Community Rainbow Waves

Still figuring things out 🙂

I’m still very young, I am only in my mid teens but I’ve known that I had feelings for girls since I was like 7 or 8. I live in quite a small town and had no representation around me apart from in the odd tv show, I thought sexuality was as linear as just either straight or gay. As a 7 year old that had certain feelings towards girls but also fancied a boy in her class this very small concept on sexuality made me very confused on who I was and what I was meant to feel.
I went to church with my nanny even though my parents weren’t super religious and had sort of picked up through the years that love was supposedly only meant to be between a man and a woman. I was a very anxious child and the idea of hell was terrifying to me so the fact I had been taught that that’s were I would end up if I continued feeling the way I did made me very very scared. Now I know that I have been made the way I am and I’m not going to get punished or condemned for just being me so I’ve been able to overcome the that fear. And the thought of a big pride party in a lgbtq+ section in hell makes me giggle a bit.
The year or two of fear and confusion led me to just suppress it as much as I could and just try get on with the normal things a 9 year old should be worried about. My attraction to girls always just stayed in the back of my head and by the age of 12 I had learnt about bisexuality so anytime the thought creeped back into my head i just sort of went ok well your probably bisexual but that’s good because you can still just end up with a man.
I always avoided the thought until around the start of 2020 when my best friend told me she liked me, at first I was just like ok chill and didn’t think much of it until I started thinking did I feel the same. Over a month or two I stopped hiding from my sexuality which was pretty easy as I spent a lot of time just by myself because of lockdown. It was a lot easier than when I was younger as I had my friend who felt the same as I did.
In this time I labelled myself Bi and talked about it with a few of my close friends. they were all supportive and to my surprise a lot of them were also questioning their sexuality. Deep down I still felt unsettled about being bi apparently undoing years of internalized homophobia towards yourself isn’t the easiest thing to do. Thankfully I had several friends around me on the same journey so I never felt abnormal in my friend group.
I started watching just about every show with the slightest wlw representation in it because I’ve always used tv for comfort or an escape so maybe these shows could help me feel more comfortable with myself. It was sort of difficult to find a show that had a good representation of a wlw representation but then Bly manor came out and a short time later I found Wynonna Earp. Even though Dani and Jamie’s relationship didn’t end the happiest it was still a beautiful story and it was never made a huge thing that they fell in love with the same gender it just focused on their love story and the plot of the show. The same with Nicole and Waverly, it was never made out to be something so shocking that they fell in love with each other, it was also nice seeing Waverly accept her sexuality there was no 3 seasons of her questioning, it was simply a oh well that’s new, a slight hiccup then a, well I love this person so why should it matter if they are the same gender as me. This definitely helped me view my future, potentially with a woman, with a lot more ease.
In the past month or so I have started to question myself a lot again on whether I am bisexual or lesbian. I think watching these shows and realizing that ending up with a man isn’t the only normal thing has made me think whether my very few experiences with having feelings towards men were real or simply because I had been taught since birth that was the “normal” thing or the way I had to feel to fit in with society.
I am still very young and have so many things to figure out and do but at the moment I am happy with my sexuality whatever my specific label is. I am not out to my family but actually just a few hours ago my sister told me if I ever had an attraction to woman I could tell her because she would never want me to feel alone. safe to say I cried a little but I am very happy that I have support from at least one of my family members.

apologies if anything doesn’t make sense I’m not the best writer but I’m very grateful to be able to share 🙂

Small Town Girl From Kansas!

I knew I was different than my family. I had boyfriends in the past but it never last. I knew I was attractive to both men & women, I don’t label myself because it doesn’t matter about the gender. It just matter about the person. I only told a few of my close friends. And I am not out of the closet yet. My family won’t understand. And I can’t really tell them but I know my family would probably disown me. It’s kind of scary to go through this alone. I been through stuff in the past that I haven’t really got over. It’s hard to move on or overcome when you been rape in the past by two different men. I didn’t get therapy for it. It’s something that changes me even more. I am attractive to men & women but more of women. And I haven’t even been with a girl before, I don’t even know what it’s like kissing a girl. I want my story to be heard!! ~M

