My Life
On a mailing list I'm on, someone asked the question of how everyone came out, though it was more a question of coming out to oneself than of coming out to one's peers. My response was rather legnthy and took just under 300 lines, but was more or less a quick sketch of my childhood years.
So, if anyone is weird enough to actually want to know that much about me, here it is for you. All I've done was taken out the list name & address, as that is the policy of the list in question.
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 23:20:09 -0700 From: Night's Child <darkmoon@calweb.com> Subject: Re: the process... On Tue, 15 Jul 1997, nobody wrote: > so what i want to know is where everyone else is. what was your > process? where are you in it? did you just sit down one day and have it > all click, all make sense the way straight life seems to make sense? I think my story may be a bit unusual... I may have touched on bits and pieces here & there, and the meat of it is on my web page, but I'll go ahead and tell it now anyway. I, by no means, lead a "perfect" life. From early on my brother abused me, I was depressed, I hated school (or, specifically, I hated my teachers which caused me to hate school), I found that all of my friends were merely putting up with me, one by one. In a nutshell, my childhood sucked. I had no religion to tell me I was sinning, or parents beating me up for being home late, or anything like that, but I was miserable anyway, and it had nothing to do with my orientation or anything else "normal" like that. At this point I have to decide whether to just talk about the parts that directly have to do with my "process", or to just tell the whole damn story. Personally, I think it all has to do with each other anyway, so I'm just going to tell the whole damn thing, so be prepared for a long post. If you just want the "process" part, go read my coming out page, because the main part of it is there (not all of it, just the key to it). The first time I noticed that there were something very not-normal about me was when I was maybe 7, I think. Most of you know by now, I think, that my brother sexually abused me about that time, and I think that when that started was the end of anything that even remotely resembled a "normal" childhood. (And I think that I still revert to a 5-yr-old at times because I just haven't been the same since then, and dammit, I was HAPPY when I was 5.) Part of the abuse was him showing me (and my sister, who had to go through the abuse too) some of the magazines he had stashed away. They weren't anything as upper-class as Playboy or even Penthouse, these were hard-core, spread-those-labia-wide pornagraphy. Intellectually I knew that I should have been repulsed by them. They were naked women. They were doing gross things. They were bad. Still, I was intrigued. Not by the pictures that were just the clit & labia (at which I just thought, "it doesn't really look like that, does it?"), but by the ones that were women in the provacative positions. I was attracted to them, and I was scared that I was attracted to them. I don't know why I was scared of it. I was never taught that homosexuality was bad, by my parents, school, church (hah, I funny... born & raised an atheist, FTR), anything. I just knew it wasn't normal, and in my eyes that was bad. I knew that homosexuality existed, I had seen it on television, I just didn't KNOW anyone who was "that way." So I think it was just the "That could never happen to me" syndrome. Until it did. About the same time the abuse ended, I started having trouble in school. I hated the teacher, and that caused me to quit trying. Had I either liked the teacher OR not been dealing with abuse/depression, I probably would have still tried anyway. It was just the combination of the two, two years in a row, that made someone as intelligent as I am (last time I took an online IQ test I scored something like 147, and always did well until I hit the 4th grade). Maybe I just didn't like them because they were male, but I don't think that was it. Probably was a small part of it, but most likely I think that was just a coincidence (my two favorite teachers of all time were both male). When I was 10, my mom could see that something was wrong, so she took me to a children's counselor. I don't think that did me any good at all, just gave me something to look forward to, because it was an hour a week where I didn't have to deal with school and I didn't have to deal with my brother. All I had to do was play. Some weeks I wired a dollhouse-in-progress with the electric circuts, some weeks I made scenes in a sandbox, some weeks I just drew, some I made it into my own personal show-and-tell. It was fun, dammit. Until my mom decided it was costing her too much (always the miser, my mom, but I'll get to that later, i'm sure) and she wasn't seeing any results (well duh, I'd only been going for about three months and I don't think she knew what she was looking for anyway), so she pulled me out of that and took me to something run by the school district, of which I remember very little except they had two-way mirrors and it was boring as all hell and I felt insulted by either the fact that my mom would take me there or the way I was treated there, I don't remember which. About the same time all of this was going on, I was realizing in school that no one was really my friend. My "best friend" from the second grade all of a sudden started turning against me, and everywhere I went for comfort would stay my friend for a little while, and then more or less leave me in the dust. When Amy went against me, I met Candace and started spending time with her (pay attention, there'll be a bit about her later), then she left me and I started spending time with Anya, then she went and started hanging out with Amy, and then I started a mutual putting-up-with friendship with Susan (neither of us liked the other but we were both outcasts). In the 6th grade, Candace and her friend Alyssa (who taught me to rebel, even though I never really used those skills until several years