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I’m queer (bi). I madly love my girlfriend, with whom I live. We are raising her son. We love, we are happy. But, our parents (both her and mine) do not recognize our feelings and deny them. We want our parents to know that their children are happy.
For as long as I can remember I have always been attracted to girls. One of my breaking point was my first kiss in 2 grade with one of my guy best friends. I thought “EW” this is not want I want. I was young and did not understand the concept of being gay. So for years I hid that part of myself deep down inside until one day it decided to reappear, I was 14 years old. At this point in time I understood what it meant for girls to like girls. But I was afraid. I didn’t want people to think things about me. The stigma that stems from girls dressing “tomboy” means they are gay. Which was me. I have always worn boys clothes which I thought was normal! I grew up with 2 older brothers and always looked up to them! But then came in the bullies. I decided to repress my true identity again and again and again. Then years later we are finding ourselves in this unrealistic situation so bizarre, with our world so broken. But during these times I had time to ponder, ( and download TikTok which was also another breaking point in figuring out my sexuality). I finally realized that life is not to be taken for granted. We don’t know how long we have on this dying rock we call earth. So why spend it living it as someone else?
When I finally came out about 4 months ago, I felt like a weight was lifted off my chest. I could be finally be myself, proudly.
I am a working progress; I think that is the better way to describe myself.
Growing up I have always felt like I didn’t belong in my family, that there was something off about me. My family and teachers and a lot of people made me feel like I was never enough, like I didn’t belong there. I am sure they didn’t mean to, but that’s how they made me feel. I had zero self-steam and I didn’t like anything about myself, in fact, I considered myself a bad person and didn’t believe in me. And the worst thing was that I didn’t get me, I knew there was something off with me but could get my head around it, like a part of me was missing… and I felt lost and alone.
But two years ago, my life started changing when for the first time and without me expecting it I felt in love with a girl. I have never been attracted to women before, so this came as a totally surprise for me. And it scared me a lot and made me really confused and my head couldn’t stop spinning with all the questions and mental confusion I had. I didn’t know what was happening and I new I had two options I could either burry everything and ignore it or I could deal with it and see what was happening. And obviously I am here so I took to follow my heart and not my head. Because as scared and confused I was feeling, a part of me knew that there was something in it that felt RIGHT.
And here started the most difficult, challenging but totally worthy journey I have ever taken. I have never been a confident or extrovert girl as you might have already figure it out. It takes me forever to express my feelings and since I am really shy and was really confused, I decided to not tell anyone anything until I got something clear in my head and figure out what all of it meant. So, I dated this girl for more than a year without anyone knowing it. But at some point, after days of feeling overwhelmed with thoughts and shouting inside my head, I finally had the courage to do what for me was one of the most difficult things to do which was come out to MYSELF. Accept myself and accept that I was no longer only attracted to man but that if I felt for a woman that meant that I could fell for another women. Accept that I was bi-sexual. And even though for me it was a really difficult to accept, not for me but because of how much my life will have to change and the struggles that I knew I will have to face. Specially with my super traditional and old-school family. But for the first time I GOT ME, I understood me, I MADE SENSE.
But at some point, accepting myself wasn’t enough. I reached a point in my life where I was in a bad place. I was not feeling good at home, I was under a lot of pressure within the University and work, I was not okay in my relationship and I was feeling like I was tired of hiding this part of myself to my friends. I have been hiding myself for over a year and now that I had finally accepted myself, I started to feel like every time I would talk to my friends, I was lying to them by not letting them know this other part of me. So, I was not happy in any aspect of my life and everything was killing me inside and I went into depression.
And at one point in this depression I reached the bottom, I could not feel any worst. And in that moment I said to myself “ okay, you have shit in your life and you are feeling worst than you have ever felt but you touched the ground, you cannot feel worst… and it is okay to be sad and angry and confused and desperate but now it is time to get up” and what I did next was to go one by one to each thing that was killing me inside and try to figure out if I could do something about it to change it. And so I decided it was time to tell someone because I couldn’t deal with everything by myself. And I knew exactly who I needed but even though I was sure who I was going to come out, it took me 3 days to tell her. I did 3 attempts and it didn’t come out as I wanted and obviously I was crying and it was a mess, but that moment changed my life. Because when I told one of my best friends that I was bi, she had the best reaction ever… she looked at me, smiled and said “Really? Well now I like you even more”
Sometimes you just need a look, a smile or someone to tell you the words that you didn’t know you needed to hear. Because at that specific moment, I felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders. I was carrying so many things by myself that I couldn’t do it anymore. And it made me feel amazing and happy and relieve. And I loved so much that reaction that within the next one or two months I told all of my closest friends and every time I said the words, even though it was still really hard it took me a huge weight of my shoulders.
