Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

When people look at me I know the first thought they have is "she's a lesbian". I'm not hiding anything. I dress like a man, walk like a man, behaving primarily like a man, but I'm a woman. The way I act and dress may suggest otherwise, but I am a woman and I'm proud to be one.

From a very young age I knew something was different about me. You've all heard the story before. Almost every gay or lesbian person starts off their story like this and usually the continuation is never very different. I had always had those "primal urges" toward women. I'd want to be around them and be close to them whenever possible. Looking back I don't know how I didn't know I was gay earlier. Pam, my best friend at the time, and I...we'd take showers together. Of course I was only 7 and she was 10, so we didn't find anything sexual about it. I'd touched a girl's breasts once on a dare, which started very conflicting thoughts in my head. Long story short, the process started young.

I've heard people blame my homosexuality on numerous things: that my dad was the one that raise me most since my mom was always at work (male role model, skewed gender roles), I "made friends with the wrong crowd", and it's even been medically proven that I naturally produce more testosterone than estrogen. Even so, I believe being gay is the way I was born. Nature, not nurture.

At the age of 15 I began to identify as bisexual. The only reason I did this is because I was always told being gay is wrong, but I knew I wasn't straight, so maybe being bi was the lesser of two evils? I was wrong. Not being true to myself was the real evil, but I didn't see this truth for another few years.

When I was 17 I had a "breakthrough" of sorts. I had my first serious girlfriend. With everything her and I went through, I will say I can't thank her enough for helping me understand my feelings toward being gay, and just downright helping me understand that I am gay. She'll always have a place in my heart for what she did for me.

A few months after my first girlfriend and I started dating I lost my v-card. A few days later we were in her car, talking about the experience, what we'd do different next time, all that jazz. Well, little to my knowledge my stupid Nokia pre-paid brick phone cradled between my bra and my left breast had somehow speed dialed my mothers work, and was now leaving a 9 minute message of almost our entire conversation...

That next Monday when my mom went to work, she listened to her messages from the weekend and guess what was there. Yeah...I come home from school and my mom has me listen to the message. A lot of it is jumbled and all you can hear is the wind coming from the open windows, but a few "key words" can be heard that give away the main points of the conversation. Busted!

Surprisingly, this was not the time nor place that I came out. I lied like a possessed woman and weaseled my way out of this mess by claiming her and I were "just experimenting". An outright lie that I felt horrible about, but I wasn't ready yet...

I told my mom about my penis-phobia and she told me I'd get over it. She made me swear on a bible I'd never have sex with another woman, which I broke only a month later. I felt like a horrible person, and still do from time to time. But I had to be true to myself. I couldn't keep lying to myself, but I sure as hell could keep lying to them. I had to, no matter how bad it made me feel.

At the end of September, 2010, something unexpected happened...I came out to my parents. You might ask "how can you unexpectedly come out?" but believe me it's possible. Having something eating away at you that long, just tapping on the back of your teeth waiting to be verbalized, it does bad things to your mind. Granted, a Del Taco parking lot probably wasn't the best place to tell my mom, but it had to be done. A concerned mother plus a guilty conscious is a coming out equation.

They told me they knew before I did. That they didn't know who I was kidding when I covered it up. I thought maybe there was a chance things would turn out ok, but I was wrong. After being told I was a disappointment, a disgrace, and an abomination, I was told I had until the end of June to get out of the house. It's been about three months since coming out and I've done a lot of growing up. I got a job and am thinking about the long term, but I still have a long journey ahead of me.