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Since I was a kid. It all started during my elementary days. I am avoiding one of my classmate because I am ashamed of her. Like she’s so beautiful and everyone likes her. Then one time our teacher assigned our permanent seating arrangement and I was shocked because she is my seatmate! We are awkward to each other then. So that was the time that I know to myself that I like girls and boys.
Little Pat already knew that she liked boys and girls. Surrounded by friends and always dreaming of colorful friendships. But only the boys had the courage. The girls only saw their friend. I kissed many boys, but I knew that one day I would kiss girls.
I let time take care of that part. And when a girl finally wanted to kiss me I just closed my eyes and let it happen. It was wonderful.
The time passed and the falmiliar meetings speculating the life of others about boyfriends, children, marriage … And I let them talk about how many boyfriends I had. I have never spoken openly to the “family” that I am queer (I like different types of people). My 2 sisters, 1 niece and my closest friends know that I am queer because I don’t hide.
But this year I decided to put the rainbow flag in the description on the social networks that I am on. Family members and acquaintances will see what they never really wanted to know.
And Dominique Provost-Chalkley, you are a beautiful person!
I was unable to read your statement and remain silent.
Thanks to your delicacy I wanted to write …
I am OUT. (and also a ACE “demisexual” brazilian person)
#OutIsTheNewIn
Maybe when I’m 12 or 13. I used to like to chatting with girls. I used to have strong feelings. And then I know, it is love.
I got caught by my parents. And they were so dissapointed with me. Thats makes me so sad. But, I need to accept that. Cause the country where I live now, still cant accept LGBTQ.
So, I still hide it until now.
I adore you so much with your work, with your passion, with your kindness. Do more for other. There will be a lot of ppl out there that need to be encourage.
When I found love. I didnt say anything, I’m just action speak louder than words. I think everyone, no, not everyone notice what makes me happy. But I am glad i found love and Im lil bit scared because not everyone knows or accepted my imperfection. And that’s for being a Bi. So I am not totally out because I’m scared.
I knew I was different from about 9 or 10 but I knew I was gay when my teacher in 8th grade, giving a talk about sexuality, gave all the girls a survey to ask, “on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you desire a boyfriend?”. It was an odd question but it was anonymous so I answered truthfully. He then collected the papers and read out the numbers aloud “8, 10, 9, 2! Two??? Wow.” The class laughed…I was mortified. I spent the next 20 years hiding this truth from myself and everyone around me.
In order to keep up pretenses I slept around and dated every guy I could but I never felt love. It always felt like friends with benefits. I joined the military at 26 during Dont Ask Dont Tell and after I started dating women, in secret, I still did my duty at work but that law kept me from feeling connected to my fellow troops. I couldn’t share my dreams or hopes or loves. I couldn’t talk about my weekend trips without dancing around pronouns or lying altogether. I lied to myself, my family, my friends…i felt like a fake. I was externally happy-go-lucky and adventurous but inside…I felt alone. Empty.
At 30 yrs old, I finally stuck with one girlfriend longer than a few months and we moved in together. I couldn’t keep lying and I wanted to free myself of the burden I had felt most of my life. It was time to be honest. I was a grown-ass woman; brave in every other area of my life except this one. No more lies.
I knew my biggest rejection would come from my religious family so I went big and started with my parents; if I could tell them, I could tell anyone. I knew that the moment I said it out loud I would lose them forever but I could no longer live for others; it was time to be authentically me. My parents and I got into a car to head to the beach and on the way home I told them I had to tell them something big. They saw my face turn white, my voice began to shake, tears started to fall. They said, “Mija…whats wrong? What is it?”. I said that I was gay. I knew I was attracted to women and I was tired of living a lie. I then commenced to crying even harder. My father spoke up, “Lisa, you are my daughter…you are the same person you were 5 minutes ago, nothing has changed. I love you. I will always love you.”. My strict religious father surprised me with LOVE. My mother took it harder but she came around over time.
