Refusing To Be Erased

Here is my National Coming Out Day blog post. Some of this I will have said before, and some of It will be new, but I feel like these posts are like onions, and pastry crusts, full of layers. So I will peel another back today.

As Twitter greeted  me this morning with all its many tweet alerts, I first noticed that Eminem had apparently rapped something that even had Ellen Degeneres and my favorite vegan soccer players taking note. And then of course the epic melt down of us soccer fans and a decent into bickering over wether or not the women deserved fair pay and treatment when the men were so abysmal.

But finally, finally after all that, Twitter let me know it was 1) the day of the girl and 2) national comming out day.

So today, all I could think about was how after I came out, at least one of my aunt's  (I remeber one specifically, but I have many many aunt's so there could have been more) asked me a question. "When did you know?"  And I figured probably more people have that question.

I answered my aunt fairly quickly and simply, but it took me 28 years on this planet to fully come out to myself, so my answer of "about since I was five" though accurate, isn't really the whole story.

When I think back to my earliest memories, what I remeber most was that I hated frilly girl stuff. I hated pink, and lace, and dolls, I hated stupid gender rolls and patriarchy. I had a raging temper that stoked when I was told the boys got to do  the "cool stuff", and I was expected to do the "dumby girly stuff".  More than that, I could see even at the young age of around 5 ish, that men and boys got treated way better at church, at home, on tv.

And I was not ok with it. And that had nothing to do with sexual orientation. I was a tomboy, and probably a raging young feminist before I could even understand the concept of equal pay for equal play.

This small detour is not a rambling tangent, it's intentional. When as an adult, trying to fit into a box of sexual orientation that I didn't, I spent a year or two reading books about what went wrong with me, and why. Those books were horse shit. And their theories completely unfounded. But they added to my interesting life puzzle I spent decades on figuring out just who I am.

Around that same time, I remember that I liked boys and girls. And that sometimes I was sad that even though my male friend my age down the road was someone I was constantly being told I should one day consider marrying, because it would be so cute, my female friend my age at the other end, or the one from school, I was just supposed to be friends with.  But what if I liked the girl more?

Those were simple child hood times, and I don't know how much depth we can give to those. 

When I truly want to think on that moment that I knew, then I go to around the age of ten. By then I knew what a crush was, and i started to really get confused by it, mostly because I don't think I had words for it.  There was a boy, I really liked him. I sang Trisha Yearwood songs about us running away and getting married.  And I kissed him behind an old car  one day.

And there were other girls. Lots of other girls. One girl in particular I was super crushing on. I used to hang out with her a lot in 4th grade. I thought she was the most amazing person ever. But I felt weird about it, because I was feeling things I was told I wasn't supposed to and it scared me, and eventually we just went our seperate ways.

I remeber a family trip to chrystal hot springs around that time. I remeber distinctly, sitting in a hot spring pool, and going, 'hey, that girl is really cute, what if I'm gay?' And then seeing a really cute boy and thinking 'Well, I can't be gay, because I think he's really cute too. So if I like boys, I'm must be ok."   It was very culturally reinforced at this time my life that being gay was very very bad, and it would mean something was wrong with me, so I couldn't be that. 

Jr high came, and everytime a certain cheer leader would talk to me, I would blush. And then I would feel stupid about it, because what if she knew I liked her? But when the cute boy would talk to me and I would blush, I was relieved, maybe I could fit in the boxes I was supposed to.

We don't have all night, so I'm gonna fast forward. The struggle was real, and it continued, in high school, then college. I had a crush on this or that roommate,  but THAT must be just really strong feelings of friendship, because I really liked that hot guy in German class, but I kind of liked her more.   When I was in 9th grade a friend came out to me as bisexual, and it freaked me the heck out. I wanted to say me Too! But I couldn't. I knew then, by college, that bisexuality was a thing, but some how it didnt really exist, because as long as I could find a guy I liked... I was "normal" and it would be "ok", no one needed to know.

Fast forward a decade or so. Home from my mission by about five years. I had almost started to come out, and panicked and went right back into the closet, in ultra high pray the gay away mode. I was attracted to men. Just find one you like, and make it work. I tried and tried and tried, and I genuinely was attracted to the guys physically.