Gay

I was never really attracted to anyone growing up, I never understood the whole thing. I just didn’t feel the ‘oh my God I like him so much’ thing that all my friends seemed to be experiencing. Until one day I saw a scene from the show ‘faking it’ where two girls kissed and I was immediately thinking, that looks right. I watched more episodes and I found myself drawn to the main couple and their trials and tribulations, I was never this invested in a relationship before. After I ran out of episodes I started looking online and turns out there was more than one show with a girl and girl relationship. I started to know the show by the scenes I saw on YouTube. I started realizing people in my life who I had always thought I just really wanted to be friends with them and realizing that that feeling was what a crush is. I had attractions to people for years I just never knew that those attractions being girls was an option so I suppressed those emotions and changed them subconsciously. My world changed around me. About a year later and I was up to date an all the wlw couples on TV and I decided to finally tell someone, my best friend. After school one day I sent her the link to a YouTube video of a coming out song. Her response ” hooray you’re gay!”. I was fully accepted by her and that was incredible. A feeling of freedom and openness. I started college and my new friends just kinda thought I wasn’t really into relationships and just let me off with that. Which would be great if that was the case. One day we all decided to make tinder accounts for each other for fun and when my flatmate gave me my phone back she had it set to see guys. She asked what I thought (meaning her choice of pictures) and I just said ‘ it’s great but I will change one thing’ and I switched it to see girls. None of them even reacted, my flatmate said okay fair enough and that was that. I still haven’t come out to any more friends from home, they seem like a bigger deal and it never seems to come up so it’s difficult. My parents are a different kettle of fish all together but we’ll get there soon enough.

Queer woman who tip toed out 20 years ago

The summer before my freshman year of college I lifeguarded at a hotel pool in MD. One night, I was working late because my boyfriend’s band had a show out of town. Toward the end of the night this women’s basketball team from Boston came down to hang out in the hot tub and we all ended up chatting bc they were all around the same age as me. We ended up getting along really well, especially this one girl, Vicki.
Long story short, the team went back to Boston and Vicki and I kept in constant contact over the next several months. We both moved into school and decided we wanted to see each other again, so I booked a flight to go visit her in November. Even though I had a boyfriend, I thought maybe I started to develop feelings for her. I was confused, but I figured my trip would clarify things. By the time I got there, she ended up having a girlfriend so I got no answers.
When I got back to school in Pittsburgh, I felt worse than before I left for Boston. I went through a very deep depression. I stopped eating, I never slept, I felt like I was just going through the motions bc my head was always consumed by what was happening in my heart. I still was very attracted to men and didn’t know anyone like me bc this was 2000 and things were A LOT different 20 years ago. All I could think about was “why am I different” and “what did I do to deserve this”. Finally, my cousin who worked at my school, saw how badly I was struggling and she addressed me about it one night by coming out to me. It was the first person I knew who was actually gay. It was a kind of solace, but I still didn’t know who I was or what I was.
Fast forward a couple months and I had grown close to one of my cousin’s friends but she was in a relationship. One night I was staying at my cousin’s house she had a “surprise” for me and turned out that this girl had feelings for me, broke up with her gf, and was on her way here. We ended up kissing the night (my first time kissing a woman) and it was like fireworks. I knew at that point, I was going to have to address these feelings.
After that, I met and started dating a woman and slowly started telling my teammates and close friends. At school in Pittsburgh I felt free to be myself, but when I went back to MD that summer to be with my family, I got sucked right back into the closet. I wasn’t comfortable talking to my Catholic family about it bc I knew they wouldn’t understand.
One day, my mom walked in on my “laying” down with a woman and she flipped out. My mom was eventually “ok” but didn’t want me telling anyone else.
It took quite a while but now, I am 38 years old, married to a woman and have 3 children. I am fully out, confident in my queerness, and happy!

I am proud of who I am

All my life I was asked ‘are you a lesbian?’ And I always said ‘No I’m not.’ It started when I was really young, like 9 years old, people noticed I loved being around girls and loved taking care of them, so they assumed I was into girls. For pretty much 10 years I thought I liked boys, so I dated boys throughout middle school and high school. I had a terrible relationship when I was 16 with a boy who always wanted to have sex, he broke up with me because I kept pushing him away. The truth is I didn’t trust him, so I couldn’t give myself to him. It was a very bad breakup and then he harassed me for the rest of the school year, my mom had to step in because I was mentally broken. I haven’t been in love with a boy since then.
When I was 19 I moved to my own flat for the first time, I started university and I was very happy to be done with high school and to start over. That’s when I fell in love with a girl for the first time. Terrible story, it was 13 months of pure pain because she wasn’t in love with me. I was so jealous of everyone flirting with her and she made a friend on Twitter and I felt like something was going on between them. I was so mad in jealousy… that friend came to our hometown during summer so we met and I hated her so much but I was nice to her anyway cause I don’t want to be a bad person. After that they went on holiday together and I got so mad that a month after that I had a huge fight with that girl on Twitter. Funny story, that girl I was so jealous of has been my girlfriend for over 3 years now haha. Everything changed so fast and I still cannot believe that I fell in love with her after all the hatred we felt for each other.

