Community Rainbow Waves

Gay and proud (most of the time…)

CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT.

I always had feelings for girls, probably from the age of 9, when I really fancied a girl in S club 7, when all my friends fancied J from Five! haha.
However I went to a school where the word gay was never even mentioned, I had no idea it existed or what it was. I don’t even think it was mentioned in sex ed. I kinda just left it at the back of my mind and didn’t hook up with a girl until I was 20, when I left to go travelling to Australia and walked passed Mardi Gras, which is the most amazing pride I have ever been to. This all started up my curiosity as I realised there were soooo many people who I could relate to, and kissing a girl for the first time felt amazing.
I used to think I was Bi, I didn’t ever think that I was a lesbian as nooo that can’t be me, I’m going to have a ‘normal’ life with a husband and children, however I have never actually enjoyed being with a man. My mum still thinks and hopes I am Bi. I have been sexually abused twice by men so she thinks that I am too scared to be with men, which could be true but it kind of hurts that she doesn’t just accept that I am gay. I now know I am just full on gay and that my past trauma has nothing to do with my sexuality. I was born gay, as was my brother and my cousin. We are all out to our families and friends (my best friend always knew I was gay, coming out to her was the most fantastic experience with the love she gave me) and my brother is marrying his partner when covid allows, I am hoping to find a date for the occasion who I can eventually marry myself and also maybe children 🙂
I know I am in an amazingly privileged position as I live in a country where being gay is celebrated, not condemned. I really hope over time that these countries will make it legal to be gay, there are some charities out there helping and I am trying to raise awareness of them.

The Invisible Girl

I think I am actually invisible sometimes.
I think most people think that every now and then.
I was little the first time I felt invisible sitting on a brick wall outside of my church, all the other kids had run to play but I was too tired to play. The adults didn’t even seem to notice I hadn’t made it to the playground.
The thing is I knew then I wasn’t invisible but I still thought it, I still think it.
I do not like putting myself out there.
I slouch when the teacher asks the class a question.
I panic when I don’t understand things.
I panicked when I finally came out to my best friend. I actually don’t even remember what I said to her and I am quite certain that she responded within a minute but that minute felt like forever. In that minute I thought of all the ways my best friend could say she didn’t support me and all the painful ways I would slowly disappear to the person that had stuck by my side since birth.
The truth is even if my friend had said she didn’t support me I would still be me, I would still be gay and I definitely would still be visible.
So here I am.
I haven’t disappeared
And no matter what people say I will never disappear because I have every right to be happy, to find love, to be me.

A very gay introvert!

I was like 10 or 11 years old when I realized I really like girls, from movies, to tv show even in real life. It was though at first, because I kept denying it that I am not Bisexual, that I am straight. But as time pass by, I accepted myself for who I am. I came out to my friends first, they absolutely knew I was Bi. I then came out to my classmates and the whole school knew it. Some think it was so cool, some didn’t quite like it. When I met my girlfriend (we meet on a dating app ^_^ , I knew it in myself that I really really like her. Like she’s the one for me. I came out to my mom, It wasn’t easy tho. But she did accept me. And my brother is cool with it he doesn’t have any problem me being Bi at all. I am still try my best to come out to the rest of the family. Wish me luck!

Bi

Last year when I watched Wynonna and ever since then I have watched girls and wanted them as muck as I wanted boys but I not out yet as I am still in school and scared of what people think as my friend is out and gets a lot of hate and I am scared

Gay

I knew when I was very young that I was interested in women, I came out when I was 13. I like the umbrella term gay because I don’t feel as though I am a lesbian. I don’t want to deny myself love based off gender however I am mainly attracted to women. Love and lust are complex and deeper than gender. Thank you for sharing your story, you are an inspiration. Keep being the shining light you are.

I’m a women who is in love with all women

I guess I’ve always known but at the age of 15 I gave in to the idea that I was really into a girl that had been my online friend for about 3 years. I met her when she pretended to be boy on twitter, which really hurt me when I found out because I thought I fall for a pretty boy and in the end he turned out to be a pretty girl. That’s really fucked up but It took me some weeks to get into the idea that I actually had feelings for a girl, and it was okay. It was not until 2018 that I came out with my friends, which was really hard because we went to a very religious high school and they were pretty conservative; but it turned out just fine. For sure the most difficult thing was to come out to my family, which took me another year and on November 2019 I told my father that I was into girls, it turned out okay too. Though it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be coming out, I’m still finding out how to have a conversation with my mother about it, she has heard it from my sisters and my father, and she really struggled to accept me, but still I can’t bring up the courage I need to just speak to her.
For me, sex or love the same sex wasn’t as hard to accept as the idea of a mother not loving her child for choosing what really makes her happy. To all the parents out there, it’s not you business who your child fucks or love as long as it make them happy.

Larissa

I’m a 30 years old queer cisgender woman that knew from a very young age that I liked girls. However, I didn’t really know that I was a lesbian at that time.
As far as I can remeber I had crushes on girls, but as a kid growing up in the northeast of Brazil (a very “tradicional” region) I had no queer references whatsoever. I just knew that girls were suppost to like boys, so I faked it, throughout my entire adolescence. I dated boys and kisses a lot of them so that no one would suspect that I was actually in love with a girl friend.
It was only when I went to college in another state across the country that I had the courage to try to kiss a girl. In a traditional Brazilian festivity, carnaval, I kissed a girl for the first time and that made me realize how much I wanted to do that for my entire life. Since It was a party and there was a lot of alchool involved none of my friends said much about It, and I actually ended up with some other guys for almost an year before finally having the guts to admit first to my self, that I was definitely not into guys.
It was watching shows with queer characters that helped me build the stregnth to come out, in special Naya Rivera’s Santana in Glee. I related so much to her that I started to feel the need to be honest with myself, to stop hiding who I was, that’s when I leaned on my first openly gay friend to start going out more, meeting girls and telling people around me that I was gay. I then came out to my childhood friends who still lived in my hometown and it was such a releaf to hear them say that they loved just the same. It was time to tell my family. In a visit to my parents house, on a long weekend that my dad was way I told my mother. Her reaction was as far from undestanding as it could possibly be, she didn’t speak to me again for several months. As I left the very next day, heart broken, I didn’t really know what to do next. My mother told my older sister who called me and said that my mom was devasted, crying all the time and not eating, begging me to go to a therapist. I knew that they were expecting me to be “cured” by this therapist but I went anyway to try to make amends. It turned out the therapist was a really nice woman who knew my sister and their intentions and told me at the first session that she wasn’t there to cure me, but to help me cope with everything I was going throutgh. My father was the real light for me at that time, he asked me to have patience with my mom, that she was taking it pretty hard but was trying to be better for me and that he would love me for the both of them until then.
A lot of scars had to heal before I started to feel whole again and be proud of who I am, but as I was going through all of this with my mom I kept reminding myself that I needed to treat her with the same love and acceptence that I expected to get from her. Now, eight year later, she has come a long way. It took patience and love, but most importantly I knew I wasn’t alone.