I haven't rambled on here in a while

About a year and a half ago I wrote a long post wherein I came out to most of my friends and family. The post was unplanned and inspired by a conversation I had had with a former friend that didn't go exactly as planned. I was explaining to her that I am sexually and romantically attracted to women and, in my view, she questioned whether this was true. I was hurt and incredibly angry and at the time I blamed her for these feelings and shortly after our conversation I ended the friendship by deleting her phone number from my phone and removing her from all my social media. Now, looking back, I can see that I wasn't angry, I was confused, unsure, self conscious and terrified that she might be right.

For years I've known that on some level I am attracted to girls. I would get crushes on friends, imagine kissing them and dating them, but I didn't vocalise this and I only ever dated guys. Slowly I built a wall around myself mostly to keep people out. A few years ago I started breaking down the wall by slowly evaluating myself and last year I thought I had completely torn it down when I started to come out to people. I thought that was the hardest part. That after telling people that I like girls, everything would just fall into place.

What I didn’t expect when I started coming out was to feel so lost and confused. I thought that by finally accepting myself that self-confidence would follow. I thought I’d feel more like me. But instead I felt like an imposter; like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I found myself googling “how to look more gay” to figure out how to express myself appropriately. I didn’t know how to be this “new” me but instead of figuring it out, I was trying to model myself around stereotypes and be who I thought people would think I should be.

I feel like my coming out was different  in that I didn’t have a fling with a girl or experiment in university, it was just something about myself that I’d always known so coming out was about accepting and exploring that side of me. At first I thought coming out was this amazing self-acceptance thing I had done for myself, but really it was just me trying to put a different label on myself. A label that I am still not sure really belongs. Coming out made me start to feel inauthentic.

To this day I still haven’t to this day kissed a girl, I’ve gone on dates, some better than others, I’ve fallen hard for girls, but still no kiss. The difference now is that it no longer bothers me. I used to feel like since I hadn’t really been with a girl it meant somehow I was less than everyone else in the LGBT+ community. Like I hadn’t passed a test or proven myself, and, if I’m completely honest, I was worried I wouldn’t pass a test if there was one to pass. I used to put all kinds of pressure on myself. I would do stupid things like sit on the subway and stare at every girl and tell myself that I had to be sexually attracted to her because if not, it meant I was lying, that I wasn’t really gay. Side note, that’s just ridiculous; I have never been attracted to ALL men so why did I think it was my job to be attracted to ALL women. I also used to punish myself if I thought a guy was good looking. I would internally tell myself I wasn’t good enough to be part of the LBGT+ community. I was just overall in a bad place and incredibly confused about how I was supposed to act.

I don’t know when it changed, or even why, but lately I have started giving myself a pass. I stopped trying to label myself. I don’t know if lesbian fits since I in the past have been attracted to men, but straight doesn’t fit either since I am currently attracted to women. I call myself queer, which to me means “not straight”. I’ve stopped trying to force myself to be attracted to every woman I see on the street and in doing so found one that I am quite attracted to. I let myself off the hook. I realized that there is no right way to be queer. There is no magic test and experience doesn’t make you authentic, your feelings do. I’m not stressed about my first kiss with a girl anymore because I’m not letting it be my first queer experience; it will be my first kiss with whomever that person happens to be. The kiss won’t define who I am, only I can define who I am and how I’m feeling and even that is allowed to change daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. I don’t know, I just feel like I found me and I am comfortable with my sexuality, for possibly the first time in my life.

This feeling of being ok is what made me want to reach out to this former friend. I wanted to explain to her that I wasn’t mad at her but that at the time I was scared. I had been questioning my sexuality and I was trying to fit into a box and she was questioning whether I fit into the one in front of me. I should have been more understanding but I was hurt, confused and worried about whether she was right. I can’t communicate any of this to her; I was so wrapped up in my own frustrations and fears that I wasn’t supportive of her in her own time of need and our friendship was damaged beyond repair. I regret how I acted and I wish I could go back and maybe just talk to her more, explain my feelings, listen to her thoughts and be open to new ways of looking at life. Then again hind sight is 20/20.

I have no real reason for posting this on my blog. It’s mostly me rambling to someone who doesn’t want to listen, but maybe there is someone out there struggling with what it means to be queer or to come out, and maybe they can learn from my mistakes. You don’t need all the answers right away, there is no right way to be or to express yourself and questioning who you are and what you want from life is normal and it doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. Like everyone else.