Community Rainbow Waves

I’m a small lesbean (lesbian)

ellow I’m Kai >3< and my pronouns are she/her 0w0. This is my coming out story, I wrote it at the time. I just wanted to say this joke before I forget it, I came out in the year of twenty gay teen. On Tuesday the 16th October 2018. I came out as gay to my mum. Earlier that day my mum asked if I wanted to go on a walk with her. I agreed, and I got ready. That’s when I decided to come out to her. The whole time I was dreading the moment before I told her. When I had enough courage to say what I wanted to say. Her only response was “I could already tell”. So, she already knew that I was gay. Then I came out to my soulmate, she was really the first to know, but I told her I was bisexual instead of being gay. I then told my best friend. My mum told my older sister on the 17th of October 2018. My mum also told my dad today which is the 18th. I found out that she told my dad because he mentioned my sexuality. Which at first, I was really confused on what he was talking about, until I realised that he was talking about my sexuality, that I’m gay. Everyone has been so supportive with my Decision . I don’t know if my brother knows yet, but if he doesn’t then he is the only one who doesn’t know.

Bisexual

i think i finally actually realised i was bisexual last year but i was into girls many years before that but just thought of it as a phase i guess. i actually once said to a friend of mine in school probably about three years ago that i would “mess around for a year or so and then get married properly with a man, just so i could get it out of my system” and when i think back to that it seems so mad to me that that was my mindset and as the years have gone on i see more of a chance of me starting a family with a woman even though i still haven’t came out to my family. my friends all knew but it wasn’t like a big secret because i thought nothing of it in the beginning so i never kept it from them. i’m 18 this year and i haven’t been in a relationship since i was around 14 which was with a boy. i’m scared to come out to my family because although i know they love me endlessly, there is still something in my mind that holds me back. i wish coming out wasn’t such a big thing and although it should be celebrated i also think it shouldn’t be expected. i would like to come home one day and introduce my girlfriend to my family without anyone thinking anything of it.

Non binary and lesbian

I was in grade 5 when I realized that I wasn’t the same as the other girls, I liked boys stuff more than girls and I’ve always known I’ve liked girls. When I came out to my mom she wasn’t excepting, my step dad was very excepting. My mom kicked me out when I was 14 and I live with my grandma now but I am much happier now

Better late than never!

I always felt like I didn’t fit in with the girls I went to school with. I grew up in a hard-believing traditional Christian household, and one didn’t talk about things of sexuality that didn’t fit in that vein. So purity culture was huge, and total abstinence was expected no matter who you loved outside marriage. So I pushed it down and tried to ignore it. I was attracted to different genders and I felt wrong trying to be with people I was attracted to and had to deal with the guilt of that attraction as well as the worry of violating purity culture in general. I guess subconsciously I decided that since I could be with who I wanted, I would not be with anyone.(I know- it sounds wrong to me now too!)
Fast forward literally decades to 2020- I was terrified of coming out to my family, in particular to my Mom, who was the strongest Christian influence in the family. She passed unexpectedly in 2020, and in my processing grief, I decided it was way past time for me to live my truth. I had denied myself my true being too long. I decided that I was tired of living a lie and had moved away from the many of the strict “traditional” Christian beliefs of my childhood and started looking for myself. It was time to come out. I spent weeks thinking & worrying about it, and one day, the timing made itself right- I came out as queer.
My Family’s response: “We just assumed you were.”

I couldn’t believe that I spent so many, many years living outside my genuine self and my family wasn’t really an obstacle (some other, distant relatives are not on board, but I’ve never interacted much with them) as much as I had made them to be in my head. I know this isn’t likely a common experience and I am so proud of my family and the support they’ve given since, and the work we have put in to build communication on a new domain.

I am learning and growing, since I feel like a sort of oddity being a middle-aged “baby gay”, but I’m wading into a life that I have long denied myself. I’m thrilled, I’m scared, I happy, I’m nervous, I’m certain, but mostly, I’m free and I’m out!

Trans masculine

I first questioned things when I was 5, but a negative reaction from my mother led me to suppress my queerness until I was 17. That was when I tried binding my chest for the first time. It was a life changing experience, and over the past 5 years I’ve continued to explore my gender. Now I can confidently say I am a non-binary man, and I am no longer ashamed of it.

