Community Rainbow Waves

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 🙂

Proud Lesbian

I came out when I was 16. I was so afraid to tell my mom who are born in the 1940’s but she took it really well and said as long as I’m happy and loved that’s all that matters.

My brother took it good as well and said all he wants for me is a girl that loves me the same way I love her.

My friends at the time is a whole other story. They rejected me started to bully me and hang me out for the whole school. Waited for me after school ended just to beat me down.

It took me a lot of years to finally find some good friends that supported me for who I am. And when you find them don’t let them go. They mean everything for me and we’ve been friends now for over 20 years.

Bisexual

I knew that I was bisexual when I was in 10 grade and decided not lie to myself anymore because this is who I am and I don’t want to suppress myself. First I came out to my oldest brother it was funny because he didn’t care much he just wanted me to be happy. Next I told my religious mother she is a catholic. I came out to her right after I told her I was molested didn’t really matter it did it really matter after she expressed her dislike for the LGBTQ+ community, but nonetheless she loved me for who I was. She told me “you are my daughter and I will love you no matter what” so that really upped my spirit. I have not come out to my dad but I plan on it being soon I trust for him not get mad because he once asked me if I had a boyfriend yet then right after asked what about a girlfriend. I felt relieved when he had said that. It made me feel loved. And when I am ready and not afraid I will come out to everyone else my friends and family.

Power in knowledge

I’m 17, and I don’t know myself. Or at least I don’t think I want to know myself. As a child, I didn’t really have anyone to talk to because I didn’t have any siblings (other than a dog). I turned to the media, video games, and fictional characters from TV shows and movies to feel a connection to someone or something. Man, I would sit in front of the TV as a kid and watch these shows where I saw these beautiful people and I would always imagine myself pretending that I was their friend. And as I got older, the same thing happened where I continued enjoying characters. But then around my older teenage years, I realized that maybe it wasn’t an “obsession” with the characters, it was that I really liked them. And I was confused because no one had ever really mentioned this feeling to me, but in my mind, it just made sense. And I’m a relatively athletic person, so I got the whole “tomboy” thing as a kid, so people probably chalked it up to that. But I didn’t. Because, as of recently, I figured out who I was. And while only select people know, it’s cool to like the best of both worlds. Like God must have invented males and females for everyone’s enjoyment, so why not enjoy them both? And I’m lucky to be able to say my parents would be accepting of me, but in a way, I feel like they know, so I have avoided making it a “thing,” because why should they focus on a part of me that’s just who I am? There is no reason. And thanks to many TV shows, like Wynonna Earp and their amazing characters and cast, and movies, and just people in general, they have helped me with who I am.

Queer

Even as a small child I knew I felt a strong need to be around certain girls and women. From friends to teachers to celebrities, I would always be drawn to a woman. In those days I just thought everyone felt that way. I knew it didn’t feel especially normal cause I never really saw it anywhere, but I just thought I really enjoyed certain people’s company or really wanted to be their best friend.

It wasn’t until I was 15 when I had my first experience with another girl. It was once again a thing where I naively thought we were just incredibly close and best friends. I knew I felt very strongly for her but I didn’t really make it a sexual thing. That is until she kissed me. Finally everything made sense. Experiences I had kissing and being close to boys never felt right. But just a kiss with this girl sent my heart racing. It all made perfect sense.

I didn’t grow up in a house where LGBTQ+ folks were a bad thing. We were just ignorant to the fact that they existed. I knew queer people and I was friends with them, but I know people would not be kind about them behind their back and they were always a salacious topic of gossip in my very small town. I didn’t want to be the odd one out. I was popular, I played sports, boys liked me, so I just kept this part of me to myself. It always helped that the girl I was infatuated with lived 40 minutes away in a different town. So my worlds never needed to collide.

While that aspect of my life was a roller coaster of feelings, I was good at compartmentalising it. I focused really hard on sports and really didn’t let the whispers of me possibly being a lesbian get in the way. I also still dated boys to keep the rumours at bay for the most part.

It wasn’t until I was 19, dating a different girl secretly, that I was sort of pushed out of the closet. My mom was making dinner one night and she out of nowhere asked if I was dating the girl I was always spending time with. All of my instincts told me to lie. Just say no like I always do and move on. But that evening I said yes. My mom without skipping a beat said “honey I’ve known since you were 10. Nothing is going to change. Now do you want spaghetti for dinner” and that was that. Truly the easiest coming out I could have ever imagined. I actually hold a bit of guilt about that because I know it’s so much harder for so many others. I want them to have friends and family who let them be authentically themselves.

While I came out as a teenager, I think now as a 33yr old I’m realising that sexuality is an ever changing thing. I always identified as a lesbian until 4 years ago when I was feeling attraction to men. Last year I dated a non binary person who made me once again reconfigure my orientation. I feel like queer is a great label that I feel comfortable and proud having. I have a beautiful partner and life really is magical despite all the really tough moments.

To coin a popular term, it really does get better.

Love, light and rainbows to you all

Bisexual

I knew I was attracted to the same sex since my early teens, I am 32 very soon my sister has ways known and she is so supportive and amazing about it, I came out to my close friends a few years ago, but recently came out to my co-workers and my other friends, I was in a long-term relationship with a guy and I have now ready to explore new horizons and enjoy my sexuality, I have recently joined the local LGBTQ community and I happy that I have new friends from this too. I am happy and feel like I can be myself and I feel like weight has been lifted off my shoulders now I’m out, everyone took it all very well and is very accepting of my being part of the LGBTQ community. Moving on and being accepted into the LGBTQ community and making new friends has made me a happier person and a new lease of life and opened doors for me I thought I wouldn’t have thought I would never had opened. I am super proud of myself being part of this new community I am now a part of.

