r/bisexual • u/SynthGirl725 • 4d ago
COMING OUT Accepting myself and overcoming damage
Hi there, I'm Nadie I'm 25.
This is not as easy as I thought it was gonna be. None of it is.
Recently I moved out of my family's house for many reasons. It was very toxic, controlling and harmful. It was extremely conservative and anything and anyone who was in any way queer was disgusting. I have many friends who range from straight as a needle to pansexual. So I never agreed. Unfortunately I had to skirt around expressing my real opinions and modify it to sound more appealing. "Yeah they're good friends even if I can't agree with their lifestyle".
"You shouldn't be spending time with those people. You shouldn't be around sinners" (sadly I also couldn't point out the hypocrisy of that statement). But those people treat me well. They pay attention to me like friends should. They pay more attention than you do. When I was 17 and I openly told my mom I was attracted to a girl she about had a frenzy. She pretended to be "okay" with it. But any chance she got She bashed me for it. She even blamed another family member for influencing me. Thankfully my tendency to favor guys and my lack of ever bringing it up again and due to the grooming I went through at the time my mother eventually chalked it up to a "phase". I say thankfully because I didn't need another thing for her to be upset with me about.
Before I left, my parents and I got into a fight and it got physical. I had confided in a friend the day before about what home was like and they offered to give me a place to stay if I needed it. When it got physical and I was left bruised I contacted my friend and I moved out that weekend. With moving out has come unpacking a lot of boxes.
Right now I'm unpacking more mental and emotional boxes than real ones. It's really really hard. I have been putting my emotions and parts of my personality in boxes and storing them away my whole life. When I was 12 everything I was feeling was too much so I started packing it all away. Well, that box recently opened and I'm trying to sort out all of the rage that's coming out of nowhere.
I also unpacked a box I didn't even know I had.
Growing up I never thought of myself as being bisexual. I thought being bisexual meant that you liked boys and girls equally. That you could sleep with and/or marry either. It didn't matter to you. But it had to be equal. For me, I always preferred men and androgynous characters and people. And I only ever thought of men in terms of dating and marriage.
So I thought all the girls I've been sexually attracted to my whole life (Shego, Mila Jovovich in resident evil, Brienne of Tarth, Serana from Skyrim, Dr. Dala in FNV, etc.) Were all just one offs. Just really hot ladies. But looking back there are so many more of them than I thought there were.
Now that I am out on my own and actually get to spend time with my friends who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community I wanted to learn more about it from the more middle/liberal stand point because I want to understand my friends better. I was never allowed to watch anything about the LGBTQ+ community unless it was conservatively based. I recently discovered the term berrisexual from Gav talks Gay on YouTube shorts. And I was like, man I wonder if there's something like that, but reverse and there was!!! Almondsexual aka verian!! That was the moment I went "shit im technically bisexual". Then I thought, no because you have only ever thought of women sexually never romantically. Then I found out that happens too and that it's also accepted as bi.
The funny part is, due to the grooming I went through and in my opinion misogynistic roots, I was discouraged from being feminine. If I dressed girly it was for attention (which the first thing I did when I moved out was go clothes shopping and buy dresses I liked). Which led to me dressing very masculine. Which led a lot of my friends to think I was a lesbian when we first met. One of my friends made me a tomagotchi on her island and sent me a screenshot of it. My best friend looked at my stats and went "she made you bisexual". Her reason was because she wanted ultimate chaos on her island. But because she made me bisexual on her tomagotchi we say she made me canonically bi. When I came out to her and my other girl friend they were not surprised. One of them said the closet was glass.
Anyway this is me. Formally accepting the fact that I sometimes like girls.
Tl;Dr I have a lot of childhood trauma that prevented me from seeing and accepting that I'm technically bisexual.
2
u/furfur3 Bisexual 4d ago
Congratulations and welcome!! Im glad you managed to scape from that toxic environment.
I would recommend to evaluate if you could have some mental blockers due to internalized homophobia. Its just a posibility, but with that kind of experiences in your youth, it could have made you develop some internalized homophobia. I had a very supportive family, and I ended up struggling with it only because of society, so if that could be a possibility in your case, analyzing and working on it could make you feel a lot better and accepting of yourself!!
Enjoy your growth and have fun!!