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Out Is The New In​

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Androgynous

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 am not confused and therefore a bisexual…I am just a confused bisexual” Alina, Germany

Looking back on my childhood I now ask myself “how did I not realise it sooner”. I am a 16 year old cis white girl from Berlin, Germany. Troughout my childhood I always wanted to “be friends” with sertain girls becuase I thought that they were pretty and kind. I had a huge crush on Emma Watson because “she was so cool”. My “bisexual awakening” was popably in 4th grade while watching “Pirates of the Caribbean” I had a crush on both Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.
I was always a little wilder and “boyish” in my behaviour although I wore dresses. In 5th grade I stopped wearing them and started wearing hand me downs form my older brothers. because of my outer appereance mixed with my boyish behavior I was called names by some mean kids but hey I either ignored them or challenged them fo a fist fight (I won…most times).
So the name calling stopped and I lived in peace until 8th grade came along. One of my close friends outed herself as “bisexual”. I was like “wait a minute…I can like both? Boys AND girls?”. It took me a half a year to accept the Idea of me liking both girls and boys. In 9th grade I wa certain that one could classify myself as a bisexual. But then my “bisexual” friend came out as a lesbian and explained that she only outed herself as bisexual because she wasn’t 100% shure she only liked girls. But now she was.
So my inner struggle began…I thought that I maybe was lying to myself because being bisexual was “easyer” than being a lesbian. on other days I thought that I must be a lesbian because not every boy seems attractive to me.
My wohle friendgroup is pretty gay…like LGBTQ..yep we have every damn letter represented. Don’t get me wrong I love my friends but sometimes they overdid it a bit with things like: “You totally look like a lesbian today”. They didn’t know that their “encourageing” words confused me even more.
On some days I just wanted to be a lesbian just to stop that ongoing confusion in my head. But I still liked boys and had to deal with that.
I am not confused and therefore a “bisexual” I am just a confused bisexual.
Now 2 years later I am out in school, to my famely and friends and am currently dating a girl. The confusion stopped and I accepted myself.

My coming out:
The first time I came out to someone other than myself was in 9th grade when I told my friends that I was “bisexual”. They weren’t suprised and freaking high fived me. So a very positive experience.
Half a year later I came out to my dad(my mom and dad are married for 33 years now) he promised not to say anything to my mom. We were driving back from the ski-lift. My father was telling me fun facts to the song we were currently listening to. One of these facts was that the female singer was married to a woman. I said:”why marry a man if you could have a wife”. He just looked at me and agreed “true”. A few minutes later he turned to me and asked “are you a lesbian now?” I sayed: “No, bisexual”. He nodded. No questions asked.

so 2 positive reactions to my coming out. I also have had negative ones but I already wrote a little bit too much XD sooo
I wish you all the best and hope that you are living in a save environment that allows you to be yourself.
-Alina

Tara

Well to start this I guess no one knows who I am but hi I’m Tara

And I guess this is my coming out story uwu!!

I remember the first time I ever learnt about the lgbtq Community was from a girl I met in year 7, she said she was bi leaning that she liked men and women and I remember thinking to my self like are you even aloud to like your own gender, from there on it’s always had me thinking about and I started to see the word in a different light, after a while I started to moved to liking girls and seeing how pretty they were, she I cam out bi still being unsure on what gender I liked, I had started dating a boy but it only lasted for 2 weeks because I just didn’t feel any connection to him, we felt more like best friends then a relationship and we kept it at that growing a even stronger friendship, half way through year 7 I had met a girl named Charlotte and she had changed my work for the best/worst I don’t remember much but we ended up dating for a year but I remember her telling me after our one year that she hadn’t been happy for months and only stayed in the relationship to keep me happy, I felt hurt because I had actually grown to like her but looking back at it now it was a toxic place in my life,

When I told my mom in 2017 I might be bi she was kind of shooked and said it’s probably just a phase and I’ll grow out of it and boy is she wrong because it’s 2020 and I’m a lesbian, anyways

