Learning to accept my sexuality

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I always knew that I liked girls. My first crush was on the singer Brandy when I was 7. My feelings for girls weren’t sexual—I just knew that I loved to be around other girls, and that I wanted to be more than just friends with them.

When I was 10 all my girl friends started crushing on boys. They all said things about them like “Oh, he’s so cute!”. And I wanted to fit in with my friends, so I agreed with them, even though I didn’t feel the same way about boys that they did.

Then puberty happened when I was about 12, and it became clear to me that I wasn’t really interested in guys at all, but I was really interested in girls. I came out to my mom, but she dismissed it as “just a phase”. I was really hurt by what my mom said because we were always very close and I felt like I could trust her with almost anything.

As I mentioned, puberty happened, and my hormones drove me to curiosity. I had a huge crush on Rachel Stevens from the British pop group S Club 7 at the time and I secretly searched on Yahoo for sexy pictures of her. I thought I cleared the history pretty well (my mom and I both shared a computer), but when I started to type in the Autofill the next day my X-rated search terms popped up! I’m so glad my mom never knew about it until I confessed it to her recently.

When I was 15 I had a huge crush on this girl at my school—I wanted to kiss and hold hands with her. I also started crushing on this female teacher who was in my school. Still I tried to “force” myself into liking guys—I thought maybe if I tried hard enough I would “become” straight.

Also that year my mom bought me a teen study Bible that had a lot of homophobic commentary, and I panicked and thought I was going to hell. So I tried to live my life as a typical, feminine straight girl so I would go to heaven and so I wouldn’t be bullied and ridiculed by my peers.

The years after that were hell on Earth. I was suicidal nearly every day and had to be hospitalized once for severe ideation (and many more hospitalizations would follow for years to come). I also started cutting myself because the physical pain was easier to deal with than the emotional pain.

I had so much difficulty from the emotional pain the next year that I couldn’t function at that school at all anymore and I got expelled. I had to go to another school, which was MUCH worse than the previous one.

Until graduation I still tried to fit in with the other girls, but then I became even more angry, depressed anxious and suicidal because I had to hide who I really was. Plus the rules at the new school were a lot stricter than the old one, so that added even more stress on top of the stress I was already dealing with. I almost dropped out my senior year because things were unbearable.

When I finally graduated I burst into tears because I was finally free from trying to hide who I was. But then things got even harder.

I was still reeling from the trauma of high school, and I wanted to get my old friends to help me through it, so I called the girl whom I had a crush on back at my old school to see if she wanted to rekindle our friendship, and she said no. I was devastated because I was not only hoping that we’d become friends again, but that we’d actually become a couple. I had put all my hope, trust and faith in this girl only to have it all crushed. It felt like my whole world had fell apart.

Also around this time I was still trying to be “straight”. I was dating a guy, but we broke up. I didn’t have any feelings for him whatsoever, but I was still sad about it.

In my 20s, I came out as bisexual even though I knew that I would never want to date another guy. I guess I thought it would be easier than saying that I was gay. My mom slowly began to accept my sexuality.

I became even more depressed around this time and I even attempted suicide twice when I was still in my 20s. It wasn’t until after my second attempt that I realized I wasn’t bi—and definitely not straight—I was a lesbian, a butch lesbian, to be precise.

I came out to my mom again, and now she accepts me for who I am. I haven’t dated any women yet, but I really hope to find my first girlfriend soon.

i wish you good luck in your endeavors.

Sorry you had to go through that rough stuff.

I hope things get better soon, and that you find a great female companion in love.