And to quote Dom:
Out is the new IN

So proud of you Dominique

Sending my love

Saira

Ana

Hii, so, what a beautiful place to be in sharing just a little bit of my story. 🙂 I won’t take too long, I wanted this to be short but truthful. Just like Dom reiterated with her story. Well, yeah, I’m queer too I guess. I never knew this about me, and maybe when I was younger I did shove it in the little dark corners of my heart. But I won’t anymore. I started to question the heteronormative narrative about my sexuality when I started to think too much about a girl I met unpretentiously when I was 18 years old. What I keep asking myself is if I had felt this way before, but I just didn’t recognise this when I was younger, and only now I do. What helped me see this in a better light was a friend of mine (my best friend now) and she had already been dating a girl for 6 years, and they themselves overcame some pretty rough things. Still, till this day I can’t really help but feel disgusted by what they’ve gone through. But anyways, this ain’t about them. It’s about me. And when it comes to it, THIS is all that matters, guys. After starting to feel things for girls, crushing really really hard on them, I kept asking OTHER PEOPLE for their opinion. Well, now I know better. They did help me A LOT, but at the end of the day I think what matters is that yes I don’t like only boys, I like girls too.
I don’t really feel the need to come out in a huge fashion, I think people suspect this of me, and I have been bugging everyone about Kat and Dom, and Melissa, and Katie and Kristen Stewart, and Caity and Jess and a loot of actresses, so there’s that as well. But I hope people won’t give me too much of a hard time once I start dating, if it’s a girl and not a boy. I lke to think that they won’t. I will nevertheless still love them even if they don’t understand, I guess for some reason we should be understanding. Fight like hell to end LGBTQIA+fobia, but be understanding, as well.
Thanks for reading.

I am QUEER

I was always attracted to both men and women and deep down I knew that I like both men and women as I don’t look them as genders I look them as beautiful heart. I am from India and I never got the courage to share this with my family that for me love is love but hopefully soon I will let them know that I am QUEER !!

Bisexual

I accepted within myself that I was apart of the LGBT+ community in late middle school. I’ve always known I was attracted to the same gender, but when I was younger I expressed it as an appreciation for women before I was able to understand how I really felt about both men and women. I denied it for years as there are a few VERY vivid memories I have of people assuming I was lesbian before I even knew what I was. I guess these traumatizing moments can really hinder a person’s ability to be open up about themselves, but I finally met a girl in my junior year of high school that didn’t make me want to hide anymore, and she happened to be the first person I ever came out to and the first girl I dated. I became comfortable with myself, with my sexuality, and with living my honest truth from there on. Having other LGBT friends has made me feel accepted and sharing my inner thoughts have reaffirmed a feeling of validity. I don’t feel the need to share a coming out story in mass viewing on social media, but I know I can freely express myself to new people and not feel judged. I struggled with family acceptance for a short while as my older brother is completely gay and my parents always knew and easily accepted him when he came out, but they weren’t expecting their second child, their daughter, to be LGBT as well and so when it was my time, I did not receive the same enthusiasm. It took about half a year for my parents to settle into this reality of mine, but in the end they love their children no matter who my brother or I love. Coming out to friends was easier, most of them weren’t surprised, but they were very supporting and I am always thankful for the love I continue to receive from those even after sharing the part of myself that I’m always most anxious about. Love is love.

Nat. W.

I was 15. Had a “boyfriend” but was more attracted to his best friend who was a girl. As she and I got closer, my family began to notice. My aunt duringblack friday shopping, asked me if I were gay. Having only the knowledge of just gay and lesbian, and what it meant, I replied..”I think so” I was also very afraid to speak of anything more because she was very into bible verses and Church Sundays. My parents would ask questions about her and I would tell them truthfully. But my father had a huge problem. He would forbid me from hanging around with her, going places with her, and just speaking of her. She had a beautiful smile, a smile.which would brighten my day in an instant. One day my dad caught us in a small kiss and threw her out of my house. Grounded me and took everything away from me. I couldn’t see or speak with her unless it was at school. We tried to make it work, but as in most relationships, things go wrong. People change. Feelings change. My dad and I had the worse relationship for almost 10 yrs and it caused me so much pain and often thought about just putting an end to all of it…and end to me. For some reason, I never let it happen. I wrote a small screenplay about it in college as I went away just to be on my own for a while. My professor hand picked mine to be read to the class because he got chills when he read it. As I grew into the changing world, I worked on reprogramming my mind and my heart to be able to love me. I worked on finding myself. The moment I said to myself, before you can love anyone, you must love yourself, in came the girl who “whoa-ed” me the second she walked into the building. Not really looking for a serious relationship, it just grew from there and 5 years later I asked her to be my wife. Just last week we celebrated out 4th year being married and i have to tell you….she is the only thing I have ever been sure of. My wife and I are happytogether and she just gets me. I wrote a screenplay just recently on reflecting on my hardships growing up to what I worked hard to just become and how I wish I could tell the kid back on that day where I almost went through with it…that your life is going to be so much better than it is now if you can just be patient….my dad and I have a better relationship than ever. He loves my wife and he treats her like his own. I work with teens who often are discovering themselves just as I was at their age…and I try to be the person I needed when I didnt have anyone….in hopes that the suicide numbers go down….to anyone who needs it….

Be patient. It does get better.