I’m 44 now. I’m happy, healthy, and OUT to ALL . In the military I have to still be careful who I let into my circle but those who know me, accept all of me. I am finally allowed to serve and feel connected to my team. I am absolutely unafraid to live and love. It feels so good to say that. I lost some homophobic friends and family members along the way but you find that when the lies are gone you are able to have closer bonds with those who truly love you. It was worth it.
Sending love and amazing vibes to all my fellow LGBTQ+ family. May you all be free to explore your path and live devoid of any shame that stifles your happiness.
I always knew I was different from other girls. Different from my peers. I was an only child who grew up around college professors, spiritualists, and artists. My parents taught me that the most important thing in life was to always seek knowledge. That one of the most insidious dangers was anyone or anything that demanded you to OBEY without asking questions. But that still got buried while I was trying to survive the public school system in Idaho (very conservative).
Teenagers, especially teen girls, can be BRUTAL to anything that is different. I was already weird enough for wanting to do well in my classes, communicating well with adults, and being an artist. Adding “why no I don’t think Johnny is cute but I think his sister is gorgeous” to the mix seemed impossible. Seemed terrifying. So I sat on it. I laughed at queer jokes. I ate the poison dished out by my peers and it made me sick every day. It wasn’t until college that I started feeling more comfortable with being queer.
Coming out for me came in many steps. My first girlfriend in high school. Telling my friends when I needed support because she wanted to stay in the closet and it was killing me. Telling my peers because I was in pain after my break up and I was too bitter to stay quiet. Telling my parents. Telling my coworkers. Turning down jobs that paid more but fostered an anti queer environment that would force me back in the closet. Not lying when someone asked me if I was queer.
It’s still hard, especially on days when I have to listen to someone spewing poison about how much they hate anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. I imagine there will be more steps in my journey but with each one, it gets a little easier.
I’m fourteen and not fully out to my family. I’m gay and I live in a small town in southern Louisiana where church is everything. There’s not much I can do physically in my community, so I help out through the internet. I use the internet to educate myself and learn strategies to fight against prejudice and cruelty against the community. I love to write so I write stories of inclusion and happy endings for LGBTQ+ people especially when I enter writing contests. I use my artistic abilities to depict non stereotypical people of the community. I try hard to unify and support others when I come across them on the internet. I support and reach out to other, especially younger, people in the lgbtq+ community. I’ve had several people come out to me because I was the only gay person they knew. I tried my absolute best to reassure and to give hope to them and point them in the right direction. Being that person, the person who others feel comfortable to come to with such an important part of themselves, is one of the highlights of my life. A lot of the time I feel alone, but helping others makes me realize that I don’t want others to feel that way, I want to be the person that changes that for them. I’m proud of the person I am and the people I’m helping others become. The internet can be a scary and cruel place, but I hope to make it a little bit better one step at a time.
I realized that I liked women when I was thirteen. I recognized it and came out as bisexual when I was fourteen years old. I came out for the first time on 3/29/20. I kept searching for labels that fit better after realizing that bisexuality didn’t fit me. I began experimenting with they/them pronouns and my attraction to men decreased very quickly. I chose a new name for myself and began using they/them pronouns. I began identifying as a lesbian, and came out as a lesbian in June 2020. In July, I came out as nonbinary. I started dressing masculine and I felt a lot more comfortable. I was not accepted by my family after coming out, and I struggled with undiagnosed depression and anxiety and possibly ADHD. Even though I was out of the closet, I still struggled with internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality. My family continues to deadname and misgender me, despite all my efforts to correct them and get them to use my correct name and pronouns. I began to self harm to cope with gender dysphoria and my family’s rejection of my identity. I still live with my family and I am not currently able to get away from them or move out. Seeing the state of the country that I live in, and how it treated people like me worsened my feeling of hopelessness. My story does not have a happy ending yet, but I want to live to make it better. I am human. I’ve got goals, and dreams, and hopes. I am not just my past, and I am not just my trauma. I want to become an actor. I want to have a family one day. I want to adopt kids when I get older. I can’t wait to make some of my dreams come true.
