Coming Out

Quick update; I recently turned 18! I still haven’t come up with a new title for the blog but hopefully I’ll get an idea soon. As always, apologies for my lack of blogging activity; exam season is upon us! I especially apologize for the lack of poetry of late. Don’t worry, I am still writing poetry, but I’ve been attempting to submit work to journals and competitions so I’ve been unable to post it here. I was going to post something for Autism Awareness month, but it’s May now oops…

Also; I hope you all found Alice’s post yesterday as helpful and insightful as I did!

I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile now but I have kept putting it off. This is by far the most nerve-racking post I’ve made so far. Around this time two years ago, I posted an article about coming out as a person with Autism, at that time I never in a million years would have imagined myself, here now, writing a post about “coming out” coming out. This post is simultaneously so trivial yet so massive for me. I’m going to try stop rambling now and get straight to the point (no pun intended.)

The Crux of the Matter

So basically, my sexuality is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. A few months ago, around December, after a very difficult process of self-questioning, I finally came to the conclusion that I am gay. (Phew, the hardest sentence out of the way!)

I have been out to my friends and family since then. Part of me wants to shout it from the roof tops and part of me wants to keep it as private as possible, and I’m still constantly shifting between these two viewpoints.

Up until last December, I had been identifying as bisexual. I was kidding myself. I feel bad that I had been using bisexuality as a front, although unknowingly at the time, as this feeds into the negative stereotypes cast on bisexual people. Bisexuality is a legitimate sexual orientation, it just doesn’t fit me. When I  looked back on my experiences, I realized I had never really been sexually attracted to any member of the opposite sex. The girls that I had dated in the past; I only liked them for their personality, support and company. “Dating” was really just a heightened form of friendship when I actually examine it. I was very confused at that stage, lying to myself, and by extension everyone else. The truth was/is: I only experience full attraction towards my members of my own gender.

On a personal level, yes, coming out helps me accept myself ,and will hopefully help me find someone who I can care for and will care for me (hopefully the first step to me finding a boyfriend, I’m single af!) But also, I like to believe every time some one comes out, it encourages more people to follow their own path to self-acceptance. Identity is an important part of this, yes, but a lot of that has to do with history and society’s expectations, a discussion far too long for one post. What I am really talking about here is Love, when you really get down to it. I’m talking about who I have the propensity to feel love for. That is all. Love is universal, something we can all understand. I write to unite not divide.

Why did I make this post?

I am making this post because I still haven’t fully accepted myself (and I felt that sharing this piece of personal info with strangers online might help?) On a serious note, I am making this post because I don’t want to lie to myself any more and I don’t think anyone else should ever have to lie to themselves either. Hiding my sexuality caused me a lot of unnecessary pain. There are two reasons it took me so long to come out (though I know 17 is not so very old an age to come out at, in the grand scheme of things!)

1. I think I hit emotional puberty slightly later than most people, even after going through the rest of physical adolescence as normal. Even when I was sixteen, I was still questioning whether or not I was asexual.
2. Over the past few years, I have been suffering from internalized homophobia; extreme guilt and disgust with my sexuality, thinking it made me immoral, unwanted, “less of a man.”  This held me back a lot. I’m not entirely sure where this arose from. I didn’t grow up in a homophobic household, quite the opposite in fact. My parents taught me about acceptance from a young age. I think though, that my former Catholic faith might have to do with it somewhat. By which I mean, even though the Church’s stance on homosexuality was not my parents’ view, I latched onto it as a result of my “back-and -white” thinking, an common symptom of Asperger’s. Even after leaving Catholicism behind, these thoughts lingered on awhile. This is a subject I’ve devoted a recent poem to, which I may post here at some point. Of course with OCD too, I’m very predisposed to guilt, plus homophobia is all around us everyday, even if we don’t want to acknowledge it, especially in schools.

I am also telling you all this because it may provide further context to future posts. (That’s actually the main reason, I hope I wasn’t coming across as over-dramatic back there!) I want to fight against the stereotyping of  the LGBT community, particularly against gay men like me as that is my personal point of reference, in the same way as I have already been working to dispel myths around Autism and mental health. This blog will firmly remain standing for what it has always stood for; education, truth and diversity!