questioning...still

ok. not sure where to start...i guess the beginning? bear with me...

about 3 years ago, i started really questioning my sexuality. i had never given it much thought until i met a friend of a friend in high school (all girls catholic high school. i knew a handful of lesbians and the student body were generally very accepting of them) we clicked instantly and got along really well. at first, i was totally fine just being friends, but then i started to develop feelings for her; she was funny, smart, and absolutely gorgeous. i shrugged off any notion of us being together because i wasn't sure what she was feeling, but there came a point where we just kind of brought it up and i found out the feelings were mutual. from there we became a couple, telling only a few people (even though there were rumors all around school, we weren't really open about it.)

i tried to talk to my parents about it only to discover that they were not as accepting as i thought they might be. there ended up being a lot of fighting between them because of this relationship. over the span of about a year and a half or so, this girl and i really tried to make it work despite the hard time i was having at home with my parents and her reacting badly when i told her about what was happening at home. we ended up splitting just before we graduated from high school and tried to stay friends (it hasn't worked out as well as i had hoped, but we're still on civil terms, i suppose.)

anyway, that was about 1.5-2 years ago. i tried to kind of just forget about my sexuality seeing as it really took a toll on my home life. i figured it would just be easier to not mention anything to my parents about my love life in general. it was a tough time because the backlash at home made me feel bad for liking a girl as more than a friend. it caused a lot of strife for the whole family, and for that i felt really bad. i struggled with the thought identifying as lesbian of coming out and kept putting it off, hiding any feelings. and it was fine for a while. but now i'm really starting to struggle with it again. i dated a guy this past summer but didn't really feel the whole relationship thing with him. one of my best friends, who is openly lesbian, is really the only one i ever talk to about it and she swears up and down that i'm in denial of my sexuality and that i just need to come out already.

it could just be my indecisiveness, but i don't know if i'm ready to make such a definitive statement about myself. i'm only 20yrs old and still learning who i am and what i want, etc. i still don't even know for sure if i am lesbian or bisexual, of if that relationship was just a phase/experiment. it's not something that consumes my thoughts all the time, but it's a constant nagging in the back of my mind, something that i tend to think about often, but not too often.

i haven't ever brought it up to the friends i have in college, and there are really only a handful of friends from high school who either know or have had suspicions about it, but i really don't like to bring it up. it's not necessarily that i'm uncomfortable with the topic, it's just that once i get talking about it, it's all i'll want to talk about and don't want to make them uncomfortable.

i don't really know what i'm trying to ask here, it's more of a venting of some thoughts and feelings. i know a lot of people struggle with this during their teens/early 20s (and hell, even beyond that), and i guess i'm just looking for someone to talk to about it, someone who might be in the same place i'm in.

thoughts and advice are certainly encouraged, feel free to message me as well

 

throw - my thoughts exactly! i want to be able to be confident and comfortable, but at the same time i kind of feel that it's really just between me and who i choose to intimate with. i try to just go with the flow and just kind of take things as they come rather than defining myself. i know that my parents would eventually learn to accept whatever i choose, but it was just really tough to see them fighting so much over something that had nothing to do with them. i actually ended up walking out on them on more than one occasion. but that's besides the point. it's cooled down and things are pretty much how they were before all this was brought up.

i appreciate your advice though. i try to not think about too much because it really does cause a lot of unnecessary stress (which i reaaalllly don't need on top of schoolwork and everything...) feel free to message me if you ever want to talk about this more it's good to have someone who kinda knows what you're going through

 

chandra, thanks for the advice. i try to avoid labels and just love who i want to love but not identifying as anything is a little unnerving, i guess? i dunno, it just makes me feel like i'm just out there not really knowing what's going on. your answer's given me a lot to think about, and i appreciate it muchly! as for bringing the topic up with my parents again, i'll have to think about that one - definitely not till i'm more comfortable. but like i said, i've got some thinking to do. (i feel like i've kind of ignored any attraction i might have felt toward girls so as to not freak people out or anything up until lately...so i'm trying to just figure some stuff out)