Community Rainbow Waves

Bisexual

I’d always known I wasn’t into boys. I appreciated them, got along with them, played sports with them, but I didn’t like being in a relationship with them. I spent a lot of my time watching old classic movies as a kid and watched how gentlemen treated women, and knew that the only way I or any other woman was to experience that in this day and age was to treat a girl like that myself. I had come out to my friends when I finished school at about 18. I didn’t get the opportunity to be with a woman till I was 22, and all it was was a drunken kiss, but after that, I knew for sure there was no going back. I had started a friendship with a girl I was working with at my local horse stables and after a few months of giving her chocolates and flowers, she came to stay at my place. During the week she stayed with me, she and I both opened up and told each other things we had never told anyone else. Our dreams, our hopes, our pasts. Nothing was off limits. The day before she went back to her place we spent the day just lounging around in bed, and for a brief moment, I thought she might kiss me, and as quickly as I thought it, she quickly moved away. I should point out at this stage that this woman had never even thought about being with a woman.
That night I went to stay with my ex, a guy, and told him of my feelings for this woman. He told me I was being ridiculous and no one would ever love me. The next night I went to stay at her place while her parents were overseas.
She taught her horse riding lesson, and we went home. We had showers, then went and laid in her bed. She had been quiet all day and I had started to worry I had scared her the day before, but suddenly in the darkness, she turned to me and told me she was confused, she didn’t know why she felt the way she did or what was happening, but she told me all she wanted to do was kiss me, and asked if I would be ok with her doing that. She kissed me, and the rest is history. Two weeks ago we celebrated out two year wedding anniversary.
My mother didn’t and still doesn’t accept our marriage, but the rest of my family love my wife to pieces. And why? Because she makes me happy. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters, is happiness and love.

Dana (she/her)

I remember the first time I actively thought about girls in a more than friends way, I was in grade 7 and about 12 years old. There was this girl in my class who was like nobody I’d ever seen before and I REALLY wanted to be her friend. As the year went on, I started wondering what it would be like to kiss her. We were in a group project together, and at one point she hugged me and it was the best thing to ever happen to my 12 year old brain. But, I didn’t really think anything of it, because I thought all girls felt this way. In any case, I still had crushes on boys and continued to do so right through grade 8.

Near the end of grade 8, in the spring of 2012, I discovered Glee and quickly became obsessed with the relationship between Brittany and Santana. I wanted to know more about their storyline, so I delved deeper, buying the DVDs of season 1 and 2 (which I hadn’t seen) just so I could see all of the context behind how their relationship came to be. I had never seen a WLW relationship portrayed ANYWHERE before, so Glee had my head spinning and it became the first TV show I ever got hooked on. I went down the YouTube rabbit hole, searching “TV lesbians” and finding so many more ships to obsess over. Somehow, I still wasn’t connecting this fascination to my own identity. It was new and exciting, but I never really stopped to consider why. All of a sudden, YouTube clip after YouTube clip, it clicked for me and I realized I wanted to be like (and with) the women in those videos.
Later that summer, I realized I was developing feelings for my best friend. At that point, I was secretly labelling myself as bisexual (I still liked boys, right???). I came out to my closest guy friend as bisexual while playing truth or dare over text message, and he accepted it right away. As the summer went on and turned into fall, and the celebrity crushes and the BIG OL’ CRUSH ON MY BEST FRIEND didn’t go away, I began to realize that I could definitely not see myself in a relationship with a boy the way I could with girls. I remember crying about this a lot and literally praying that it would go away. I just wanted to be “normal” and have a “normal” life and it would be so much easier if I could just like boys. This took months to reconcile with myself.
I tentatively asked my best friend if she would ever consider being with another girl. When she said no, my heart broke and I came to the stark realization that not every girl felt this way. I did come out to her, and she accepted me no problem, but I didn’t let slip that she was the girl I wanted to date. I began labelling myself as gay, because the word “lesbian” didn’t sit right with me. I was outed to my school in grade 9, and I remember feeling betrayed, but also relieved because that meant I didn’t have to broadcast it myself. Shockingly, at my Catholic school, nobody cared. I never received flack for it, and everyone was very cool about it.