And from there everything started to get into place. Some of my friendships changes so much (in the best way possible), I ended the relationship that was being really toxic (although it gave me the best gift of my life), I got a job in another country so I could leave my family and that environment and I started to love myself.
And its been several months since then, and I can tell you I have never been happier. I am a working progress and still have a lot of way to go but finally I get me, I accept me, and I am starting to like me. I feel free and proud and happy and excited to see what life has to offer me. And yes I still have to tell my family and a lot of people but for the moment, I am in another country where I can be who I really am, my friends back home know me and love me and I feel more complete that I have ever felt.
First, Excuse my english. It’s not my mother’s tongue.
It was a long time ago (the 80’s).
I realized I was lesbian at 16 (and tried to shut it down right away too because evreybody around me was -in the best scenario- mocking homosexuals).
It took me to go to University for a year (five years later) to understand that the desire for girls was too hard to fight and finally accept it.
I reconnected with the best friend I had between 9 and 11. It turns out she was gay too!
I think the first person I told it – few month after I quit Uni- was one of my cousins. I told her that on Sundays, I was going to this “famous” gay nightclub about 1h of road from our hometown and that the reason was because it felt home to me. Because I prefer girls.. She didn’t care AT ALL. 🙂 Her first words? ” I’m not surprised. Do you have a girlfriend?”…
Then, a short time after, I told it to the highschool friend I’ve been in Uni with and the 2 others girls we befriended there. I said: “Humm.., guys? I have to tell you something… Well, I’ve been in this gay nightclub a lot lately and…I have a flirt…..with a girl… And I’m gay”. No problem with them neither.
Basically, they said: “It’s your life, you do what you want to. It’s not important for us.”
But I stopped coming-out after that because there was only my family left to tell. I remained silent for many many years. (But it doesn’t mean I pretended being straight! It was not even an idea for me. And it would have made coming-out worse).
So, at almost 40, I had a little breakdown and send a email to those I had the address, knowing they would talk about it to their sister/brother I couldn’t reach out. I have been really less diplomat than you but I was really down:
“Ok, here it is, I can’t anymore, it has to get out or I’m gonna blow a casquet…
I don’t care if it doesn’t please someone but I’m not gonna play a role to satisfy anyone.
Let things be clear for everybody: I’m homo.
I haven’t change, I’ve always been.
I’m open to any question/discussion.
Here, it’s done.”
It turns out that, with all those years passed by, my family had evolved on the “homosexuality topic”… and that they love me for who I am.
It was just support and love. I was right to wait…
I knew I was lesbian at a ripe age of 4.
But I was in a school full of homophobic kids so the only way to fit in was to “act straight”. Did that for eleven years but through those tough times, I got sexually abused by males my age (groped, used as a sex iconand even blackmailed). It has left me scarred – mentally, physically and socially.
I have always been an anxious person but I needed to break out of this shell.
Imagine I am a cattipillar (or however you spell it) stuck in a cocoon: it wants to open up and reveal its true beauty but it can’t because of the walls in its way.
I did identify as pansexual, but that was when I was in a relationship with a boy. I feared my parents would tell him that I was lesbian so I had to come up with something to hide away that thought.
It was until I went to Snowdonia, Wales (a VERY odd place to debate on your sexuality), I started having spontaneous crushes on women. I couldn’t help but think about them non-stop.
Even the word “women” made my heart flutter.
Edging to June 2019, I was slowly getting confident. My boyfriend split up with me as he thought I seemed “different”. But the thing was, he was right.
I was different.
How could a 16 year old autistic female fall in love with another women despite being in a relationship with a male?
It came to my last full day at my secondary school and I came out.