I am a lesbian girl

I think I always knew I was different but only figured out how ‘different’ at about 10 years old. I found myself looking at girls. It gave me this weird feeling like I shouldn’t be looking at girls I like boys! So I did everything to supress those feelings and started talking with boys from my class. I got into an relationship with a guy from my class and thought that’s what it’s supposed to be. Then one day we went to his house to hang out and he wanted to make a YouTube video titled girlfriend Q&A. We looked up some questions on the internet and then one came across which made me realize I don’t want to be with him. It was the question would you rather hug or kiss? And if so you have to do it. Well I’ve never kissed before so I said hug but I didn’t want to hug him! So I told him I didn’t want to and short after I made an end to the relationship. I still wasn’t convinced I was gay, I thought maybe I am bi, so the next year I did the same thing. I got a boyfriend but quickly realized I didn’t like him.. I liked this girl from my class. So me being 11 years old went online and chatted people around the world about it. To this day (I am 14 now so 4 years later since I was 10/11 years) I still talk to her! My mom eventually found out I was talking to a ‘stranger’ which she definitely isn’t for me. She took my phone and went through it and quickly found out that I am a lesbian. She still often asks me if I really don’t like boys and I always tell her I am fully gay. When I was about 12 I came out to my class in school. They were very cool about it and didn’t mind at all. Now I am in 2 years further and I don’t really feel the need to tell people anymore. I mean when ur straight you don’t tell everyone too right? So now every time somebody asks me if I am gay I will simply answer yes, I am not afraid of coming out or accepting myself. Because I did, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

It took an almost deadly accident for me to be true to myself

I began to know I was LGBT in middle school but I lived in a very small east Texas town where it was highly frowned upon. I struggled with relationships, trying to date men as society wanted. I never talked to anyone about my feelings towards women except my Mom, and she was always supportive but I was terrified of being rejected by my family, friends and church community.
In my late 20s I became an active cyclist. Riding 20-40 miles each week. Not long after my 30th birthday I went for what seemed like a normal ride on my nearby trail. Instead, I had a severe accident where I flipped over my handlebars onto the road. As I laid in the road unconscious a woman driving by stopped and called 911. I had landed on my head and shoulder. I cracked my helmet in 3 places, broke my collarbone into pieces and cracked my shoulder blade. I was very lucky to be alive and not parallelized.
For me that was a wake up call, I finally decided to be who my heart wanted me to be. I came out to my family one by one, my father took it the hardest, telling me it was a phase. I was told by an aunt to lie and hide who I was, not to share anything on social media so my grandpa did not find out. He denied my marriage to my wife until a few months before he died. When he finally accepted me, my wife and my son, whom he met for the first time.
I have now been happily married for 6 years to an amazing woman! I love that Dominique decided to be her true self as well. It can be so hard to fear everyone will shut you out but it’s much better to not shut out yourself.

I’m an out and proud butch lesbian

I could, and regularly do, tell the story of coming out as a lesbian in the age of Section 28. I tell it because, mostly, it’s relatable, and it’s got some funny bits, and has very clearly defined parameters that say “This was the moment I was not out; this was the moment I was out.”

I’m not going to do that; instead, I want to tell you about what was, for me, a much tougher journey, one which took a lot longer and a lot more questioning, a journey which is no where close to being finished. I want to tell you about being butch.

It isn’t a popular word, nowadays, even in the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s an identity that helped me verbalise my own gender when I didn’t know how to, and gave me the comfort that I wasn’t the only woman trying to find her way through the world when the trappings of femininity felt increasingly like a cage.

I had always been a tomboy, more interested in climbing trees and getting muddy than in playing dress up and dolls (the barbie dolls my mum bought me spent more time rescuing each other from hideous fairytale monsters than they ever did swooning over Ken). Which is fine, when you’re young. It gets less fine as you get into adolescence, when the expectations of society become more restrictive, and the struggle to fit in, to be normal, comes to the forefront. I was a shy kid, bullied because my family were working class in a middle class neighbourhood, and my parents were catholic and somewhat strict; the thought of standing out any more than that made my stomach churn. So I wore the skirts, rolled shorter at the end of the road so our mothers wouldn’t see, and applied the colourful eye shadows which we’d be marched to wash off after first period, and I felt like I would never be happy again.

