what's your story?

It's hard to explain, but I don't "process information visually". I tend to be a bit oblivious to my surroundings. So although I assumed I was straight growing up, I didn't really ogle good looking girls. I just assumed I hadn't found a girl who would "do it for me" yet. But in college, I was getting frustrated seeing all my friends hook up and get girlfriends (or boyfriends), while I still hadn't been gobsmacked by an attractive girl. So one day, I wondered if I was gay. It seemed silly - wouldn't I KNOW if I was gay? But I decided to give it a try. I went and sat outside, and waited until somebody who could be considered "attractive and male" went by. Eventually a guy jogged by wearing nothing but short black jogging shorts and sneakers. I watched him surreptitiously as he approached, and more or less ogled him when he ran by...

...and popped major wood. It's surprising I didn't tear a hole in my jeans. I may have in fact yelled "Holy shit, I'm GAY!" but I'm assuming I didn't. But I went back inside, and started coming to grips with the fact. It took a while, not because I was afraid or in denial, but just because I still had a tough time believing I couldn't recognize something this obvious for so long. I wondered if it might be a phase, so I just sort of ran with it internally for awhile without telling anybody. But several months later, I realized I was still as horny thinking about guys as I was the first day I saw that jogger, so I decided this "phase" was going to probably last my entire life.

Lex

 

ICTOAUN, my situation was the same as yours! I didn't realise it either before I fell in love with the girl who happened to be my best friend at the time. At first I was in denial, but accepted the situation relatively quickly, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it before I was alright with it.
And when I looked at things back, I realise that she's not what made me gay, I liked girls before that too, but just never had such a big crush on anyone before that.

What I still am not sure about is whether I should call myself a lesbian or a bisexual. Depending on who is asking and how the question is phrased I answer differently. Back then I called myself a bisexual although I had never really had a crush on a boy. But it's always a possibility, right? And I don't really look at people as males and females, so that's quite bisexual behaviour apparently. But I also don't feel like I am completely lying if I say that I'm a lesbian. My friend helped me to figure out where I would be on Kinsey's scale and we decided on the number 5. So if someone asks a very specific question I can start talking about Kinsey. But I am not convinced about this whole labelling thing anyway, but it's always good to know what to answer when people ask questions about me.

 

(All dates are aproximates, I have an awful memory)
I was like 13 and I'd never been attracted to anybody (boys or girls) and all the guys I was around were talking about tits and porn and it just never seemed to be high on my priorities to go and look at this stuff on the internet. Anyway, one of my friends came out as gay to the whole year, he was my best friend and I was a little freaked out (looking back, probs cos I was gay, but whatever) anyway we grew apart for like 6 months and then became friends again. During this 6 months it did occur to me to google the ol' pr0nz and I realised I wasn't attracted to women; I also realised that men were just generally amazing, but I panicked and went into major denial until just after I was 15. Me and my friend (the guy from earlier) were hanging out at another friends house; we'd run out of seats so the two of us were on the same armchair next to each other. We were sitting really REALLY CLOSE and I liked being that close to a dude (still not thinking about sex/boys/gayness at all at this point, my reasoning being that if I didn't think about it, I wouldn't be gay) Anyway about a week later I was talking to this guy on facebook and he just drops 'hey, you like boys right?' and so without thinking I just typed back 'yh'. I was shocked with myself but the moment I read it back I realized that there was no point in denying it because I am gay. I haven't denied it to anyone else who has asked, but only one other person has asked and I'm not proactive enough to be bothered to go aroudn telling people, seems more hassle than it's worth; will probably come out at uni or if I fancy someone I think I have a chance with.

 