I remember back in 2017 watching pitch perfect 3 for the first time not watching the first two and I shipped beca and Chloe for such a long time and that’s what kind of helps me to know what I wanted, even though they never got cannoned, after 2017 I hit a hard point of my life my dad left our family and basically cut all contacts with me and took my baby piper away who was my boxer, I had loved that dog with all my heart, but I was also glad my dad was gone because he was never there for me growing up and was always just toxic and rude, even now days he does not bother to she me any love and yet shows it to my brother and it does hurt me at Times because I’ll never get that have to father daughter experience that others get to have but this is my life, at this time in my life o had also gained weight and felt even more depressed about my self, as everyone around me was skinny and pretty where as I was the 5,4 girl with the extra weight just trying to fit in but never could, it wasn’t really until I left my old school and moved that I had found my passion for film and photography, one day hoping to be a movie producer and Director, and I had made much better friends who where all in so way gay, fast forward to 2020 being where I am I’m still in locked down but I had discovered Wynonna Earp, at first I didn’t want t watch it because I heard a lesbian died and I didn’t want to cry over it but then i watched it, and I just have to say I am in love with the show the cast and crew and the fandom, they have to be some of the nicest people I met and I’m now big fans of Kat and dom I fell my cheeks hurting from smiling, and because of their characters Waverley earp and Nicole haught I have truly discovered who I am and “I am a lesbian”, when I went to tell my mum again I was I bit nervous since what happened back in 2017 but I wrote it on paper and gave it to her, to my luck she supports me and says just because you like. Girls doesn’t change anything and it made me feel really great to know I will always have one parent who loves and supports me for who I am

And I’m now starting to get my life on track and have managed to lose weight and I feel a bit better about my self

To anyone reading I wanna say sorry this 12:30 am and I kind of wrote this on the spot

Lesbian

My journey started way back when i was a child. I always knew from a young age that i’d just marry who i married and as long as we both loved each other and made each other happy then i’d be happy. But then as i became more aware of the world i realised that this wasn’t the “norm” and that in other people’s eyes i was going to marry a man. I moved up to secondary school at age 11 and suddenly realised it was a dog eat dog world. People would pick on you for wearing the wrong shoes, not styling your hair correctly, for not looking like a model and they’d call you “gay” whenever they could. So i buried that side of me of me for nearly 3 years. Eventually, i slowly started to learn about the LGBT community through the media and tv shows and i finally saw people like me represented on screens. But even then, it wasn’t always positive. So then i struggled for a year telling myself that I wasn’t bisexual and that it was a “phase” and that i’d get over it in a few weeks and then i could forget about it. But months passed and i was still telling myself it was a phase.

Then in June 2016 i found a show where i finally saw that positive representation i needed. i followed the journey of Waverly Earp and i saw her and it helped me to accept myself. So for the next 2 years i lived accepting myself and not telling anyone in fear of judgement and people not liking me.

Then i went up to college and i decided it would be a new start so on september 14th 2018 i came out to my dad and then i came out to my mum the following tuesday. Then i slowly started coming out to my friends. And i finally started accepting myself. I experienced the odd homophobic comment like “god created adam and eve not adam and steve, but i ignored it because i knew that they were just being ignorant and i continued making growth and finally breaking out of my shell. Until March 2019.

By then i had a voice in the back of my head telling me that i wasn’t actually bisexual. It was telling me i was a lesbian. The self doubt starting flooding in again. I was telling myself “I‘m not a lesbian, i just haven’t found any boys who i like yet”. All my friends were getting boyfriends and i felt like there was something wrong me. Every time me and my friends would do something they’d point out the hot boys and i’d just nod along and pretend. I didn’t want to point out and girls i liked or thought were good looking in fear of being judged, in case they’d see me differently even though i was already out as bisexual to them.

Then in November 2019 i got locked outside with a girl i liked and her friend. And i told them that i thought i was a lesbian and they pulled me in for a hug and told me that it didn’t matter how i identified because they’d always accept me.

Then in february 2020 whilst my friend was drunk i told her i thought i was a lesbian. She pulled me in for a hug and she told me she was so proud of me and that i deserved the world.