later) went around everywhere together claiming they were lesbians, though no one really believed them, they were still much talked-about when not in their presence. Looking back on it, I do think they said that just to be different, but it was likely a hidden bisexuality that neither of them realized. Incidentally, I ran into Candace years later at a football game and saw her with a guy, so at least the fact that she wasn't a lesbian was confirmed. :) (No wonder some people think it's "just a phase;" for some people it really is.) Once I hit Jr. High, everything started coming together and falling apart at the same time. I made new friends, but changed my attitude. I was depressed, and recognized my friends as superficial, but wanted desperately to believe otherwise. I wore black all the time, not because I wanted to be different, but because it was the only way I knew to express my pain (besides, Candace and Alyssa told me that I looked good in it :>). Then when I hit the eighth grade, not only did most of my new friends go on to high school, but jazz band got moved from 7am to lunch time, so I no longer had time to spend with my remaining friends save for one day a week. And what happened? Amy (yes, the same one who was my "best friend" in the second grade) started hanging out with them and on the days that I wasn't there (all but friday) took it upon herself to tell them what a lousy person I was. When I figured this out (I have no proof but it's the only explaination for them to act very cold very fast), I quit trying and spent my friday lunches in the band room even though I didn't have band. Still depressed, and then suicidal. Shortly before I turned 14 I even wrote a journal entry about it (and if you can get past all the silly entries about "who do I like this week?" and other trying-to-be-normal stuff, there's actually a very sad girl there), and in writing came to the conclusion that I couldn't try to kill myself because I didn't have a surefire way of succeeding. Through all of this, I was still attracted to women, specifically voluptuous ones. More than once I caught myself staring and tried not to. I mentioned in another post seeing the playboy in my sister's apartment; the only reason why I think it was so long ago is that I remember it very clearly, so I'd think it would have been more recent, except she was married when I was 10, and lived in the same house she lives in now for a little while before that, and I clearly remember that at the time I saw it, I was at her apartment for the night because she was babysitting and at the time she was living alone. I think that was the same occasion I literally lost a tooth because I swallowed it while eating popcorn. I even remember what the cover looked like... there was a woman wearing suspenders that just covered her nipples & aeroles. (And if memory serves, we had rented DARYL, which is why we had popcorn, if anyone saw that movie way back when.) Through high school, I had boyfriend after boyfriend, but never anyone who I felt were "real" friends. I had the same group of girls I hung out with from halfway through my freshman year until about halfway through my junior year, when one of them decided she was too cool for us, and it kind of fell apart about then. I guess my big clue to leave was when they started spending more time with my little (okay, younger) sister than they did with me. And of course in high school, we have budding females, so the admiration and pushed-away feelings were more up-close-and-personal than they had been before. I still had no indication that homosexuality was bad, and I even admired out gays and lesbians, but it just never occurred to me that I could be one. And I wasn't a stranger to the concept of bisexuality, either, it just.... it was just one of those things that "couldn't" happen to me. It was something that existed but I was detached from it. Through all of that, I was still miserable, just a hell of a lot better at hiding it. When I was 15-16, a lot happened at once. At 15 I was dating a guy who was verbally abusive (though of course I only realize this with 20/20 hindsight), and at one point (shortly before I realized that dating this guy wasn't the best idea I'd ever had) he very nearly date raped me. I think he would have except my whole family was in the house at the time. This was when I had my first clue that maybe I didn't like guys as much as I thought I did.... he wanted me to touch his penis and I just wasn't comfortable with that. I liked kissing him and everything, and liked it when he touched my breasts, but I just did NOT like touching his penis. Shortly after that evening, all (well, most) of the details of the abuse came rushing back, and a few boyfriends later I allowed myself to cry for the first time since I was about 10 and told someone about it. Er, second time since I was 10; the first was when a guy I REALLY liked (and to this day I still think I loved him, just didn't know how to deal with it at the time) broke up with me. Late 1994 was when I finally realized that it *could* happen to me. It had to be between September and November, because it was when I was between boyfriends, I had my driver's license, and I was still in high school (that particular combination of events only happened between September of 1994 when I got my DL and early December of 1994 when I started dating my last boyfriend during high school). At the time I remember I had a thing for someone I met on a BBS, and was friends with two other people from the same BBS who lived near him. (Which means it was September-early October, since I kind of gave up on the guy after that.) I was at one of those friends' house (the reason for which escapes me, unless it was just an excuse to be in Natomas), and bored, so we decided to see who was online said BBS and try to go out and do something. There was a grand total of one person online who was available at that particular moment so we went to pick her up and went to go have pizza (I think). That was the first time I'd met her in person, though I'd talked to her plenty