About my coming out, I told my mom a month after I started university, I was back home for the weekend and I wanted to tell her so I did and I cried so much because her reaction was amazing. She was totally ok with it. Then my siblings pretty much knew before I did so they were already fine with it. Last but not least I had to talk I my best friend at the time, who’s bisexual. I told her I fell in love with a girl and she told ‘look baby, I knew, we all did, but I didn’t want to tell you, I wanted you to find out on your own’ and that meant the world to me. So coming out was beyond ok for me, I feel extremely lucky to be surrounded by such open-minded people and I know many of us are struggling out there.

Today, I’m 23 and I’m happy. I am so grateful to have such amazing women to look up to, of course Dominique and Kat, and so many others.

I’m still human- CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT SELF-HARMING BEHAVIOUR, BULLYING, AND SUICIDE

I knew I was different when I was about 6 years old. I never liked girly things I would play football with the boys and chase the girls playing kiss chase. I realised I was attracted to women when I was in high school. I told my best friend that I was gay when I was 15. It didnt go so well soon the whole school knew. I was bullied really badly i had my hair set on fire, people tipped cans af coke over my head, i got beat up on the way home every day. I had to cut out chewing gum from my hair every day. It was a nightmare I fell into a deep depression and started self harming. When I was 16 I tried to kill myself I couldn’t take it anymore, I was being tortured for being myself. I hid my sexuality and got a boyfriend. He was also gay and didnt want the same abuse I was getting so we pretended to date. We would hold hands and hang out together. Things got a little easier after that. When I was 19 I started going to the gay village in manchester I would dance in the clubs hook up with women but would give them a fake names because I was so scared everyone would find out I was gay. When I was 21 I got very drunk and shouted at my mum that I was gay while trying to climb the stairs. My mum just smiled and said she had always known and that I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I am. I wished I’d have told her when I was at school instead of lying about why I was being bullied. I am now 39 years old I’m married to the most beautiful woman on the planet. We have been together for 15 years and every day I find something new to love about her. I wish I hadn’t experienced the abuse I suffered as it has had negative effects on me like I dont like people coming up behind me or standing to close to me. I still suffer with bouts of depression and low self esteem but I wouldn’t be the person I am today if i hadn’t gone through that. I’m still human after all. Xxx

Abbey: One who’s capacity to love grows exponentially each day!

I always love deeply. Through my adolescence I loved so hard it hurt. I was truly confused at the difference between what I felt inside and what I saw all around. I even went as far as determining another type of love that I just knew existed to try to explain in a more “acceptable” manner what I was feeling for other people. This was when I was 15 and knew little of other cultures that describe a myriad of types of love. I dated many people of both genders pretty quietly for too many years. Then I met Molly. Our love was so luminous . So able to easily penetrate through all the bullshit that had been and that I had allowed to be built around me. And that was that. We loved each other. We came out to our families and friends. Years later I proposed, we are married and have a beautiful daughter and a son on the way. It is intense how my capacity to love grows exponentially each day. Allowing this love has allowed all the love.

Caitlin

I was always very feminist and had a lot of female role models. I would be very into specific actresses and just chalk it up to wanting to be their friend, or look like them, or love their personality, etc. It never really fell into that “I want to be /with/ them” category. I never thought anything of it. I was on Tumblr and everyone was that way, and no one was gay (at the time, now we’re all LGBTQ+ but that’s neither here nor there) that was doing it so it just seemed pretty “regular”!

I’ve always been pretty introverted and had anxiety, so add those things together you don’t really venture outside of comfort zones too often! I dated a few guys in high school but that was high school and who really knows what they’re doing anyway, right? After some less than ideal “boyfriends” I went into college single and definitely not looking for anything except an education. I made a good group of friends and we went out fairly regularly. My friends were always asking “are you gay? I never see you flirt with anyone.” I’d always said no, not because I was ashamed but because I really didn’t know. It’s a scary thing to dig into yourself and really question things about who you fundamentally are. It’s even scarier to go in and admit that you’re any type of “other”.