Everyday i still fight inside my head against the compulsive heterosexuality i feel inside, against the idea that i need to marry a man in order to be accepted and liked. I’m done sacrificing my happiness and identity in order to make others happy. Therefore from today, March 30th 2020. I will be living my truth.

And that truth is that I am a lesbian. Because in the end, love wins.

And out is the new in.

I’m a bisexual latina

I think that since I was little I always felt that something was off or that I did’t fit with the rest of my family or friends. I grew up in a place where being LGBT wasn’t something that you could be or see on a daily basis. I was your typical stereotype of being not so feminine, loooove soccer and hang out with the boys more so than with the girls. Oh the irony!

I remember that when I was 8 o 9 I had this “competitive” obsession with this girl in the opposite soccer team. I always thought that I just wanted to defeat her in every soccer match and If she didn’t play I would get very upset. Later on you start to see this “gays clues” that life would throw at you and don’t realize. Then, when I was in secondary school and puberty started I had this massive crush on a boy, the pretty boy of the school, so I got distracted for a while but deep down I still felt off from the rest. When I was 13 this boy got a girlfriend and for a while I thought that I was jealous of her but in reality I was jealous of both, at the same time!

Then, highschool happened.

When I was 15 I finally had the opportunity to see “gay people”. Yes, as ridiculous as it sounds. Back then representation was not something you could find in mexican telenovelas o any other type of show broadcasted. Internet was just starting to be a thing and basic education at school never tells you that not being a cis straight person it’s possible. So there I was watching girls kissing girls and boys kissing boys and then I knew that was possible but still didn’t questioned it within myself. I hadn’t realized that I’ve had feelings for girls before.

Not until I was 16.

I’ll never forget it.

I was in my biology class, bored as hell so I started to get distracted and while looking around I suddenly felt that someone was staring at me. So…I turned around and there she was, this beautiful girl looking at me. We shared a look, like a 10 seconds long look!…and I knew. Nothing happened between us mostly because I was scared. I’ll always regret that.

After that, research started, quizes about whether I was gay or not, youtube videos, webseries, Carmilla, clexa, Las Aparicio here in Mexico and eventually I came out to myself.

I was in fact, attracted to cis men and cis women, I was bisexual. So far I haven’t had attrattion towards non-cis folks but who knows?!

It took a while for me to know because my attraction towards men is not as strong as it is towards women so I thought I couldn’t use that label but who cares, I feel comfortable with it and sexuality is fluid. If I ever feel the need to change it , I will and there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it.

Once I figured that out I decided to come out to others.

I started with my bother, who by the way, is also part of the community! I was so funny when we both knew about each other.

Then, my mom. Poor soul, my bother had just came out to her and a week later her daughter as well. She was shocked I can tell you that but with some time she processed it and now she is even asking me to take her to a Pride Parade, gay bars and everything that’s gay because as she says, it’s what makes me happy and “gay people are so funny”

My dad found out because of her, she told him and he was cool about it.
I know that I am lucky to have a family that loves me and supports me no matter what and unfortunately that is not something everyone has but I know the world is slowly changing.

We will make it, maybe not my generation but the future looks better than the past.

XO XO from Mexico.

Bisexual, Indian, Female, Androgynous. Still a badass 🙂

I didn’t know you could be something other than straight until I was 13. Growing up in India when homosexuality was still a crime, I didn’t exactly see myself represented in any way. But I guess it’s always been a part of me, whether I saw it or not. I “wanted to be friends” with any girl I thought was cool. I wanted to be the “boy character” in any kind of role-play games. I was starstruck looking at both Zac Efron and Ashley Tisdale. Typical baby gay things.
My internalized homophobia convinced me that I couldn’t come out until I was sure that it wasn’t a phase. (If anything, being straight was my phase) I could muster up the courage to tell my friends only when I was 16 and when I did, I could feel some baggage physically being lifted from my heart. I was always worried that things would change between my friends and I but thankfully they’ve been super supportive and we are closer now because we are more honest with each other :’)
My parents are a tough nut to crack. They’re not homophobic, but can’t imagine having a daughter “like that”. It’s bad enough that they don’t have a girly daughter, and sometimes I feel guilty about my self expression. I don’t think I will ever feel confident about coming out to them.
At the same time, I know there’s hope. Homosexuality has been decriminalized (in India), I see positive representation in media and I choose to have faith in the human race. There are going to be people who won’t accept me, and that’s okay. I would rather be hated for who I am than be loved for someone I’m not.
Love is Love 🏳🌈
~S

The Long Road To Acceptance

CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT SELF-HARMING BEHAVIOUR.