Skip forwards 8 years, and I was living away from home for the first time, in a foreign country, with no one to define me but myself. It was an opportunity, not just for learning, but for becoming. I found myself around people who wouldn’t bat an eyelid when I cut my hair short, or tentatively started adding “men’s” clothes to my wardrobe. It gave me freedom to experiment with my name and my pronouns, and start to uncover the layers of my attachment to womanhood that I had long since hidden in shame. I still felt anxious about it; there were still confusions and unkindnesses as a result of my outward appearance, but more clearly than any of those, I remember standing in front of the mirror with my waist length hair shorn for the first time, the strands lying around my feet, and crying because I finally felt like I was looking at myself.

It took another 5 years for me to exclusively start wearing “men’s” clothes, to stop disguising my mannerisms to appeal to the wider society who still demand performance of culturally mandated gender roles. It helped that I had found, online and offline, a community of women like me who enabled me to map out the words I needed to explain this huge part of my identity, and a woman who made me believe I was ‘handsome’ – not ‘pretty’ and certainly not ‘strange’. It took two thirds of my life and that unwavering support to fully accept myself as a woman, a lesbian, and a butch, and I’m still learning.

No, butch isn’t a popular word, nowadays. For the wider world it carries too many of the negative connotations attached to it by the narrow feminism of the 1970’s, but for me, it’s the key descriptor for who I am. I found an affinity with it, and it helped me – is helping me – on my journey as I dig deeper into what that means. It’s true that labels are just words. They’re just words we use to verbalise who we are, and our feelings towards them are based on our own personal experiences as we travel through life, constantly evolving or cementing as we ourselves grow. To the world at large, I’d ask you one thing: be gentle with other people’s labels, and the words they choose or do not choose to give their identity form. Invalidating them is a form of invalidation for the many roads they travelled to find them.

And to the masculine of centre women – the gender nonconforming women – the women getting called out in the ladies’ loos and receiving the side eyes as they pick up their groceries – stay strong. Stand tall. Keep on holding your own. And hold onto your swaggers – we’ve earned it.

Zo, Birmingham UK

Gay (lesbian)

By pure chance I came across some videos on YouTube that brought me to Dominique’s profile and read this incredible post. Everything I have read has inspired me, I have felt identified and has made me wonder about so many things in my life.

I am 28 years old and since I was 12 or 14 years old I was attracted to women, men only saw them as friends, despite feeling all this I only dated men.

At the age of 22 I decided to stop and accept myself, accept that it was impossible for me to have sex with men and I did not see myself with any of them. I sat down with my best friends and told everything I had hidden until that day, it should be noted that my best friends are gay and I was still afraid. My friends understood.

Today with 28 years, I still feel that I am afraid to talk about it with other people, even my family does not know it, this has brought me problems of having a relationship as I would really like to have it. I am patient with myself and with the stages of my life.

This post has made me think and reevaluate my values, my passions, my whole life, rethink what I want and it has let me know that I have neglected a part of me that feels imprisoned. I want to be happy.

Lesbian

I guess I’ve always known, I’ve always hung out with the dudes, never really had a crush on them or anything. That was until junior high. I knew I needed to date somebody, but who? Well, that was the part I didn’t know. Those 3 years I dated some boys, but never felt a real connection. I associated that with being young and not knowing what love was about.
My freshman year in high school, I met this girl I instantly fell in love with her. We clicked, and soon we were a thing.
But then the rumors started. Nasty, mean things were being said about me, and as I knew they were true, I too just wanted to fit in. To be normal, to not be the person others looked at. So I pushed my sexuality out of the way and pretended it was “just a phase”.
However, my sophomore year in high school I met this girl during the summer. She was beautiful, stunning even, and I knew then it wasn’t just a phase.
Soon however, word got around to my parents. And things weren’t so accepting. I was kicked out of my house for 3 months, luckily I had two very supporting sisters who took me in.
In the middle of my sophomore year is when things changed. I decided I wasn’t going to let the ideas or beliefs of other people affect who I was. So I officially came out as a lesbian woman. I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t care what others thought. I had no fear of the harsh things they would say, because in the end the only thing that matters is me.
After weeks of reconnecting and talking, my parents finally invited me back to live with them. We had a sit down conversation, with tears and yelling, but in the end I think my parents finally realized that I’m still their daughter, and nothing is going to change that.
Now, I’m 18, and things are awesome for me. I have a girlfriend who I love, a family who loves me and supports me for who I am, and friends who will always have my back.
It wasn’t easy, it never will be. But the thing that I will always remember, is that at the end of the day. I am me. Words don’t matter, what other people believe don’t matter, in the end it is me, my life, and who I am. And I am me.