Ok here is my story:
I personally never really considered that I might be gay until my mom posed the question once (thank you mom). I denied it at first but I gave the question some thought, which led me to finally realize that I was gay.
I always assumed I was straight, but just thought I was picky with boys and hadn't found the right one yet. I never could really gush about hot guys with my friends either, again, i just thought this was because I was picky. Also early in my life I stated that I didn't want to get married, because I only knew of straight marriages and I knew that i could not be happy living the rest of my life with a man. I also didn't think anything of the random obsessions I would get with certain girls, I thought I was just eager to be their friends.... NOT.
Anyway, when I first started thinking about weather or not i was gay, I was very confused. I kept changing my mind,"am I gay? am I straight? WHAT AM I!"
Eventually I asked myself the right questions and was able to conclude that I was in fact gay. In fact now that I had come to this revelation about myself a lot of things about me made sense now.
At first I was actually ok with it, I was like, eh no big deal. But actually as time passed i got more worried about it. What would people think of me, was my whole life going to change now. What was going to happen to me if I came out? Eventually these worries and fears began to die down a little and it helped a lot when i came out to my first person. My very good friend.
After I came out to her, I was on a rush because her reaction had been very positive. So I came out to my mom, well actually she asked me and i told her. This happened the very next day.
Her reaction was not that bad actually, but I guess I was not ready for even a slightly negative reaction. She said she still loved me but just seemed really distressed and sad. She kept looking at me in this really sad way.
Then I did possibly the worst thing. I un came out. To both her and my friend. I guess I was really freaking out.
A day later I felt really guilty about un coming out and re came out to my one friend, but not my mom. My friend was good and understanding. She really is the best.
Then quite a bit later I came my other friend. She also reacted very well. In fact she was EXCITED to have a gay friend. Haha, it made me happy.
Actually I think it was the next day that my mom then confronted me on my 'orientation.' (I think she has psychic powers that tell her when I recently came out to someone.) We had a discussion about it and basically she was afraid for me. She cried. But I told her that all was ok and I convinced her that it was not a phase (guess my uncoming out really did noting at all - which was a good thing)
Lately I have been feeling really confident and good and came out to my favorite teacher by letter and three people at my friend's pool party. I am feeling like I am on a roll now because i came out to my sister recently too. I got good reactions out of all of them.
I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for but I just posted a shortish version of my coming out story.

 

hmm well i just always felt deep down that i was different, but the naive seven year old part of me was always hoping that it was because when i turned eleven that maybe i would get magic powers (i didn't). i learned that there was a word for girls who were attracted to other girls, and i kind of put 2 and 2 together, i guess (again, i was very naive). I didn't even know there was a such thing as "being gay" until a bunch of my 5th grade classmates came up with a whole knew brand of words to attack each other with. it was hard to accept at first, because i was in massive denial and couldn't find any "indicators" that i might be gay. after i learned that it wasn't the worst thing in the world to be gay, i allowed myself to realize that this is who i'd been all along. and i had to let go of my dream of ever getting those super powers lol

 

When I was 12 I started finding pictures of shirtless men attractive. Then one day I suddenly realized, "OMG Why do I like men and not women? How am I supposed to get married and stuff when I grow up??!?!". I got really scared!
But, I guess I was so sheltered, because I didn't even know what homosexuality was. I thought I had some mental disorder and no one else was like this except me.

In high school I wondered why I didn't have a crush on any girls like the other guys did. I remember one night going through all the girls I knew and thinking "could I like her? no. her? no. that one? no..."

In grade 12 I knew I was gay. Then many years later I finally realized that I had had a huge crush on this boy for four years in high school. I never knew it at the time.

But I kept ignoring it all. Until last year when I came out to 2 people. After that I got stuck again and haven't been able to come out any more.

 

Haha yeah. It is funny looking back and being like "oh, why didn't I notice this before!"
Like when I was younger I made a same sex girl couple on the sims and they were my favorite couple. I always played with them and even made them adopt a kid. It was fun. I know I also hated dolls and barbies, they were so boring!
There are so many little things like this that just make everything fit into place like a puzzle.

 

This thread reminds me, I've still never made a gay couple on The Sims games. Must get around to it if I ever play them again any time soon.

Anyway I posted my story here, but I'll quote my original post here to save typing it again:

 

I had a strange pull to girls, some girls (not most of the girls since most were quite straight and I am blessed in that I find straight girls unattractive for the most part...something about straight vibes and straight acting, whatever that is supposed to mean). I had emotional and almost romantic feelings since pre-school but never could make sense of it and thought of guys instead (no one real since boys in school, on TV, wherever, never really attracted me).

I knew I wasn't straight when I met this girl in HS. She came off as really butch and mistook her for the opposite sex at first but quickly realized she was female. I remember checking her out as some really hot guy (I never did get that reaction to guys before).

I pushed it out of my mind. I was very shy and a loner and was befriended by a senior girl on whim. Second half of the semester (this was in my first year of HS) most all of my friends had a different lunch period so she happened to have mine and invited me to hang with her. I came with her to the bench she was at and the girl I checked out was sitting there (they were friends). I immediately felt like she was someone I could really connect with based on her looks and vibes but didn't understand it had a lot to do with the fact we were both lesbians.