This was the year I discovered Tumblr, where I went on a journey of self-realization. I put posters of women up in my room, and I downloaded pictures of my celebrity crushes to the computer. I didn’t have my own computer, so I used the family computer for all of this (rookie mistake). One day, my mom came into my room, sat with me, and started asking me questions. I knew exactly where she was going with it when she asked me about the pictures in my room. In my heard I was pleading with her not to ask the question I was dreading—I wasn’t ready to face it. My silent pleading didn’t work, because she did ask it: “I see a lot of pictures of girls, and none of boys…I want you to be honest with me, are you leaning towards that? It’s totally fine, it doesn’t matter to me one way or another, I still love you”. I told her that honestly, I didn’t know. Even though I did know, I just wasn’t ready to say it. I think I was still battling a lot of internalized homophobia. I didn’t know any out queer people in real life, and I felt so abnormal.
Grade 9 was really great. Everybody I told was so supportive and I didn’t have one negative reaction in my peer group. Eventually, my best friend found out I was head over heels for her, but we managed to remain very close. Somehow, I got over her (yes, it gets better!!) and had other crushes and near-relationships with other girls. Then, my buddy set me up with this girl in our grade, and I had my first relationship over the summer right before high school. She broke up with me a couple weeks into grade 10 and naturally, I was heartbroken. I was so beyond upset that my parents definitely noticed. My mom asked me about it, and I broke into tears— in order to tell her what was wrong, I had to tell her I was gay. When I told her that the girl and I had been dating, she said that she kind of figured. She was so supportive and it made me wish I had come out to her earlier, but I really hadn’t been ready.
I had already told my younger sister (who was 11 at the time) that I had a girlfriend shortly after I started dating this girl. She had no problem with it and was extremely supportive. My dad was the hardest. We’d never been super close, and I didn’t really know how to talk to him about anything, so it was hard to breach the topic. It was probably a few weeks after I told my mom that I finally came out to my dad. He told me that my mom had told him, and that he still loved me, but he was concerned about my safety at school (my dad, ever practical). I came out to my extended family a couple years later, via Facebook on National Coming Out Day in 2015. I wrote a massive post because I didn’t want to come out to my family members individually, and at that point it was a non-issue to me. I never received any negative reactions, and everybody has accepted my now-girlfriend as part of the family.

Positive representation matters because it’s what made me realize who I am and also what gave me the courage to let others know who I am! At the time of writing this, I have been out for seven years. As soon as I came out, I felt instantly freer and life was much easier. I am so fortunate that this has been my experience, and that I have been blessed with such amazing and supportive people around me. I look forward to a day where everybody can fall in love without boundaries, and where “coming out” is no longer necessary. Because, after all, #OutIsTheNewIn

Thompkell (she/her)

I have a vivid memory of walking home from school when I was 13 years old. Where my steady footsteps on the pavement, the soft weight of my backpack, and the gentle warmth of afternoon sunshine created the conditions for my mind to wander to romantic curiosities about one of my best friends – a girl (like me). The memory doesn’t stay with me as a milestone for my first gay thought (which I’m not even sure would be accurate), but it hovers because of the innocence that emerged when I remember telling myself afterwards with a playful shrug – “I’m sure everyone has thoughts like this.”

Whether or not more people ever do feel a pull to kiss their same-sex friends, my experience was that it was unsafe to consider – so forget talk about – that this desire could be any part of my truth. But there was something enchanting about the tension that I then began to experience as I felt called to acknowledge this part of myself.

I had to make a choice.

So instead of pulling myself together – I split and divided core facets of my being to maintain an illusion of a “normal” life and to hide the pieces I was not ready to accept.

The division, as one might expect, led to secrecy and a dynamic where I could only find true happiness in controlled, private, and hidden spaces. Escapism and disconnection. And, as if to further confuse my inherent sense of self and intuition, my friend – who I had imagined kissing – ended up playing in these shadows with me. We “dated” in the later years of high school – a secret we kept from literally everyone else in our lives. But where we were each coming from, at our cores, wasn’t aligned. She would cycle through boyfriends and force a hard separation from our day life and our shadowed life. I started living a life so empty on the surface – craving the time in the shadows – that I became numb to who I was spending time with when it wasn’t her.

I lost my centre.
I lost my own personal sense of who I was since I was craving to exist in the only one place I permitted and allowed myself to connect to what I was truly feeling.

Eventually it became too much to maintain the separation between the two lives. When I had approached her with the confession – that what I felt in the shadows was something I wanted to share with the light – I was met with hostility and denial. This would start a dysfunctional pattern of dismissing my own needs for those I love. How can you develop any sense of confidence in yourself when the person you care about most and feel you can be your truest self with is ashamed of who you are? Can look you right in your eyes, speak directly to your heart and tell you that who you are and what you feel is wrong?