It all started when I was 12 years old and I had my first experience with lesbian representation on tv. For some reason I couldn’t get it off my mind and I sat alone in my room wondering if it could be possible… could I be gay? The answer was clearly yes but my young, innocent self didn’t figure it out that easily. I went through the stages, denial, denial, oh she’s beautiful… wait, denial, denial, denial. At this time in the world the whole concept of LGBT+ was taboo and so separate from what is taught to us as ‘normal’ that I believed something was wrong with me. This couldn’t be happening to me. I was 12-13 years old and I already hated myself.

I then felt, that because I had discovered this aspect of me, I had to come out immediately. Isn’t that how it goes? I was pressured by a ‘friend’ to tell them my secret but the fear consumed me and I couldn’t do it. I now know it’s because I wasn’t ready but that didn’t matter to her and I wrote my secret on a small piece of paper in class. She opened it and class was over. I felt sick and terrified. That’s not where the note stopped and instead it made it’s way to someone else… Then you know how school is. The next day a lot of people knew. I don’t even know who did or didn’t to this day but at the time it felt as though my whole world knew and they were all staring at me. I lost all of my friends. I had no one. It made me feel dirty. I didn’t want this anymore.

I didn’t deal with this well at all or in a healthy way. I was cowering to the farthest corner of the closet trying to grasp onto the darkness with all of my strength. The same person that received my note first showed me how to take my fear, disgust, punishment out on myself physically. It didn’t help but I needed control over something because I was lost. The darkness of that closet spread to my life everywhere and I was very close to ending the darkness all together…

I made it, I’m not sure how, but I made it through school and at 16 years old I was free of those people and the label of being gay. So I left the label there and I pretended like I’d never even considered it to begin with. For another 3-4 years I lived in blindness of who I was and did everything I could to stop any thoughts of the past and the rainbow. To be honest, for a while it worked but was I happy? Was I comfortable? Did I deserve it? No absolutely not.
I started university, I got with guys. I got told I should be getting with guys. Does it feel like this for everyone? Maybe you aren’t supposed to really like it? I did not enjoy it but I was still covering my eyes and ears from anything other than what was expected. I guess I actually drank enough to dull my senses and not acknowledge what was really happening. Yes, my use of physical harm on myself moved to borderline alcoholism. I mean it is university after all. But this way of living helped me kiss who I wanted to kiss and be with who I wanted to without explaining myself almost. When you do kiss who you are meant to, I am telling you, it feels amazing and right and everything it should. Wait… can I actually do this? Look around, people here don’t care. No one cares. Yes, please be yourself. It feels too good not too.

Watch out, your rainbow is showing! Finally.

It doesn’t matter how I got here or how long it took. What matters is that I did. This is my journey. It is beautiful.

I managed to find my truth and even though it took counselling and a breakdown to grieve my straight self I am me and I found someone outstanding to love along the way.

I finally accept myself, the love of my support system which I am incredibly lucky to have and the love from myself. I’m not going to lie and say it’s easy or it is always sunshine now but it is true and it is free. I still get looks when I hold my girlfriend’s hand in public. I still get approached by people when I decide to kiss her in public. I still don’t tell people I first meet about my sexuality because I don’t want to be judged. I still scout out any representation I can of LGBT+ content in media because we still don’t have enough (but thank you for what we do have, just don’t kill off all the lesbians please). However, I will take all of that because I also love this unique part of myself and I really bloody love love.

It is getting better and we are all in this together. I am thankful for my story and I am thankful for my gay.

So breathe, take your time, love yourself and make waves. You got this!