The cocoon disappeared.
My wings had grown.
I felt blissful. I felt complete.
It was my last words at that school too, and I always look back at that and think as to how far I have become.
Back to when I used to “act straight”, all fell for it.
Does that mean I deserve an Oscar? I betta.
These following people helped me come out with all my might:
Daisy Ridley
Kat Barrell
Dominique Provost-Chalkley
Cara Delevingne
Ruby Rose
My family
Some fictional characters like Nicole Haught, Waverly Earp, Rey, Viola Eade, Thirteenth Doctor, Jyn Erso
You
So when someone says: “how have you come so far?”
I will tell them this story.
Just you wait for me to appear on the big screen, portraying a character who has gone through the same things as me.
I will credit all of you when I walk on the red carpet.
There’s a million things I haven’t done.
But just you wait…
Just you wait.
– H.L Good, a proud lesbian 
#OutIsTheNewIn
This story starts from the very beginning, so prepare yourself for a roller coaster.
Growing Up
Growing up as an only child, I was pretty dependent on my friends to get me through the day. If there was ever a rift in my group, it left me with a horrible feeling inside, as if I could show up the next day and be shunned from our usual bench at lunch. (My fear of abandonment is still real today, but in grade school, you were a loser if you didn’t bring the type of Lunchables that people wanted to trade you for or share with you. Social suicide at such a tender age. Kids are cruel.) So to keep my “social status”, I practically begged my parents to get me the lunches that the cool 10-year-olds ate, with fruit-by-the-foot and Mondo. After surviving the playground, my afternoons consisted of playing sports. Once I could start trying out for the teams in 5th grade, that’s all I wanted to do. I’d save the candies from my Lunchables and bring them to practice to share…with the popular (attractive – because society shamefully says that attractive=popular) girls. I’d pay attention whether they took the chocolate or the candy, which flavor Warhead was their favorite, etc. all in an attempt to talk to them as much as I could. Back then, I saw this as me just wanting them to like me because they were popular and everyone wanted to hang out with them. I knew nothing at this point other than I got severely jealous of their close friends, boyfriends, etc. Again, an awful feeling. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I started to put the pieces together.
High School
In high school, I continued to devote most of my time to schoolwork and basketball, and my teammates were again my best friends – one of them becoming my first girlfriend my sophomore year. Trust me, the irony is not beyond me. This relationship was my first real relationship, so many “firsts” came along with it: first physical/emotional/sexual experiences with a girl, first love, first breakup-and-makeup, first long-term relationship. We were together for roughly 4 ½ years, on and off, and it was such a whirlwind of a relationship. I was 15 years old, completely immersed, everything heightened and everything intense. The feelings, the arguments, the learning, the growing. It truly was a relationship fueled by the unknown mixed with teenage angst, which needless to say caused tension between me and my family because we were both “in the closet” at the time and I couldn’t tell them all the things I was going through. We went through several breaks and rekindlings, that when we approached the end of the relationship within the first maybe 1 ½ years of college, it grew to be unhealthy for the both of us. This is not to say that the good times we had weren’t really good, because they were, but all-in-all, I had outgrown it and was turning into someone I wasn’t quite fond of.
College
I met my second girlfriend in my second year of college, during my “divorce” period with my first girlfriend. I call this a “divorce” because I feel like it took a few months to “finalize” the breakup and detach myself completely. This proved more difficult than I anticipated because potential-Girlfriend-#2 was a roommate of one of Girlfriend #1’s friends, so we were still running in the same circles. Once I was officially out of relationship #1 and in relationship #2, we moved in together and this took my experiences to a whole new level – cohabitation can either make you or break you and it definitely made us. We didn’t have too many hiccups, until I hit a huge speedbump: my dad confronted me about my sexuality. I was 19 years old. Again, we were both still “in the closet” and it was terrifying.
