Since I have started seriously questioning my sexuality and come out to my boyfriend about this, I have been experiencing extreme stress. I already have a stressful life to begin with, have very difficult life ambitions, and I am quite poor. I recently started 2 jobs after being unemployed for 2 years (desparately looking though). I know I will have to move away and financially split from my boyfriend in order to fully discover my sexuality. The thing is, whenever I start "allowing myself to be gay in my head", as in check out girls, etc and think about what this is gonna mean in my life, I get severe insomnia and can barely function, which then spills into my day to day life and prevents me from working towards my life goals. I would rather "shut down" my sexuality, never think about sex again and spend all my time working or working towards my life goals. Basically I wish I could be asexual so I dont have to deal with this. It works to a point until I see a hot girl every now and then in the street or wherever and I "wake up", for lack of a better term. I have no close friends other than my boyfriend and no family left and I am doing this almost entirely on my own.
Dear tapsilog2012, Thank you for sharing. Reaching out when you are clearly under a lot of stress shows courage and will help others in a similar position to feel less alone. You are not alone. It sounds like you are ready to come out but are finding it incredibly difficult without a support network. Although it is no substitution for face to face support, EC is such a great place to get support. Keep posting, even if it is just to rant! I can understand you wanting to "shut down" your sexuality when exploring your true feelings leads to poor functioning. Can you have faith and hope that you won't always feel like you do now? Change is a long and difficult process but by taking things little step by little step you will see progress. I can only talk about my own short experience of working towards accepting myself. I have learned that I cannot push the pace. I want to be proud of who I am and to lead a full and truthful life but I have to take my time. I am working through years of buried pain and numbed feelings and after many months of depression, I have glimmers of joy and hope for my future. For you treating the anxiety would be a really good start. I appreciate that finances may prohibit this, but is there any way you can get counselling/therapy? And/or perhaps you may be able to find a local LGBT support group? Depends where you live. Please keep posting and take care of yourself, Supporting you Rose
I totally understand what you mean about stress. Some nights I cry myself to sleep because I am still quite confused about how to proceed. I am almost certain that coming out fully will cut me off from a big chunk of my natural family though I suspect that my parents, at least, will be not abandon me. My questioning stage has been about two years long and I have been doing serious introspection for about a year. I have started my coming out process in the past couple of weeks with a few safe people but there are certain things I don't feel like I can talk to even these people about. Frankly, I don't even think one of them believes me. One thing I did is what you are doing. I found sources of online support through blogs and forums geared towards LGBT issues, coming out, and especially coming out later in life after an extended period of identifying as straight. I'm lucky to live in a city that has a really good LGBT community center and I made my first visit there yesterday for a class. See if your city has and social groups, community organizations, or something where you can go and get some support. I'm still in a state of flux but at least not feeling alone and having someone to verbalize some of my fears to is making it more manageable.