Love, Hannah.

#OUTISTHENEWIN

Gay

The start of my journey was a girl. It’s stereotypical, but that’s how it happened. I was teenager, my parents were divorcing, I wasn’t even sure the true romantic love was real. Then we kissed for the first time. No longer could their be any denial of love or my sexuality, because in that moment I knew.

When I first came out, it was as bisexual. Maybe because I still had not fully accepted who I was… or maybe because the girl was bisexual. Coming out to my friends was blissfully easy. They’d suspected for years and had never had any problems with the idea. My dad, such an open minded man, again gave me no fear. My mum though. She was unpredictable. I was so scared, that I did it via text message while we were in the same house! BIG MISTAKE. I had to wait 40mins to hear back! But when she did she told me she still loved me. It somehow didn’t give me relief. As though, she was being okay with my sexuality because she felt she had to be. In this phase in my life the biggest difficult was school. I once had a group of 30 people chanting things like: “What would Jesus say” at me. Lucky for me, someone saw. The school asked me to talk to the group and asked my opinion for appropriate punishment. So they did an assembly on inclusion.

When I later came out as a lesbian, nobody was surprised. I’d dated guys, but it was clear nothing had particularly clicked. But finally I was out for me…. or so I thought.

5 years on I was 21. I was absorbing a lot of LGBT content and I remember thinking about this in the context of myself. My gender. I’d never been what you’d call ‘girly’. When I was younger I was called “a tomboy”, but when I was older, suddenly this label disappeared and I no longer had it as inclusive context. I was just different. When I was learning about other LGBT labels, one that came up was gender neutral. Because it is one I instantly identified with. I wasn’t female…I just wasn’t male either. Then I had to come out again. It took me several years to come out with one of my friends. We disagree on many things and the concept of genders beyond cis or transgender is definitely one of these. I’d tried so many times to calmly explain how it is possible for an infinite number of sexualities and genders could be, to no avail. When I told him, he was offensive – but in a way that showed his , acceptance. We constantly talk about our differing views on multiple topics. I certainly find it difficult, at times, to remember that just because he isn’t as open minded as I would like him to be he is not a bad person. He just has different views to mine.

With gender and sexuality being constantly changes, filled with multiple aspects I can not promise that these aspects of me won’t change. This is why I like to identify as ‘gay’. I feel that it is such a broad term, I can make it fit with who I am now and who I will be in future. The story above is all to brief. You come out thousands of times! It also doesn’t include some of my darkest moments, but the main point is that as dark as things have got I am me… I wouldn’t want to change that for a second. Neither should you. Be proud of who you are, regardless of what comes your way.

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.