online. She was a lesbian, and very out, and only 14, and I remember when I found all of that out (it happened all at the same time)... I was surprised that she was a lesbian and knew about it at 14, that she had more sexual experience than I did (which was no small amount), and that I offended her in some way and had to defend myself in that I really had nothing against lesbians at all, just that knowing that she was one put me into a brief shock. When I met her, despite previously being told about her appearance, I was surprised. She was something to the tune of 6 feet tall, and had esentially a buzz cut for the most part. Over the time I knew her, I don't think I saw her with the same hair color twice, though I think when I met her initially it was her natural color. She had several tattoos and body piercings, and she looked like she was about 18 or 19. Anyway, after I spent an afternoon chatting with her and Doug (my other friend that I had been with in the first place), the next time she & I were online at the same time, she asked me a question that threw me way off guard: she asked whether I was straight or bi. I don't think that's what caught me off guard so much as the fact that all of a sudden I didn't have an answer to that. I don't think she had a major crush on me, only a slight glimmer of interest (and maybe her gayder was going off just a little), and she just wanted to know whether it was even worth pursuing. Well, I had to tell her *something*, so I just told her that I'd never been with a woman, and she took that to mean that I was straight, though at that point I wasn't sure about that anymore (reminds me of a line out of Men in Black: "15 minutes ago you 'knew' we were alone on this planet"). I let her think that I was, because I wasn't (and still am not) attracted to butch women, but to this day I wish I had told her that I really wasn't sure. The worst that could have happened was she would have been my next ex, though it would be an ex girlfriend instead of an ex boyfriend. It took me several months to come to terms with the fact that yes, I'm bi, yes, I'm attracted to women, and no, there was nothing wrong with that. I was fairly relieved, because finally I knew *why* I was attracted to women. I even allowed myself to start fantasizing about them. There was one in particular I had always thought was beautiful that was very straight (as far as I knew) and in entirely the wrong crowd, but she was still beautiful and didn't wear too much makeup (just enough that you couldn't really tell she was wearing any) and had the most beautiful long black hair (it rivaled mine in terms of legnth, and was in much better shape). To this day she's my standard of the perfect woman, in terms of appearance. For the most part, though, I stayed in the closet for quite a while. I first came out to someone besides myself when my boyfriend at the time finally asked me whether I was bi. I don't even know why he asked, because he was afraid of the answer, being very homophobic. He managed to turn his fears into something erotic once I told him that yes, I'm bi, and he then started fantasizing about us both with another woman (he never would have been comfortable with it actually happening, though... just a little too uptight for that even though he didn't realize it). I didn't tell anyone else that until shortly after I turned 18 and started spending time in bifem channels in IRC (April-May of 1996 for those keeping track) and just finally figured that I didn't want to worry about people finding out anymore. I was out of high school, in a job where people had shown that they were open to non-christian/heterosexual lifestyles (more than one of my coworkers are wiccan & bi, though I seem to be the only one who is just one of those), and more or less on my own, though still afraid to come out to my family, though again I really have no idea why. The first time I saw Bryn (the girl who got me thinking) after my general coming out was at a birthday party for three of the people online, two of which I was marginally attracted to. For some reason, it wasn't public knowledge on that BBS that I was bi, just the people who knew me from work (which were several, including my now-fiance) and my boyfriend (same one I came out to initially) knew that. Bryn hadn't been online much in several months, and the community at large (as I considered it, anyway) was dying out, but just about everyone who I had ever known as someone who was part of the heart of the BBS was there. And I had this desire to go up to her and say, "You remember when you asked me that time whether I was straight or bi, and I told you I had never been with a woman, and you took it to mean I was straight? Well, I was wrong. I'm bi." I knew nothing would come of it at that point, especially since she was there with a girl she was dating and had been for some time, but I still wanted to tell her, just to tell her. And I wanted to tell someone else there who I knew was a lesbian (though in her case it was someone who thought she was straight until she started dating Bryn then realized she had been dating the wrong sex all along even though her relationship with Bryn didn't last all that long). Hell, I wanted to tell everyone there, becuase it was true and I knew it and I felt like I had been lying to everyone the whole time, even though I hadn't been. But I didn't because it didn't fit into the conversation, and I hate telling people I'm bi for the sole purpose to tell them; to me it seems too much like I'm trying to be different when I (or anyone else) do that. Congratulations if you're still reading all of this... I think I'm done for now, though I'm open for discussion, questions, whatever. :) My apolgies for the life story, but it seemed to all tie in and it was all part of the process. ---,--'--{@ Sierra Kempster: Night's Child, Lover of Roses, Sister to the Moon. http://www.calweb.com/~darkmoon/ "...And on that night "You girls watch out for those weirdos." I will have my blood "We ARE the weirdos, mister." And so will -Nancy, The Craft My sister The moon."