But perhaps the biggest hurt was to realize that we did not feel the same way about what we were experiencing. That the space we had created together was starkly unsafe for me to feel the way I felt.
My world began to collapse.

I had separated an incredibly significant piece of my identity from the rest of my experience, and since I had defined my happiness based on how worthy I was in someone else’s eyes, my core became a void. Who was I? An emptiness emerged from the gaping hole that I had been filling with validation from others – validation I did not recognize I needed to be seeking from myself first. And when the sadness shifted to numbness it became an exceedingly difficult vibration to move out of – especially when fear and shame took control.

Then in the swirl of sadness, shame, confusion, loss, and uncertainty – the emergent realization that maybe I am gay snapped any remaining stability out from under me. To be this way wasn’t safe, especially if my love won’t be reciprocated, wasn’t enough, or was to be used as a weapon to demonize me. I couldn’t trust myself if this kind of happiness also meant so much harm.

But what is a “coming out story”?

I would love to say that this was the lowest point of my life through this journey – but that isn’t the case. I would also love for this to have been the moment that I accepted and acknowledged my place in the LGBTQ2IA+ community – but that isn’t true either. It would take many years to get to where I am today, and maybe I will always be going through the process of coming out and deepening my self acceptance.

What is the case though, truly, is that as I have found more self acceptance, the people in my life and the world (I believe) have also been finding softer hearts and raising their levels of acceptance, awareness, and love – consciously and subconsciously. And I genuinely believe that we will only get better. We will only love more. We will only build on and grow our collective kindness and compassion.

And, at least based on my experience, I deeply believe all of this is possible through the simple, challenging work of each of us turning inwards towards ourselves – first – and lovingly embracing all of who we are.

Change doesn’t need to be a light switch – but trust that lights shine their brightest in the dark.

Thank you for creating this space for us to share. Thank you for starting this wave of change and inspiration. Thank you for your sincerity and courage.
xo

She/her/they/them, gay, queer, Asian-American

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

I think the instinct was always there but I never thought that being gay was an option where I grew up. In my parents’ home culture, being queer was simply dismissed, as something not real and it really messed with my head when I first truly realized I was attracted to women. Even though in high school, I did have friends who were lesbian and bisexual, I couldn’t see myself ever being one of them. I still remember the night I saw the first woman I was strongly drawn to. It was when I was watching her in a performance that was so passionate and evocative. I thought, “oh God, she is attractive.” That night, I sat down, wrestling with my newfound feelings which I had never felt before in grade school. It was a crush, but I finally understood all those love songs that I didn’t really identify with, because they were mainly heterosexual love representations.

It still took me five years to come out. In between was a rollercoaster of identity crisis, unrequited love, and finding self-acceptance that I was gay. I even entered a relationship with a boy just to see if I could suppress my true attractions. It ended up becoming so toxic because at the end of the day, I could not bring myself to be attracted to him. There was a lot of coercion and I let him because I thought I didn’t deserve any better. The homophobia I had towards myself led me to being desperate to be in control of anything, which included my own body image. I developed an eating disorder, and mentally and emotionally killing my own body. Finally, at the end of college, I looked at myself, gaunt, low-sex drive, thinning hair, and empty. This was not working. I left the relationship, cut my hair, and began to pick up the pieces that were left of me.

Fortunately, that same summer, I found friends who I could be open with about my sexuality. I don’t think I ever had to explain myself or the things I went through to them, but they accepted me without question. I still owe it to them for basically saving my life. My weight went back to normal, and I was beginning to find ways to be more confident little by little. I went to pride parades, watched films and shows with queer characters (Wynonna Earp), and slowly but surely began piecing together my tattered self. I met more queer people who were kind and essential to me becoming more forthcoming in my queerness.

In the year 2017, I survived and graduated with a masters degree in teaching. I was far from being a true professional, but one thing I knew I could do was to start being more authentic. How could I teach students to believe and be themselves if I didn’t do the same? I came out, shakily, to my parents. I had to tell my older sister first, who helped me bring it up with my mother. She looked at me and said I her native language, “well I figured, seeing you brought home an effing big rainbow flag from San Francisco.” I laughed and I also cried. My dad heard, but is still not understanding quite yet. Perhaps he never will, but I was out and I was grateful he didn’t dismiss me or kick me out.