I think I’ve always known I was queer since a young age, but growing up in a very conservative area, and being told a “man and a woman are supposed to be together” really made me squash any feelings that were perceived “not right”. I’ve always felt scared and ashamed to be my true self because growing up I was bullied severely in high school relating nothing to my sexual orientation. For things like looks, and interests. I never felt safe enough, even within my own household. I still haven’t officially come out to anyone because being completely honest I squashed this part of me for so long that it took hearing Dom’s coming out story to make me finally connect that piece Id been missing for so much of my life. I’ve always loved the idea of just two people in love, regardless of gender, and love is love. My name is Haley and I am into all people. Thank you for giving me this platform to finally say this out loud.
I’ve known since a young age that I was attracted to girls. I kissed my babysitters niece when we were 8 or 9, a few years later I found my dad’s playboy magazines – and I wasn’t trying to read the articles, I was lucky enough to have a computer in my room when I was in 6-8th grade and I found wlw fanfics online and I remember the one time I took a 1 megapixel video recording of two (2) girls kissing from a TV show on my flip phone when I was in the 9th grade (of which a friend saw and I’ve never panicked more than I have then, but someone got them to drop it and move on). The point is I’ve always known, I just always felt like that part of me had to stay hidden, even though I later became a very outspoken ally of the LGBTQ2IA+ community. I even sat with several friends as we cried together while they came out to me and I loved and supported all of them, but yet I felt that I couldn’t do the same. Maybe it was just my body insecurities, or whatever but I felt, and I guess still do to an extent, that I didn’t belong. That I didn’t physically look or dress and certain way so I couldn’t be anything but straight.
Even though I supported and had friends in the community I felt that I still needed to hide that part of myself, like it was ok for everyone else but it was wrong that I felt that way. I kept that part of me isolated to my apartment, my second tumblr account, etc. I let others make their own assumptions and just ran with it. That felt a lot easier to me than actually saying those words out loud.
I also struggled as the years went on with my age (I’m 28) I started thinking that I was “too old to come out” and what if I come out as this but later figured out that I’m that or none of those. Would people take me seriously? Would that perpetuate the bisexual stereotype of just being confused? Thinking about coming out is stressful enough but add those questions on top of that with no one to ask or have provide some kind of reassurance that everything I was feeling and thinking was normal and valid and all I had to focus on was me was torture.
And then one day I was scrolling through Tumblr and saw gifs of WayHaught and I read the comments and found out about Wynonna Earp (Funny side story: I didn’t watch the series immediately so I was just going off comments and tags and I thought Nicole was Wynonna for the longest time and was a bit confused when I first started watching the show lol) Watching Waverly grow to understand and accept herself and how brave and sure she was of her feelings for Nicole really hit me. I knew it was just a TV show but her journey was so authentic that if helped me be a bit more comfortable with what I was feeling. As soon as I started the show I also sent out my #EarperGreet tweet and was floored by how friendly and accepting the fandom was. Everything combined made me feel like I had a safe place to be myself. I started getting bolder on what I posted or liked on my main twitter and eventually got the chance to hang out with other Earpers from my city. Being able to hang out with other queer people naturally made me feel more comfortable and confident to be myself. It would be another 7 months after meeting my fellow Earpers in person, of subtle hints and whatnot online before I finally came out on twitter, on national coming out day no less. I came out as Bi and I couldn’t be happier. I’m still a bit shy in person talking about it, but I think that’s just my normal introverted, awkward self. It sounds silly, or maybe it doesn’t, but Wynonna Earp, WayHaught and Earpers as a whole really helped in making it possible for me to be me. If I hadn’t found wearp I honestly think I would have continued to be a closeted ally. So thank you.
Disclamer: I am not a writer by any means and have major scatter brain when I try to write so this probably reads as a word vomit salad so I hope it makes sense.