I was a devout Christian and never prior had any inkling that homosexuality was a sin until it was beaten into me by reading a lot of homophobic stuff from Christians. In any case, I really connected with her, thought about her a lot through the day (never met someone who I really connected with and cared to think about before her). I looked forward to seeing her at school every day. She came to hang out with our friend before school more often, too.

I eventually had a reverie concerning her (had many but not like this one) where we were together, seated, and she turned to me and kissed me. I clearly enjoyed the thought as my heart-race accelerated in the way it does when you are moved romantically in that way.

That's when I knew I wasn't straight. I freaked. Out.

Long story short, I fell madly in love with her. Madly in love. Things took very interesting turns. I never really told her how I felt and she never told me outright if she had feelings for me, but I came to find she was in love with me, too (after some point since she was into the Straight Girl who I would later by chance become friends with).

It was a real drama. Nothing ever happened between us, really, and the most intimate physical contact we had was when she extended her hand one day for mine (after seven months of silence after an incident) and we touched hands. I will never forget her and the many things we went through that I can't bring myself to talk about, and I don't think I will meet anyone who I will ever feel so intensely for. She consumed my every waking thought, my dreams, my daily reveries...God it hurt so bad. Funny is that I had no sexual attraction to her but I never had or have been so in love...it felt so God-given, so pure but tainted with an obsessive need (on my part, at least).

I only identified as a lesbian, though, in the end of last year where I fell for a girl, had some things going on with a guy friend, and realized I did not like guys period and was all into this girl (who is very religious among other things), and began really considering I might be a lesbian versus bi or unsure.

 

Any time. These stories are great too.

 

Stories!!! I love storytime!!! My turn, my turn!

...And apparently I don't know how to start this. Hmmmmmmmm... ok, I'll start at my birthday party!

So, I'm turning 10 years old, and I was born on the 10th (Golden Birthday!) so I decided I wanted to have an awesome all-nighter with a bunch of my guy friends. I get the parents' permission and we set it all up. I don't remember how many guys were there, but there were quite a few, and I knew all of them from church (I was homeschooled at the time). We were all in the basement, and my parents were upstairs for most of the night. At some point, it got reeeeeally warm there, so the majority of us stripped to boxers and a few even went nude. Admittedly, this was before puberty, so there wasn't a huge problem, but that's the first time I realized that I liked the look of the male body. (Looking back, there were other times where it showed, but I was too young to realize that I liked looking at the male body)

At first, I seriously thought that was all this was. I'd already had "the talk" with my parents back when I was 6 or 7 (my little sister was about to be born and I was an inquisitive little child), but I didn't think there was anything inherently sexual about liking the male figure. Over the next two years, there was never anything like my all-nighter, but I distinctly remember that by the time I was 12 I was regularly walking to the laundry room to grab the encyclopedias. Why? Um, well... the David, Sistine Chapel Fresco, and other nude male works of art were in them, so I would admire the art. I hadn't hit puberty just yet, but that was when I figured out I actually had homosexual tendencies.

Being a Christian (and just starting to be a major part of the ministries at my church), I knew that I couldn't talk about this. As time went on, the three different churches which I went to over the course of ages 13-17 preached against homosexuality. So I kept retreating in the closet. Though I never could completely reject my sexuality, I did ignore it and suppress it quite a lot. When I went to college (two Falls ago), things stayed the same. Then last October hit.

In October, I asked a girl out. I thought I had feelings for her, but I was actually trying to convince myself that I was definitely straight. She declined (and thank goodness she did, cause that would have sucked), and over the course of about a day I stopped hiding from my sexuality. It took a month or two to actually come to grips with it, since I had to deal with the Scripture references which were against this part of me. I had actually just figured it out when something unrelated happened that caused me to abandon my Christianity (ironic, no?).

So for me, this whole Spring semester has been about me getting comfortable with my atheism and my homosexuality, and the last week of school I started coming out. It's been a difficult process, as far as making myself say to my friends "I'm gay," but I've had great friends on my side. I'm really close to finishing off my closet, but I have two more friends to tell before I tell my Dad. Then after Dad, I have to tell my extended family, since they are on Facebook. Finally, once those people have been told, I can come out on Facebook before I return to school in the Fall. It's taken a long time (it seems) to get here, but it also seems to have been a very short time ago that I was still scared out of my wits that a church friend would figure out that I was gay.

Fun story to tell, although I usually leave out the beginning part and replace it with "There have been hints before puberty, and when puberty hit, I was attracted to guys and not girls." Thanks to all the posters above me who have shared theirs, and to all those who will come after me!