I started to really wonder about my sexually my senior year of college. I was nearing the end of my studies and being a psychology major all you really do is introspective work. I was taking a lot of gender/sexuality classes and in writing all these papers and researching all these things I started to really wonder, what if I’m not into men because I’m /not into/ men. Huh, who would have thought! I started watching more tv shows and movies that gay characters (Orphan Black, South of Nowhere, The L Word, etc) and I felt connected to them. I could feel that tingling in the pit of your stomach when 2 women would kiss on screen. I never felt that when I watched straight couples, or when I kissed men. So when I went out to bars with my friends I would be more open to just realizing that women are great and sometimes they flirt with you and you flirt back! And it’s not so scary.

After realizing I was definitely not straight I had been asked out on a date with a woman but I was worried because I hadn’t actually told anyone I was gay. I just, wanted to be. Why do I have to “come out”? Why can’t I just be like “this is my girlfriend” and we all move on. These are the annoyances I still feel. Because even though I’m 29 I come out every time I meet someone new. It’s always different but it’s always coming out. It’s always that moment of fear from when the word “girlfriend” leaves your lips to the moment the person you’re speaking to actually says something that you fear what they will say. No matter how comfortable YOU are with your sexuality you have to make sure those around you are okay with it to. And that blows. Anywho – I could talk about that for years so I’ll move on – I decided to come out to my family on my 22nd birthday because who could be mad at someone on their birthday? I was sitting at the table with my mom and dad and waiting for my sibling to arrive and I was nervous AF. My parents have always supported me in everything I had done and I knew this would probably be the same but that fear is real and it doesn’t matter how nonsensical it is, it’s SCARY. So I blurted out “I think I want to date women”. And then I had to backtrack and tell them that I’ve been thinking about a lot of things and I’m pretty sure I’m gay. They were supportive and by the time my brother showed up for dinner they were already joking about things with me. My dad was encouraging me to ask out a cute bartender and my mom was embarrassed to be at the table with us. Business as usual! I still struggle to really find the “box” that fits me, I like the term Gay because it’s all encompassing. For me Queer has always felt… Not me, and I don’t want to be called Queer, but I know others feel that way about Gay! I don’t quite feel like a lesbian because I do sometimes find men attractive, but bisexual doesn’t really fit either. I’m somewhere on the Kinsey scale and “gay” hits the nail on the head for me. Anywho, that’s me.

I know that my story is definitely on the more rare side of being accepted by family with such ease and I hope that as time goes on the stories like mine get more regular and the ones where parents react badly become the odd ones. I know that’s where we’re headed as a society and I can’t wait to get to that place.

Just remember the most important thing, if your given family doesn’t support you, turn to your chosen family because they will. You always have support whether it’s virtually through places like this or real life framily (thanks, Sophia Bush for the best term, friends/family = Framily!), lean on your people when you need to that’s what we’re meant to do. You are not now, nor will you ever be alone.

I’m a woman who’s proud to love other women

My coming-out story is a loooong journey. I first faced my homosexuality when I was 18. I’d left my family-nest to pursue my studies, and it really was the first time I was left alone with myself. It became a journey, during which I discovered myself entirely.
And I met that one girl. She was gay, and I completely fell for her. That moment was the starting point of a really long thinking about my sexuality and myself in general. Each step was full of sadness and pain … but also full of joy. It took me 6 months to tell my closest friends about being in love with a woman. More than a year to completely accept and embrace my homosexuality.
But the hardest part was telling my family. I’m really close to them, we share everything and love each other so fucking much. Taking the risk to lose all of this by telling them my truth, it was unimaginable for me. So I kept it inside of me for 4 (very long) years. The thing is, I was exhausted. Exhausted of lying to the ones I love, of hiding my feelings and a huge part of my life.
That is why, on January 1st 2019, I confessed to my family about my homosexuality. And, damn it, all the feedbacks I received were full of love and acceptance. I was scared of crying because they would reject me. Instead, I cried only tears of joy because they accepted me. Whole of me.
Nowadays, I’m a very happy 24 years-old gay AF woman.
M.
From France.

Katrina, 29, queer- CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT DEPRESSION.