Coming Out – Part 1
My dad asked me to go to the grocery store with him one Saturday afternoon. This would have been a normal occurrence IF 1) he didn’t tell me to get in the car the moment my mom started running her shower, AND 2) if he didn’t take the absolute longest, roundabout way to get to the grocery store. Once he parked the car, he jumped right into it. He asked who insert screenname here was (he already knew), how long we’ve been together, and if my mom knew. His spitfire questions got my spitfire answers: “Girlfriend #2”, 1 ½ years at this point, no she doesn’t know.” My face never seemed to get the memo from my brain to remain calm, so my panic shined right through. My dad’s response: he immediately put his hand on my knee, told me to look at him, and said “Hey, it’s okay. There’s no need to panic. I just suggest you don’t tell your mom yet because we both know that she won’t be as cool about this as I am. Now let’s get some shopping done.”
With my hands still shaking, we went into the store and went on business as usual. My dad, being the extremely blunt unfiltered person he is, proceeded to randomly ask me inappropriate questions about my relationship, drill in the point of me needing to delete my profile from the home computer so all evidence was gone, and said that if I didn’t do it the moment we got home, he would ask me more inappropriate questions and force me to answer them. “Blackmailed” by my own father.
I didn’t think it would ever go this way. I didn’t have a plan, I hadn’t thought about coming out yet, I was just being the kid-away-at-college and figuring things out as they came along. I mean, to me, this relationship with Girlfriend #2 was kind of still “new” compared to my first relationship. I have to admit though, even without having a formal sit-down with him, a coming out announcement, or anything out of my own choice really, the weight that lifted off my chest was so much greater than I anticipated it to ever be. I finally had a parent I didn’t feel I had to hide all my gritty life details from.
“Adulthood”
Girlfriend #2 and I moved back to our respective homes after being away at college, and things started going awry less than a year later. No longer being able to rely on “cohabitation making us”, we started growing apart. The want to visit each other, Skype, and even text throughout the day like we used to dwindled. We were together for roughly 4 ½ years (similar to my first relationship), but the relationship was becoming one-sided and it wasn’t fair anymore. I hate to say that fighting for it wasn’t worth it anymore, but it’s the truth. We were at different points in our lives, wanting different things for our future, but although I won’t go into the details (because that’s not the point here), all-in-all, it ended amicably.
I took a break from all the seriousness for a few months, focused on my hometown friendships, went on a few (failed) dates, but really just honed in on regaining my individuality. I was 24 years old, juggling my first job as an undergraduate and being a new furmom. Things were really coming back together, in their devil-may-care fashion, and I managed.
And then there was Shedonism – Las Vegas Pride, where I first met Girlfriend #3, my current and god willing my last. Long story kind-of-short, we met through mutual friends from LA and Sacramento, we said maybe a handful of words to each other in Vegas, went home after the event, I texted her 2 weeks later on her birthday, and it was all downhill from there. We talked daily at all hours, officially got together 6 months later, and have been together ever since. We did the long-distance thing for about 1 ½ years and here we are now, living together in LA with 2 dogs, just 4 months shy of our 5 year anniversary celebration, and I’ve never been happier. I could gush about this girl, but I’ll save you guys from that, but I just want to say that it works. It all just works. The present, the future, everything. But no matter how great and grown and comfortable I’ve been in the relationship, I still had a huge chip on my shoulder: I still had to come out to my mom. I am 29 years old, and disappointing my parents is still (and will always be) such a huge deal. But I did it, and I wasn’t alone, and it changed my life.
Coming Out – Part 2
Friday, October 28, 2016 – The day I took the most nerve-wracking risk of my life (and the longest and most crucial).
So this plan had been brewing for almost a year. I originally wanted to come out to my mom around last New Year’s, but it just wasn’t the right time. I thought so long and hard about the various ways to do it because this was probably the most important thing I was ever going to do. I was finally going to be able to plan for this and do this after so many years. I could tell her in one of our daily phone calls or texts, pony up and tell her in person in a very public place to avoid the meltdown, have my dad tell her since he’s known for 9 years, or write her a letter. I opted for the letter. I felt that if I wrote it all down in a letter, no matter how long it was, it would result in some of the weight lifting off of me AND allow me to lay absolutely everything on the table for my mom to absorb. My dad, naturally, wasn’t a fan of the idea, saying “that’s like breaking up with someone via text. I think you should do it in person,” even though I explained to him that I really didn’t think I had it in me to have an impromptu sit-down. I wrote the letter anyway and left it for her to see the next morning at my grandma’s gravesite (for other personal reasons).
