“You’re just confused…You haven’t found the right guy yet.” I’ve heard it all, so let me clear this up; I am not confused and there’s this crazy concept where I like both men and women.
I came out to myself when I was twelve years old in March of 2019. And it was easily the hardest discovery I have ever made about myself. It is a very intense hard pill to swallow no matter what age or stage of life you’re at. I happened to be an opinionated preteen. I was so insecure as it was and this just added so much more pressure to the mix. The next six years would be spent wondering if I am just confused. Maybe I haven’t found the right guy or maybe I just need a solid good friendship with a girl, then I’ll be good. Or maybe, I need people to stop talking at me. At that age, I was conscious enough to know what queer people were, but I didn’t realize that I could be queer until my best friend came out to me. That opened a whole new door.
I began to come out to others in May of 2019 and immediately I pushed down how terrified I was so I could help others who were just as scared. And though I was able to help others, so much fear and anguish was building inside of me that didn’t get dealt with until I reached high school. From when I first came out to when I was sixteen, it was a constant mental battle of “am I a lesbian?” or “am I bisexual?” I knew one thing for certain and that’s that I like women, but do I like men? That is the question of the century. Plot twist, I do. But I couldn’t decipher if I do actually like men or if I was gaslighting myself because it felt safe.
At age fourteen I had the terrifying awakening that I am not cisgender. It makes a lot of sense with who I am and who I grew up to be but there’s always a voice in the back of my mind saying I’m just confused and I’m choosing this. Then again, why would I choose this? Why would I do that to myself? Why would I want to be hated by half the world? I don’t. I want to be a regular eighteen year old, hang out with my friends, go to concerts. And I want to receive the love that I try to give everyone.
The harsh truth is that you never stop coming out and, in my experience, it doesn’t get easier. I realized I am queer in sixth grade, I’m in twelfth grade now. That is half of my education. For half of my entire education I have spent days on end wondering when can I be normal? When does it get easier? When will it not feel terrifying. These are questions that I used to ask myself all the time. The difference now being, I’ve learned to accept myself. For a good three years it felt very normal (it is not.) to constantly have a weight on my back of impending doom. I began to look for comfort in media. Examples being Izzie Taylor from the show “Atypical” and the singer Reneé Rapp, both are out and proud, helped me feel a little less alone. I just didn’t understand why I had to be different. What happened that made me different. Nothing. Nothing happened, I am who I am.
And you are who you are. Don’t let other people define your actions. Kiss whoever you want. You are not messed up or a bad person because you don’t know exactly who you are at this moment, you don’t have to label who you are. There is no timeline for coming out. Come out to everyone or come out to no one, it’s your life.