Fast forward to today, I’m pretty much out to people I care about most. There are still many scars, and healing to be done, but I’m just glad to be able to be out and proud as I am. Is it the perfect life? Of course not. I still struggle a lot as a fellow human. I still struggle with mental health and trauma. Would I choose to live any other way? Also no. Because at the end of the day, I realize that all of us who choose to be who we really are, are most able to show the love that this world desperately needs. I am proud of being myself, for the first time in my life.

Thanks for reading, and happy coming out!

I identify myself as female

I think around the age of 8 or 9 when the girls of my classroom started liking the boys and talk about them I had the thought that the boys were so childish and stupid and still girls liked them. After that when I knew that existed gay and queer people I already accepted them even though I never had think about it. Some years later I was talking to my best friend and I said that I really liked girls and apparently some guys but I didn’t know exactly what I was and she accepted me and open up about herself too. I still don’t have a defined sexuality and that’s ok since I know what I like.

The Battle Lesbian AKA That Willa Cosplayer with the Demon Puppet

Looking back, it should’ve been obvious to me that I was gay since preschool. I had so many little kid crushes but because I had never learned that gay even existed it never even dawned on me that that’s what I was feeling. I just assumed I didn’t get crushes like my friends did. By 6th grade I’d come to the conclusion that I just wasn’t built to feel romantic feelings or attraction of any kind. Then in 7th grade I had a best friend and we were really close. I remember so clearly, after school one day not long after I turned 13, we were working on something on the floor in my bedroom. We were laughing about something and she leaned in to whisper in my ear. In that moment I felt what was like an overwhelming wave of emotion and the thought that immediately popped into my head was that I wanted to kiss her. I didn’t- but in that moment it finally all clicked on my head that it wasn’t that I “wasn’t built to feel attraction or have a sexuality”, I just didn’t feel that way towards -boys-. I wouldn’t come out until 2 years later. Not because I thought my family would react poorly, just that I am a very private person and I did and still do feel extremely vulnerable talking about intimate feelings. When I’m really anxious I can go mute, so I decided to come out I would write “I’m gay” on a notecard and show it to my mom. I did when we were out on a weekly mother-daughter trip. And I’ve been out and proud ever since.

Just me

I always knew I was different from a young age but thought it was just retaliation to my upbringing. I never really addressed it and choose to just keep pushing it away until my early teens hit and I coped using alcohol as a defence, and continued to date boys/men (most of my partners were older than me).
When I was around in my early teens, I can’t quite remember the exact age, I told my mum at a party I was gay….the result was not great as now it was gossip and my father who I had just recently met came and told me I was not gay. For fear of acceptance, which is all I ever wanted, I recanted my declaration and continued to live my life as “normal”. Gossip was always abound and I wanted to protect my family from it.
Life went on with its usual trials and tribulations until I made the decision to move away, I was in my mid 30s. Being away from my small home town gave me a sense of freedom that I’d always wanted but I had suppressed so much of my life already that it was still difficult to admit my true feelings.
I am now a couple of months from turning 40 and in the last five years I have met so many people from all walks of life and I have realised that I can be who I want to be!
Even though the subject is still kind of brushed under the carpet back home I am proud to say that my family continue to be my rock and reason for doing all that I do now. I want to teach my nieces and nephew especially that you don’t have to fear anything in life no matter what it is, a fear of flying or whatever.
I have followed Dom for about a year now just purely because she is so pure and true and that really is an inspiration to know that everyone is different and can still conquer the world.
Thank you
I would like to end by saying that I am far from perfect but I am me and that is that.
I love my and friends unconditionally,
This is the first time my story is going beyond them.
Peace out peeps

Queer / Non-Binary

CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION OF ABUSE, SELF HARMING BEHAVIOR, AND SUICIDE.

Hello, my name is Paula from Brazil and my coming out history is a little confusing, so I’m gonna try to resume it as possible as I can.

Why is it complicated? Because a huge part of my childhood was erased from my mind, or at least for a long period I had these huge blanks in my brain, consequences of child abuse suffered from my 8 until my 12 years old. So when my teens came up I was struggling with a lot of stuff, so my orientation and sexual identity was on the surface of all my internal problems. Such as depression, substance abuse, ODs, attempts of suicide, and hospitalizations.

