on figuring out that i’m gay

when i was in second or third grade, i learned the word “lesbian” from the neighbor next door, and i was instantly enraptured in it.

i think i asked her two or three other times what it meant, over the next couple months. i’m not sure if i simply could not remember the meaning of the word (doubtful, i was an incredibly sharp kid with a huge command of vocabulary for my age) or that i could not believe that it was a real thing that could happen. or that it was a thing so common, that it had its own word.

that probably should have been my first clue.

i got my first boyfriend in fourth grade. we’d known eachother since we were very young, his class was right next to the one i was in, and we were both consistently the smartest kids in our grade. it seemed inevitable that we’d end up together.

we went to 4H dances together, roughhoused and chased each other around after school while our grownups talked, and generally just enjoyed each others company. then, we thought we were going to go to different middle schools, and he had my best friend break up with me for him (ahh, the social skills of high-achieving fifth graders). it broke my little heart, but not for long. once summer hit, i was all good.

middle school was about the same for the first year and a half or so. i had a boyfriend and we’d pass lots of notes, play video games with each other, talk on the phone for hours after school. we’d break up and get back together until like the end of my 7th grade year, which is when i got together with my now-wife.

i remember both of those relationships very fondly, and in retrospect, they were absolutely completely superficial. not just in the “we were both kids at the time” way, but the fact that there was actually no romantic attraction to either of them. they were guys that i highly respected and that treated me like a human being. my heart was broken at the end of each one, but it was less the fact that i wanted to be with them and more the fact that i wanted them to want to be with me.

i was 22 when i entered into a relationship with my last boyfriend. in the beginning, he was very vocal about his attraction to me, treated me well, engaged me in stimulating conversation. we were together for two years when things catastrophically ended. i left him for the final time, i didn’t miss him for a single second after that. still don’t.

how could i spend so much time with these guys without actually feeling any attraction to them at all? i didn’t know. i felt like it was normal.

i grew up in the age with all those boomer jokes about how married couples always hate each other. wedding cake toppers with the bride dragging the groom behind her by his collar. watching women in my life be so unhappy with all the labor they had to do, while their husbands didn’t contribute much at all beyond a paycheck. that was the normal i grew up seeing all around me.

i also thought it was just, like, a common fact that everyone thought every woman was more attractive than most men. i could recognize when other girls found men attractive, and through that, i sorta learned how to recognize conventional attractiveness in them too.

i thought that every woman just picked a random guy to be attracted to. i thought it was normal to be attracted to a guy until he showed any romantic interest in me (and then i’d suddenly lose all attraction.)

then, i met a woman who was very into ME, and i felt the spark. new. different. intoxicating. and this sent me into a spiral.

i’d known since i was about 14 that i did experience attraction to women. but this was the first time that it’s ever been reciprocated in a way that was very clear to me.

the little voice in the back of my head started asking, “am i a lesbian?”

i’d been married for years at this point. to a man. there’s no way. if i was a lesbian, i’d surely know it by now. i put it on the back burner, but it continued to bubble.

finally, i couldn’t handle the internal fight alone anymore, and posted about it in a private facebook group. can you be a lesbian with an exception?

this caused a SHITLOAD of Discourse, and as a result of this post, a lot of high-key biphobic shit came out of this group of women i’d trusted and several of my friends got hurt in the crossfire.

but, one person, one i highly respected and still consider to be a good friend to this day, said Yes. you can. that is where i am at in my life right now, let’s talk about this.

and we did. over the course of a few days, i realized that the idea of being free from the expectation of being attracted to men was a HUGE relief.

she fought for me, too, when others tried to tell me i was simply bisexual with a preference. it wasn’t about a simple preference for women… it was the fact that i could not comprehend being genuinely attracted to any man besides the one i was married to.

they tried to throw out lots of microlabels and other identities they found on the queer wiki, and she said “look how free she feels, how her demeanor has changed, just by allowing herself to not force herself to be attracted to men. there’s already a word for that. she’s gay.”

so i tried on Lesbian and looked at myself, like how you might try on a wedding dress… and seeing myself in this light felt more right than anything in the world ever had before. it was euphoric. my friend said, “if there’s anything in the world that could be a confirmation for this… this is it.”

shortly after that, i found the lesbian master doc and spent three nights crying while going through it after everyone else went to sleep. it’s not perfect, but it IS what helped me finally totally accept everything. and honestly, what a resource!

i was right. the little voice was right.

i was excited. i was unchained.

i was terrified. i was already married to a man.

how would i tell him?

i sat on this for months. we’d joked for years that i was a lesbian except for him. and now, i wasn’t joking about this anymore. this was a huge part of me, that i couldn’t ignore anymore. like, once you know, you KNOW. there’s no going back from that.

fortunately, about six months later, my spouse came to me and told me that she is transgender. she is a lady.

what a FUCKING relief, right? i told her that i’m gay, and she was like, “didn’t we already know that?” i guess we did. it just never occurred to me that it could actually be true.

a short time later, once i really settled into this aspect of my identity, i figured out that there was some weird gender stuff going on in there, too. scared me for awhile, but then discovered that non-binary lesbians exist, and instantly knew that was me.

compulsory heterosexuality really is a son of a bitch. i spent so long thinking there was something wrong with me. i thought maybe i just didn’t know how to love people.

extricating myself from that was one of the best things i’ve ever done for myself. by seeing that spark within me, and nurturing it, i was able to unlock a whole new level of myself and allow myself to love me.

that’s why i am so, so vocally proud to be who i am. maybe i can be the person that my friend in the facebook group was, for someone else.

other resources i love:

  • stone butch blues by leslie feinberg
  • her body and other parties by carmen machado
  • the persistent desire: a femme-butch reader by joan nestle
  • persistence: all ways butch and femme by ivan coyote and zena sharman

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