SUBMISSION NO.12
Growing up in a Roman Catholic family, I was raised with the belief that being anything other than straight was wrong. However, as the years passed by and I saw my peers finding themselves in middle school, I started questioning my own identity.
I noticed how I always put my best friend under a different light. I always glorified her, and every little disagreement we had devastated me. This started in 7th grade. I didn’t think much of it. Then 8th grade came. Fallon was about to have its 8th grade promotion dance. For a motive I categorized as “with friendly intentions”, I planned to ask my best friend out. I even had a whole slogan (to fit with her love for Beyoncé):
____, don’t be a single lady
Be my Queen B, and go to promo with me?
I honestly might have recognized my feelings as romantic attraction to the same gender way sooner, but internalized homophobia and remarks from my family played a huge part in blocking those thoughts out of my mind. That blockage worked for the next few months, until mid-freshmen year, long after my feelings for my best friend passed.
I barely even remember how it happened. I believe I was walking around the inside of the sports complex during PE. It was January, 4th period, and it was one of those chill days where you could either walk around the sports complex or play basketball. I was with maybe 4 or 5 of my friends, and one day it just slipped out.
“Guys, I think I might be bi.”
The amount of acceptance I got in return made me so happy, and even more so when I came out and told my best friend about my feelings for her in middle school. Her acceptance of my sexuality and my feelings for her gave me this newfound confidence.
The process of coming out became easier as I told more and more of my friends, but the fear I still held with telling my parents was ever-present in my mind. But who knew junior year was the year they’d find out.
There was this girl in my life, my first love. She was important to me. But after realizing the 9 months we spent together was filled to the brim with manipulation, I cut her off and that was the end of it. I thought I could put all of it behind me, until May 5th of this year.
I was in the shower, and unaware of what was happening. My dad went through my phone, and all my texts with her. I was forced to come out, years before I was ready. I wasn’t planning to tell them until I was at least in college. I was given an hour-long lecture on how liking girls was “wrong” and how I was “going to hell”. He even told me how he would “never find it in my heart to support me”. The lectures were even worse when my mom got involved. She often repeated how “being gay was a choice I shouldn’t have chosen”.
Even though it’s been almost 2 months since I was outed, I’m still not ashamed of who I am. I’ve known I wasn’t straight for the past 4 years, and I’ve accepted my bisexuality for the past 2 and a half years. Liking someone of the same gender isn’t bad, and my parents need to accept that I might just bring a girlfriend home one day. In the beginning of quarantine, I reconnected with an amazing girl I haven’t talked to in over a year. A girl who likes me for my flaws and quirks, who’s been with me through thick and thin. She’s been one of my driving forces, not only when I came out, but for everything I’ve been going through in my life since. She treats me like I deserve the world and I’m thankful to have her today. And she’s one of the reasons why I realized I should never be ashamed of who I am. Everyone should be able to love who they want to love, without homophobia serving as a roadblock. I am bisexual, and I’m proud.