But at the same time, I was quite different and I was pretty conscious that I had attractions with girls but also with boys. Although with boys I was feeling guilty as well. Because I was constantly feeling all this overwhelming hate. Hate of the world, hate of myself, and hate of all men… almost rage if I’m being really honest. Probably, that’s why I was constantly close to dying because I wasn’t giving a fuck about anything.

My brother and best friend (RIP) was the first person I’d come out. I was 14 years old. But is funny though, because was him that asked me with I was gay. And was ok with all my family, as a matter of fact, everybody embraced. Honestly, I didn’t have a problem with the girl’s attraction part, I’d always felt comfortable and safe with them. My struggle was accepting that it was okay having attractions for boys as well. That only took 10 years of my life, even though I was able to have sex experiences with men I’m still having trust issues, emotionally speaking.

Only four years ago I could see other questions tagged in my mind. Questions about my identity, am I trans or not? Because I never felt comfortable with my body, but is it possible that is my child abuse tricking me? Or maybe I just don’t like labels and have a different idea about what women and men are. Or maybe I just don’t feel like either one of them. This is still a work in progress and sometimes I don’t think if I still have the energy. Or maybe is just fear because I live in a country where LGBTQ people have no voice or even proper rights. Especially trans people. Every day a trans life is taken from just for being trans in Brazil.

Music, art, vegan diet, animal care, and LGBTQ activism. Those are all the stuff that literally saved my life. Because I feel like we are here to constantly changing and to always transcend to a better version of ourselves, and maybe or probably, I’m gonna need another life to discover it. So kills me how the world can be so ugly sometimes.

And that’s why I really don’t know how I’m alive. I’m 30 years now and I look all this stuff I had to survive and deal with. But surprises me every day how hopefully I still am, and surprises me how I can be so fucking positive that annoys myself.
I know that I need to deal with a lot of stuff yet.

But I’m proud to already be so much more.

And especially I’m proud to look backward and access all that pain and suffering but with all the fucking strength of the world.

I’m proud to just be alive, honestly.

H. E4L and forever grateful for the Earpers WayHaught

I kind of had an inkling I wasn’t straight back in late 2015. I was really into The 100 and I remember I was unreasonably attached to Lexa and Clarke. It was the first canon LGBT relationship I’d ever seen on TV and for some reason, that meant a lot to me. Then I started watching Wynonna Earp in 2016, because I’d heard about WayHaught and I got really excited that another show might have a canon couple (of course, I got totally hooked on WE within an episode.) And the whole time I’m watching Clexa and WayHaught especially I remember thinking “I wish I had that.” I started seriously thinking about my future and realised that, when I didn’t actively think “I want a husband and kids and etc” if I closed my eyes and tried to picture getting married…it wasn’t always a man. Sometimes, it was a woman I could imagine marrying. And right as I was having that realisation and trying to reconcile it with my religion (Christianity) the whole Lexa thing happened and I got angry. That was one of 2 representations I had to try and figure this out and they just get rid of her?! I decided that I wasn’t going to think about it anymore. I’d kind of figured out I was definitely bi at that point but because of the whole religion thing I decided “hey, at least there’s still a big chance I’ll end up with a guy.”

My nephew was born in the June of 2016 with a serious heart condition and for a decent few weeks, I thought it was God’s punishment. I’d figured out I was bi and God didn’t like that so he punished my family. I was 15 and I didn’t really process things right so I legit thought for weeks that it was my fault. And then I started going online more and I found the Earpers and that whole community made me feel a lot more comfortable. I found people of my faith that weren’t straight and talked to them about everything. And the whole time, I still had WayHaught on Wynonna Earp showing me that girl/girl relationships were alright. Right after the season 1 finale of WE, I told my sister that I thought I was bi. My mum figured it out within a year and told my dad for me. I didn’t officially come out to any of my friends or anyone from my high school until the end of 2019, after I started uni, but most of my close friends kind of figured it out because I stopped fighting it and actively started talking about LGBT stuff.

I was out and proud from my first day at university and that felt so amazing. It was the first time I hadn’t hid my sexuality at all from anyone and that was one of the best experiences of my life. Turned out a decent number of people I started hanging out with, both in lectures and society meetings, were also LGBT+ so for the first time in my life, I had a significant amount of non-hetero friends, one of whom is as big of an Earper as me. I found my people, both on and offline.