You can call me B, I go by she/her and I’m a lesbian. 🙂

It’s probably not a surprise but it’s taken me quite a while to get to this point, where I’m comfortable enough in calling myself a lesbian and being able to share that to the world. But here I am. And I couldn’t be happier.
Around gr. 10, I had a tough time with friends. The year before I moved to a new city and being the shy quiet kid I am I was extremely nervous about making new friends. But I did become close friends with two people so it wasn’t that bad. Then came gr. 10, and I didn’t have any classes with either of them which sucked. By that time, everyone else seemed to have made friends and well… I wasn’t a part of that, I wasn’t really friends with them. So I just stayed quiet.
Then one day, I ended up checking out this club that I knew a few of my friends would go to every Wednesday. It was GSA. Around that time I had heard of gay people and how they weren’t very well accepted, I never understood why they faced so many hardships because it was just love wasn’t it? So then why was the Catholic community I had grown up in so unaccepting of it when all I had learned from them was how to be kind to others?
Anyways, that sparked my curiosity about the LGBTQ+ community, and along with my friends in that club and my favorite art teacher running the club, I kept going there. Soon enough it became my safe haven that year. A place that I was happy to go to every week while the rest of my school life seemed to suck.
I learned a lot from the wonderful people there. I saw what a supportive and caring community was like. Safe to say I never stopped going to GSA even after started making more friends and high school no longer felt like it was terrible.
Subconsciously, at some point, I’m not sure when I started to have this question that would randomly pop up in my head. “What if I was gay?” My continuous and automatic response to that was no, I wasn’t. That when on for at least a year, and I wouldn’t give it much thought. I would ignore it. Then near the end of gr. 12, in the last month of school, I came out to one of my closest friends. I never planned to, nor expected it. We were on a phone call and she brought up boys, and most importantly how I was talking to this boy she hadn’t met in the hallway. (Note he was asking me something about one of the other clubs I was in/running). And when she brought it up, I just felt this gut feeling that this idea seemed… wrong, I had that feeling is several other occasions when my friends would talk about boys. So I took a deep breath and said, “I think I like girls.”
At the time I wasn’t sure because I never liked a girl before, but I had a lot of female celebrity crushes the same way that girls my age had crushes on Zac Efron for example. Looking back now, I remember I tried liking a few celebrity guys, like Brad from the Vamps. But it never came with as much ease as it did with liking Selena Gomez or Olivia Holt. I felt like I was in a way forcing myself to like him.
Sure there were a few actual guys I said I had crushes on, but I think they were just what I thought as a crush at that time, something I now call an admiration crush. One where I looked up to that guy and would want to hang out with him a lot, but never really thought about relationship stuff. Because honestly the idea of girls liking girls never really occurred to me, until I discovered this ship on my favorite show Supergirl. Kara and Lena. Easily I developed crushes on both actresses and loved the idea of their characters getting together. I finally had representation.
That grew more when I started watching Wynonna Earp and One Day at A Time. And yes, I did solely watch those shows because I discovered Wayhaught and that Elena was a gay character. I started to feel more okay with the idea of liking girls.
That summer, I also told one of my other closest friends that I liked girls. The two of them were the best about it. Which was great because they were the friends I was going to university with. The place I decided I would let myself explore this and see if I really did like girls.
Surprise, surprise, I do. I developed a crush on this girl. I finally experienced an actual crush, with the whole feelings thing. Yes, that whole “your heart races around them and you can’t seem to form words” thing I discovered is real.
Then I started to come out to a handful of people, the friends that I wanted to know, that I felt safe telling. Then even two of my cousins. I’ve gotten lucky because I have yet to experience losing a friend because of my sexuality. It may happen later on when I am fully out, but I now have a group of people who do accept me for who I am and will be there for me no matter what.
Then, one day with some advice. I gave myself before winter break to try and ask her out. (I know, a lesbian girl who’s an introvert asking someone out. That must be new lol.) On the third day, the chance came up and I did. I took the risk. She got back to me after winter break, and well, I got rejected.
Even though things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped with her, thanks to her I got the courage to come out to a lot of important people in my life and I’ve never been more sure about liking girls.
Heck, I got a pair of Doc Martens and a friend gave me rainbow suspenders. (And added to my already large collection of flannels). Never in my life had a simple thing such as clothes made me so happy and confident in myself. It was refreshing and absolutely amazing.
So now here I am. Happy and more confident. No longer as shy as that girl in gr. 10. I went from someone not knowing why we stated our pronouns during GSA meetings to being proud of being part of the community. I’ve grown a lot in the past few years, and especially this year.
Right now, the only part that scares me, is telling my family. Especially my parents. They are both aware of the community, know I went to GSA, and have seen gay people on shows and movies. But it’s different when it’s your kid. I’m sure a lot of you who are part of the community understand that. I know that they won’t kick me out or anything, but I’m still scared. I know I will finally tell them one day when I’m ready. But for now, I’ll just be in my room watching my gay movies.
Anyways, I hope my story helped you with whatever part you are in your journey or made you feel less alone in all of this. I just wanted to share my story with all of you whoever you are, however you identify, and whoever you love. Remember there will be people who have your back that you can lean on even if that won’t be everyone. It takes time to figure this out, so take your time, there’s no rush. And you don’t have to come out to people until you feel safe to do so and when you feel it’s the right time. Even to your parents. Your journey is your own.
Be authentically you, because when you are “you are all the colours in one, at full brightness,” (-all the bright places).
Sending you my rainbow love, B.