Anyway, I was due to visit my parents, and since they get home around the same time, you can imagine how my plan quickly devolved into not my plan at all.
My mom and I moved about the house, my dad comes in, and says “Mom, sit down, your daughter wants to talk to you.” Cue heart attack. I’ve never glared so hard at someone EVER while I said “No dad, I don’t. I REALLY don’t.” At this point, my mom is now starting to panic. My dad then looks at me, says “You’re going to hate me for this, but…”, turns to my mom and says “Your daughter’s ‘roommate’ dates women, and so does she.” Cue heart attack #2 and blackout. What’s a girl to do now that her plan had been hijacked a day earlier than expected? I held onto my consciousness as best as I could and went to sit opposite my mother. Yikes.
The first words out of her mouth were the most heart-wrenching. A phrase a child never wants to hear out of a parent’s mouth:
“I’m disappointed in you.”
I nodded my head and gave her the floor. The next phrases played like a broken record before I’d even said a word.
“Never in a million years did I think my own daughter was going to tell me this.”
And then the parental denial:
“I prayed every night that this day would never come.”
(I complimented her motherly instinct in the letter – I knew she had it in her.)
By this time, my dad is unexpectedly sitting next to me, and as much as I hated him for blowing up my plan, I am so grateful for him right now. I began by telling my mom “I’d been in 3 long-term relationships in the last 14 years, my current relationship consisting of the last 4 ½ years (funny how this number keeps coming up). I’m so tired of hiding myself and my relationships from you and this family. I’m exhausted. My dreams for my future haven’t changed: I still want that house with a white picket fence, be pregnant, have kids, and get married, which now I can, it just won’t be to a man. I’m so happy with how my life turned out, and I’m so lucky because I’ve never been bullied or put down and my friendships are so much stronger now. I’m one of the lucky ones! But it sucked having to go through every relationship and breakup I’ve had and been too scared to tell my own mother about them so that she could help me through everything.”
“The future I wanted for you was for you to find a man who would treat you as the great girl you are, get married, and have a family together. That’s what a family is.”
My dad chimes in immediately, saying “She has found someone who treats her well and makes her happy. I’ve known for several years now, and in the grand scheme of things, this is no big deal. She’s still going to get married and have kids. Your job now as her mother is to love her, not judge her, accept it and move on. She is the same loving daughter you’ve always had. Nothing has changed that.”
Now I’m crying, and I’m not sure if it’s from my mom’s comments or from the shock of witnessing for the first time my dad’s verbal unwavering support. Fast-forward through the next 20 minutes of repeated comments, my mom then has to leave to pick up a family member from work. I turned to my dad after she’s left, and said “Well, I suppose that went as expected…when I get married some time down the road, I’d appreciate it if both of you would walk me down the aisle. I’ll take one, but both would be preferable.” He grabbed my shoulders and looked me dead in the eye, “Look, I’d prefer you to date men, but I know that’s not going to happen. You are the way you are, and if you’re happy, then I’m happy. That’s all there is to it. If your mom is going to be upset at you or your girlfriend or anyone for that matter, that’s her problem. I don’t give a shit about anything else. We’re all just people.”
My hero.
Coming to the end of this story now, my mom and I went through 4 days of radio silence, which equaled an eternity since she has text me or called me several times a day since I went away to college. Per my request, she did still read the letter I wrote for her, and we spoke about it while my dad was out of town. I took this chance to stand my ground more firmly, profess that I’m no longer a child, this is not a phase, and this is truly and fully who I am. It has been 3 weeks since “D-Day” and life is…well life I suppose. I’m still a little freaked out that we might just be on the brink of a mental breakdown, but I will take what I can get, and my mom still loves me and hugs me hello and goodbye whenever I see her.
The relief alone feels like nothing I’ve ever imagined. It could have gone a lot worse, and I’m slightly shocked that I am one of the lucky ones. It breaks my heart that so many people out there will not have their story play out as successfully as I did. No matter how old you are, no matter what path of life you are on, the most important things I can say to you are: Trust those close to your heart and embrace them and thank them always for being there for you. Trust yourself especially, because that is who you will always have. Be so unapologetically yourself, and demand respect in the purest way you know how. Please please please stay safe, stay mindful, and only do things you are comfortable doing. You know YOU best, so you’ll know when the time is right.