I was thirteen when I first remember becoming aware that I was in some way different to my female friends. While they giggled and whispered about which boys they liked I noticed that I did not feel the same. I reasoned that it was likely because I found the boys immature and annoying; or perhaps I was too focused on my learning to pay them much attention, or perhaps I was a late bloomer. Whatever the reason I chose not to think too much about it.

At fifteen the devastatingly crushing realisation that I might be gay hit me. I say devastatingly crushing because up until then my understanding of the term gay was that it was only ever used as an insult. It was a label thrown around by bullies against the bullied, and it was something you actively avoided being called. I did not want to be gay. However, here I was at fifteen watching a channel 4 documentary about a family based in the city I grew up in, and it was while watching this documentary that I realised the only reason I watched every week was because I thought one of the family members was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. This realisation forced me to reflect on past behaviours and I quickly realised that when watching TV or movies I paid all my attention to the actresses rather than the actors. When idolising singers, I favoured female singers more then male. All this time I convinced myself that it was because I found them talented and relatable, and although that is true, I also couldn’t deny that I found them ridiculously attractive, something I never thought about when it came to men. So, at fifteen I realised that I might be gay. At fifteen I also realised that I needed to hide this part of me at all costs.

I had nobody in my circle of friends or family that were gay, nobody I could look up to as a healthy and real example of what it meant to be gay. The only thing I had was childhood insults and barely any TV/movie representation. Even as recent as 2005/6, LGBTQ+ media representation in the UK was viewed as a salacious thing, something for post-watershed TV that guaranteed to draw in hundreds of complaints if shown and so hardly ever was. I was petrified of what it meant to be anything other then straight, and so began the years of secrecy, self-hatred and nightly prayers for ‘straightness’. It was during this time that I resented the phrase “people choose to be gay” because it was bullshit. I actively chose to be straight for all my late teenage years, I chose to date men, I chose to kiss men, I chose to ignore the screaming voices in my head and feelings in my body that told me that kissing boys felt unnatural and forced. Everything in that time of my life felt unnatural and forced and the constant lies about who I was and what I really wanted started to take its toll.

I remember at seventeen my dad asking me whether I was gay and the reaction my body had to that question was overwhelming; my heart began racing and I started sweating as the fear caused me to adamantly deny that I was anything other than straight. Later that night I cried myself to sleep because in lying to him I had once again closed that door on my cage when there was a chance of being free. I vowed that the next time somebody asked that question I would be honest, I was too afraid to just come out and say it but next time I was asked I’d not lie. I didn’t realise it would be another four years until I was asked again.

By the time I was twenty-one the weight of this burden that I’d been carrying since fifteen (even earlier in retrospect), was so heavy that it had started to affect my mental health. I was dealing with depression, anxiety, deep shame and self-hatred. I still didn’t want to be gay but six years of pretending to be straight and praying to be straight had shown me that this identity was sticking around whether I wanted it to or not. And so, at 21 years old, and while stood in the kitchen with my dad, he asked me again whether I was hiding anything. I think he had sensed my unhappiness in the way only a parent can and was trying to find out what was causing his eldest daughter to be sad. He asked me again whether I was gay. It was clear to me then that my dad likely knew for almost as long as I did about my truth, why else would he ask me the same question twice four years apart. This time I ignored the racing heart, and dry mouth and choking sensation and I said “yeah, I think I am”.

I can’t put into words the relief that moment gave me, as adrenaline coursed through my body I immediately felt lighter. Somebody else knew my secret and the weight of it was shared. My dad was amazing about it, told me he loved me and that it never mattered to him who I loved as long as I was happy and healthy. I always knew deep down that this would be his reaction and I was relieved to find out I was right.

Regardless of whether we think our parents will be accepting doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s the fear that what if you misjudged them and their reaction, what if unknowing to you your parents held strict views against LGBTQ+ people and were disgusted and disappointed in you. The fear that I didn’t know my parents at all was what kept me closeted all those years, the fear of losing their love was enough for me to hide who I was if that’s what it took. I’m lucky that my family were accepting and loving, i know of others that weren’t as lucky. I’m almost 30 now and it’s been 9 years since I came out. I won’t lie, I’m still not fully free from the shame of being gay, I still have trouble coming out to new people or openly showing affection with a partner in public. This shame is something I recognise and that I’m working on overcoming and it does get easier as time goes on. I’m just happy to be free from that cage.