“Live your life, sing your song. Not full of expectations. Not for the ovations. But for the joy of it.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru
I’m my most honest self on this blog, and it’s possibly the most honest statement of all, to say I never thought I’d post anything like this. However, I’m grateful that I have a really great support network, and positive influences in my life, that made me feel comfortable with openly being my true self.
I took a bit of a scary step recently, and used a Twitter trend to come out as bisexual. It’s a pretty simple trend – you post a selfie, along with the flag/s you identify with. It wasn’t something I had necessarily planned on doing, because I wasn’t sure how “ready” I felt. I’m not convinced I would have ever felt super confident in coming out, to be honest. Even though at the time, I was fairly sure people in my life would be supportive, it’s still a daunting prospect, and a big step.
While it’s all still pretty fresh, I thought I’d share my journey in coming to terms with my sexuality, accepting the label, and finally coming out.
I’d known for quite a while that I wasn’t 100% straight, although I only fully came to terms with that a month or two ago. It’s been a pretty long process, and on reflection, I mainly think it’s down to not having many, if any, bi-positive people in my life. I’ve often heard comments like, “Bi people are greedy,” or, “Bi people will just sleep with anybody.” As a teenager, it can be difficult enough to figure out who and what you are, without adding another layer of confusion to the mix.
My approach was my trusty tactic of denial, because I felt pretty ashamed at first, as though it were wrong. I would tell myself there was no way I was crushing on a girl – I just really wanted to be friends with her, or I wanted to be like her because she was pretty. Sometimes it was easy to explain away my feelings like this, because my attraction to girls feels quite different from my attraction to guys. Plus, I have more of a preference towards guys anyway, so passing as straight wasn’t as much of a challenge as it may have been to others in a similar situation to me.
One of the main barriers in my path to self-acceptance was my cliquey classmates at school. Going to school in the 2000s, the go-to insult was ‘gay’. Obviously, this was always said as though being gay would be the worst thing in the world. I remember at one point, one of my teachers tried addressing this, by saying something like 10% of people are gay. Statistically, this would equate to three people in the class, she said, in an attempt to get people to think about how it could affect others. Of course, that didn’t happen, and instead, the popular girls decided to turn that into a game of trying to guess which three people in the class were gay. And of course, seeing as I was not at all popular, those girls were quick to label my best friend and I as gay, which soon spread around, and made my time at school miserable.
The other big barrier was the fear of those close to me, not accepting me. I was brought up as a Christian, so having the realisation that I fell under the LGBT+ umbrella, was terrifying to me. Although I felt close to my mum as a teenager, I couldn’t share this with her, for fear of how she would react. I remember previously, she had said she would accept me, or my siblings, if any of us turned out to be gay, or whatever, but I found it hard to trust that fully. I felt it was an easy thing to say when it was purely hypothetical, but when it came to a real life situation, the reaction may be different. It was easier to continue lying to myself, than it was to risk upsetting the apple cart.
But then, I met someone, and got into a serious relationship, with him. Obviously I didn’t have plans to be with anyone else, so I told myself it didn’t matter anymore. I had found the person I wanted to be with, so it did feel somewhat irrelevant, all of a sudden. Or maybe that’s just what I told myself. Either way, again, it was just easier keeping it to myself, hiding that part of me.
Fast forward ten years – we’ve separated, and I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching. It’s a whole other blog post, but things with my ex were pretty toxic for some time. Since the split, I’d been chatting a lot about how I’m free to live my best life, and just be my true self. Deep down, I knew I was still hiding that part of myself. I’d grown so used to the fear of rejection and ridicule, that I’d actually been rejecting myself all this time. It was time for me to call myself out on my hypocrisy – how could I expect myself to be truly happy if I was hiding a part of my identity?
The main thing I did was read. I read about bi-erasure, which really helped me understand everything better. I read about other peoples’ experiences with their sexuality, and how they came to terms with it. I retook a test on the Kinsey Scale, and got a 2. Instead of majorly freaking out, I felt good about it, because I knew it was accurate. I know a lot of people don’t like the Kinsey Scale, but it helped reassure me. It helped me see that it isn’t a black and white issue, and it definitely isn’t a 50/50 deal. For some reason, having the data behind it all, helped. It also helped me realise that there are other people out there like me. Don’t get me wrong, I still freaked out a little bit, but I was able to tell myself that it was okay, that it wasn’t a shameful thing. For the first time, the label felt more comfortable, whereas before I often felt I was trying to place myself into the wrong box. Looking back, I was definitely afraid of the idea of being out, acting on a same-sex attraction, and being in a same-sex relationship.
At this point, I still wasn’t ready to be out, and I didn’t really expect that I would be. I thought to myself, it would be nice to do something for Pride month, but it felt like it was too soon, and I wasn’t sure how I would feel when June rolled around. But I was done hiding, so I compromised with myself. I bought a beaded bracelet with the bi pride colours, as a little present for myself, and I suppose, as a subtle hint. If somebody saw it and put two and two together, I wouldn’t have been mad. It has only been in the last week or so, that I continued dropping clues on my Twitter, by adding a frame on my profile picture, and putting the rainbow flag in my display name. I was working up to becoming ready to come out, but at the same time, I didn’t want to just randomly message my close family and friends about it, because it doesn’t exactly come up in conversation.
I guess hopping on a Twitter bandwagon was actually the most “me” way of coming out, actually. The decision to post the tweet was semi-spontaneous. I’d seen other friends doing it, and I was happy for them, but I wished I could be as brave as they were, and comfortable enough to do that. So I bit the bullet, and put out the tweet before I could talk myself out of it. I sent it late at night, so I could go to sleep, and decide in the morning if I wanted to leave it up, or delete it. I woke up to a couple of nice messages about it, but that was about it, thankfully. I think I was mainly worried about someone close to me reacting negatively, or having someone ask me a bunch of questions I wasn’t ready for.
I’m lucky that nobody so far has really been bothered, and that my friends are happy that I feel able to be my whole self. I know not everybody is as fortunate as I am in this regard, which feels crazy to me, considering all the steps forward we’ve taken, over the generations. I can only hope that this ceases to be the case, and that others’ sexuality won’t be such a big deal to people. I guess my main point here, simply, is this: don’t be a dick. Just let people be true to themselves and live their lives.
Under the Crown 