This is my story, and now I can honestly say it gets better.
Fast-forward 4 years: I am 33 years old, living in Sacramento with 2 furkids, and Girlfriend #3 became my fiancé! Even though we are in the middle of a godforsaken pandemic, I have to say my home life is pretty great and it still gets better and better.
I think I’ve known I’m a lesbian since I’ve been a little kid, but it never occurred to me, because it wasn’t the norm? I was always told that I’d find my prince, I’d marry a beautiful man, get some kids one day and all my scars would fade away the second I’d give my heart in the hands of a guy. I was confused and overwhelmed when I got into a relationship with a guy, because everyone did it with 14, so we thought we should do it too since we were good friends. It didnt last long. I broke up with him after a few weeks because I’ve noticed that I dont want this. I didn’t want to hold his hand or kiss his lips. I was scared, I thought I’m not capable of feeling those shiny colourful emotions. Till a lesbian character showed up in my favorite soap opera when I was almost 15 and that’s when it hit me. She showed me that there’s a world besides those stupid stereotypes and it’s okay to like girls. I started to figure it all out, opened up to my closest friends and at the end I told my mother about it. Even though I can say it’s definitely better to share this with anyone if you accept yourself. I didn’t love myself back then, because I was scared of being different. I was never confident so to realise that you’re “different”.. let’s just say it wasn’t easy, so when my mother didn’t accept me i went immediately to a big black hole of hatred. But I fought my way through it and I’ve never been happier. Once you’re truly yourself, you start to see life with a positive attitude and since then I’m doing everything I can to support other people who have the same struggles, I had back then.
I think I’ve always known that I am a lesbian. When I was 14 years old I already had my first girlfriend. I enthusiastically told this to my parents, who unfortunately looked at it with slightly different eyes than I did. My mother grew up in a very religious family, so my sexuality didn’t fit the picture. This caused a lot of insecurity for me, and I was bullied at school and this resulted in a period of anxiety attacks. Fortunately my parents now support me in everything. I have learned to accept myself for who I am and I AM surrounded by people who also accept me for who I am. Only when you love yourself and can be yourself can you love someone else and I have been happy with my beautiful girlfriend for 6 years now. So don’t be scared if you love another humanbeing. Just be and love yourself. You have so much to give.
I come from a religious family, practically raised in a church. I had gay family and in my head with my teachings that was fine for them to live that way but I could never choose that because it was wrong. I had thought it was a choice. Until the 8th grade when my best friend came out, and slowly through conversations she had made me realize that I too was possibly part of the LGBTQA+ community. Even then some part of my brain desperately wanted to be straight, knowing that my family likely wouldnt accept me. I’d pray and I’d pretend that if I just didnt act on that side of me then it would go away. In high school I became friends with somebody who was pansexual, lots of people actually but this one happened to be a senior while I was a freshman. She asked me very outright while we were alone if I was attracted to females. This came as a shock but I found myself answering yes. Still believing myself to be bisexual. By the end of the year I had wrote a poem about my sexuality, and posted it over Facebook. Surprisingly most people were incredibly supportive. However, my aunt had called to tell me how proud she was of me and ended up outting me to my mother. Who was less than understanding, I was grounded and forbidden from hanging out with friends the night of prom. (She wouldnt allow girls to really sleep over anymore either.) It took until senior year for me to come to terms with and realize that I was just simply not physically attracted to men. Which is when an uncle I had only met as a toddler came up. He came out to my father, and then proceeded to out me. My father is very religious and often used gay, queer, and fag as insults. He never talked to me about it, but I noticed he changed his language around me. When we accidentally ended up in the middle of a pride event he kept bringing up how love is love. I guess subtle support is better than none. My mom still doesnt fully accept it. Over the years I found myself having emotions for guys, but never being able to express them, cause the physical attraction just wasnt there, and I believed it wasnt fair for either me or them to be in that type of relationship. The ones I attempted always tried to get me to be physical with them anyways. It took a lot of time researching the different types of attraction for me to understand who I truly am, and I still dont really discose it unless I am totally comfortable with somebody. Or just dont care how they feel about it.
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.