Loops in my head

I would say I am quite a private person. I don’t cry in front of people and don’t share everything with my friends. I think that’s why I’m finding it hard to accept that I might be gay. It’s even hard to write the word as I’ve never said it out loud to myself or written it down. It just sounds so weird and unfamiliar and not me. I think I worry a lot about being judged and I try to stop myself but I just can’t help but worry about what other people think of me. I’ve tried to be relaxed and wear whatever I want out the house and say what music I like but I don’t even like sharing my playlist with people as I feel like they will judge me. It sounds stupid but it’s just what I worry about.
The main thing that made me think that I might be gay is this girl I met when I was 13. I didn’t have feelings for her then but I was definitely nervous around her and I wanted her to like me. Maybe I wanted to be her, I’m not quite sure. When I was around 16 (I’m 17 now) I started to imagine kissing her. I wasn’t even considering that I might be gay they were just these thoughts inside my head I couldn’t get rid of. I started to imagine all of these different scenarios where we would be together and have a secret relationship. I still think about those scenarios now and they just play on loop constantly in my head. I’m supposed to be studying but I just sit there for several hours straight just thinking about her. She is so beautiful. I could never say anything to her. I would be too nervous, I don’t think I could ever say it to her. I haven’t actually seen her in a year. Can be so obsessed with someone you haven’t even seen in a year? I feel like in some of the scenarios I am making stuff up about her that I don’t even know. I’m not sure if I’m obsessed with her or just really want a girlfriend. I just don’t know and haven’t even accepted to myself that I am gay because it just seems to foreign and something I’ve only been considering for the past 4 months. I just like her so much. Sometimes I have said to myself ‘yes you’re gay’ but then later at dinner with my family I’m thinking ‘ could you actually confindebtoy day you’re gay? Are you really gay?’ And then I start questioning it all over again. It just such I hard thing to think about and accept. I feel like I have control over certain things in my life like school grades and how well I can play the piano and my 5k times. But I don’t have control over this. It’s not a clear cut thing, it is something I am thinking about constantly but not actually getting anywhere. I kind of know deep down that I am gay but I just can’t accept it in my head.
I know my family and friends would be accepting if I came out but I’m not too worried about coming out at the moment. I’m just thinking about if I’m actually gay and just thinking how stuff would change. No one in my life has any idea that I might be gay. It would be a shock to people if I said I was gay. A friend I love known since I was 3 came out last year. I heard through one of my friends that she had a girlfriend. I was really surprised and didn’t see it coming at all. I didn’t talk to her that much but we are still really good friends. I went for walk with her today and I just thought I could ask her how she came out and how she knew she was gay but I’m just too nervous to ask. I know she would be fine with me asking but then she might suspect I’m gay and I don’t even know myself. I think she would be the first person I might tell if I come out. Or maybe just talk to. Although I don’t think I could do that. I feel like I would have to have completely decided in my head before telling anyone. I feel like I don’t want to appear vulnerable and talk about my feelings to anyone. I just want to think about it without anyone knowing.
I have read a few coming out stories where they have said they felt gay feelings at like 8/9 and I feel like I never related to that. But when I started to think about it more, I did in year 8 have this sudden flash of feelings for this girl in my year. I remember almost laughing at myself like you don’t really have feelings for a girl and blamed it on the book I was reading that had a gay couple in it so it was on my mind. But thinking back to that, I did actually have gay feelings at about 12 but I just buried it straight away. Now I have been thinking about it more, even when watching tv, I do find that I am more attracted to the girls in the relationship. I just think to myself ‘I would rather go out with the girl rather than the guy’. in those moments I feel like surely I’m gay. It just feels so foreign and not me. But I think it’s because I just haven’t properly considered it and at the moment I just can’t see myself announcing to the world that I’m gay. But I know I have all these feelings and I still can’t stop thinking about this girl. It’s not like I try and stop myself thinking about it or tell myself it’s wrong. It’s just that it makes me debate in my head ‘am I really gay?’ ‘Do I really have feelings for this girl or is it something you’re just making up in your head?’ I do want to accept it but I just don’t even have the confidence to say it to myself and I don’t even know why. I think it’s because I always thought of myself as ‘normal’ as I do well in school, like sport, play piano and I feel like my parents see me as normal and straight forward and just a standard girl, not to sound too boring but just as a normal person. And I just feel admitting this to myself or anyone else would make me not normal. I think that just scares me. No one suspects this at all so I feel like I can hide it but I don’t want to shove all my feelings down forever as it’ll just stress me out. Anyway, this is the first time I have written any of this down. My heart still jumps whenever I write the word gay but slightly less than the start of this so maybe you could call that progress 🙂