women all the time? Yes, I like girls! This is me!
I had some of my first thoughts about being with girls when I was about 9 or so years old. Prior to that I had never really been interested in anyone or being with any one in a romantic way. At this point in my life I didn’t even know being queer was an option. Although I do live in an accepting home, There were never any situations where I was exposed to this kind of love. At the time, I had just thought I was being weird, and I kind of just lost interest in even thinking about anyone in a special way, whether that’s because I was trying to hide my true self, or that’s just who I was I still don’t know. Fast forward 3 years or so, I had met two friends in school and gradually we grew closer together. Over the summer us 3 would face time nearly every day, and they knew a secret that I didn’t because they were friends before they knew me. One of them was gay. That declaration got me thinking, and opened up a door in some ways. I thought about whether that could be me, but I always just though, “No, you just want to be like her.” Because I admired her in a way, and still do. And then I stumbled across a wonderfully written show, Wynonna Earp. The character of Waverly, portrayed by the lovely Dominique Provost-Chalkley, sort of made me realize something. It’s hard to explain, but the idea that you can be swept off your feet by someone you never even thought you would ever be with really spoke to me. I myself identify as female, and I thought about it. I could be with a man, sure. But I also thought that I would be okay with dating a woman as well. I couldn’t care less what they identified as, as long as I love the person. And not long after through the openness and support of my friends I was able to tell them, all of them, and no one ever saw me any different. In fact, me and another friend of mine (who is bisexual) helped someone else be open about who they were to our friend group, which was beautiful. And that night we decided on a funny way to tell my parents. I am so thankful that my family was so accepting, and simply didn’t care. My whole life my parents never referred to my future lover as a husband, they always said “whoever I marry” which helped a lot. So, the way that I decided to come out was through the use of a pumpkin. My friend painted a pan sexual flag on a little pumpkin, and I labeled it ‘Panpkin’. I put it on the mantle one fireplace, and my sister figured it out almost immediately, and when my mom finally got it, she spoke to me about it. Since then I’ve been living an amazing life with incredibly supportive friends and family, and because Waverly was such an important figure during my journey, I decided to name my beloved Portuguese Water Dog after her. She’s 5 months old and a racket, but I love her none the less.
I think some part of me always new that I wasn’t a girl. I dressed in boys clothes and I hated wearing anything that made me look feminine. When I was diagnosed with autism (aged 12) I assumed that that was the reason I felt different. About a year later I started questioning my sexuality. It took about 2 years before I accepted myself as gay. I came out to a few friends who were really accepting and I finally felt happy with myself, but I didn’t feel whole. Like I’d just told people something so they’d understand, but it wasn’t me. For about 2 years I kept having lapses in thoughts about my gender. It got to the point where I gave up and decided to just present myself in a way that made me comfortable. So I cut my hair short and changed my name. A couple of months later I had a sudden realisation moment where I realised that I’m nonbinary. Two days later I came out to my friend who I had previously come out to as gay. It took a couple of months to come out to my family. It took some time for me to fully accept the dysphoria I have about my chest and I got a binder. I recently started causually slipping into conversations that I’m nonbinary to anyone who doesn’t know yet. I feel like this isn’t my definitive coming out story though. As someone who is queer I am constantly coming out to people whether it’s my gender or sexuality, but this is how I found out who i am as a person.
Oh man. It’s been quite a journey. I guess it started around 5th grade or so. I recognized it and actually began to come out to myself, but in true ADHD fashion, managed to push it to the back of my mind and forgot about it for several years. My sexuality popped up later in middle school when relationships began to bloom and I failed to understand my friends’ obsession with boys. Instead I was thinking about them. I kept repressing it’s and was terribly unhappy up until last year, when I entered my first real relationship. She and I met through school and did not even know the other’s name after 7 months of sitting right next to each other. Finally, she bucked up and asked me out. Then I realized I wanted my parents to know her as my girlfriend. So I came out to them via text while across the street from them. They took it very well and it was immediately seen as just another part of me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. By coming out I was able to understand that I don’t want to hide my love for this amazing woman from anyone.