One of my then boy friends sucked marshmallow goo off my fingers, and I knew I wasn't gay. Very sexually repressed Mormon, but totally not gay. And at the same time had very gay feelings for one of my best friends.  And again, I was confused. Because I was trying really hard to choose the really hot guy, but it just wasn't working for me.

Soon the pressure got to be much and I finally started the very slow, long process of coming out, first to trusted friends, then to my family, and then to the world. And from day one I came out as bisexual, because I knew I was. But every time I questioned, am I? Because everyone is saying it's a phase. Am I? Because I definetly  have a preference for women, and I'm not sure I ever want to date men again.

And them I started dating women. And sometimes they couldn't handle that I was bisexual, because they thought that meant I would leave them for a man? Even though I very clearly preferes women, and that's a pretty low risk that would ever happen. And I thought, should I just make it easier and say I'm a lesbian?  But I couldn't do that, because I had just fought so hard to claim my identity.

I remeber sitting with bishops telling me it was great I was bisexual, and I just needed to marry a man, and that would fix everything. I knew from years of dating experience that was utter crap. I had family members tell me it was just like an addiction or an illness and after some counselling and prayer I could over come it,  and that was after I had read all the books, and prayed, and gone to "lds addiction  recovery" and years of counseling.

No. After all that, I had claimed who I was. I was finally at peace and happy, and I wasn't going back there to make anyone else comfortable, gay or straight. I was not going to pick a team. Because most likely I will end up with a woman again,  but I have had meaningful experiences and true attraction to men. And it would be a lie to deny that, even if its blue moon rate that my feelings for them are much beyond a mixture of strong sexual attraction and mild friendship.

And at the same time, I am mostly attracted to women, in a total package kind of way.  But what happens if one day I end up in a relationship with a man, and like the vast majority of my bisexual lady friends, I suddenly am made to feel less than welcome in queer spaces? Nothing more than an ally, because of a relationship that would invalidate my feelings and previous experiences in their eyes.

Everyone seems to think it's a phase. And listening to Queery with Cameron Espisito and Rebecca Sugar today finally helped me understand why. We have conditioned ourselves to put the sexual orientation of people as weighted mostly on their relationship status and sexual histories.

I have a friend that I've had discussions with, and would probably say he is bisexual leaning heavily gay. When he took the kensey  scale test online, it told him he was like a 1 or 2, so nearly straight, but he would say that is not true. Based on his feelings and internal experiences. But the kensey scale like our culture weighs heavily on relationship and sexual experiences.

Not to get too into my friends business, the point of this is, if I am with a woman, I am bisexual. If I end up with a man for the rest of my life, I'm still bisexual. I'm still queer, I will never be straight. I can't just blend in, but I can be erased, and I could be erased by either the straight community, or the gay community depending on my relationship, but that doesn't change who I am.

And one of many reason bisexuals, even if they have never been in a same sex relationship, are a part of the queer community, is because those feelings and those struggles that are carried  out in closets, and hearts are just as deeply queer experiences as anyone else's.  We throw gender into the mix and recognize that bisexuals include gender non conforming, non binary, intersexed, and trans people (because sexual orientation and gender identity are seperate non attached things) and  the bisexuals get clearly as queer as anyone else, wether they are passing or not.  It's not a choice, who you fall in love with, and it's not something to change or fight against. To be bisexual, to be gay, to be lesbian, to be queer is a beautiful wonderful, and sometimes exquisitely painful, and sometimes exqusitly joyful thing.

It is a journey and a process in a world that still often tries to get rid of us, and I am happy to be at a stage in life where I know who I am, and I am safe enough, and have a strong enough community supporting me to be proudly and openly 100% me, with out feeling the slightest bit broken, damaged, or in need of repair.

And since it took me so much time, and cost me so many hard fought battles to get to that place, I will not be erased again. And because of this part of my life, I now dare also to take up space and not make myself small in any other part of my life.

Happy day of the girl, and happy national comming out day.

Love and peace to any who cannot safely come out. If you need a friend to safely tell your story to, feel free to message me.