Not sure who I am or where to go from here

Hi all,

I'm Maja. I'm nineteen.

I've got kind of an odd story (odd because of the degree to which my family has been involved, I think, and probably odd for other reasons too), and I am just... not sure what to do. Or where to go from here. I need to come to some kind of stability over the next couple weeks because I'm going back to college soon, and I fully intend to be happy and stable in the new semester. So.

I... have never known what I am.

(I've had issues with what is probably obsessive-compulsive disorder for most of my life. It started out when I was about five, obsessing over possibly having a terrible disease that might kill me, and I developed habits over even vs. odd numbers, and avoiding certain colors, and what have you. It still appears in my life at stressful times, but I have a fair amount of control over it now. I'm explaining this because it's important to say the extent to which anxiety has been a problem even before I started questioning my sexuality.)

When I was ten years old, I first became properly "aware" of gay people. (I'd had a friend in preschool with gay parents, which my own progressive parents had been very approving of, but I'd never thought to myself that they were somehow "different" or whatever.) It started with a news report I was watching at the time -- some horrible man was saying gay people would never be allowed to marry under his watch, or something.

And... I FREAKED OUT. All the same patterns from my earlier childhood anxiety appeared. I thought, "gay people are weird. I'm weird. Hence, there's a strong possibility that I'm gay!" And I remember sobbing on my mom's bed, trying to get her to tell me that there was no way I was gay, and instead, she said things like "Michelangelo was gay! All sorts of wonderful famous people were gay! If you're gay, I'll love you just the same! But you're only ten. You won't really know until you're older."

It was reassuring to be told I'd be loved just the same, but I was still full of panic inside. I'd never had a crush on anyone. I thought boys were yucky, and I didn't really understand what a crush was, anyway.

I did have a very, very close "best friendship" with a little girl I'd known since I was two. When I was nine, we went to a block party and told each other all our secrets, and I came away from that feeling like she understood me totally and that I needed to see her every day forever, because nobody else did. (I was a really shy kid, too, and she was kind of my defense against the world. I didn't trust other people initially... I tended to have a kind of trusted gaggle of friends, and she was the core of it.) We had a huge fight later that year, and it was incredibly painful for me.

I do remember noticing the changing relationships between boys and girls that year. I sort of had half-crushes, I think... I kind of wanted to like boys, because I enjoyed the romance of that idea, so I chose a couple that I liked better than the others and watched them a bit... but then this anxiety set in, so I don't know if it was ever anything stronger. I remember deciding I shouldn't ever meet boys' eyes if I could help it, because they might fall in love with me and I wouldn't be able to reciprocate it, due to possibly being gay. (This seemed logical as a ten-year-old. Well done, Maja.) And I avoided boys like the plague thereafter.

So then the prayers started, which seems a common thing with people on this site. Started praying at 11:11 every night that "I wouldn't end up gay". I started middle school. Made a new "best friend", who was just as important to me as the one I'd left behind. Had the same kind of half-crushes I'd had in fifth grade... selected a boy to "like" and then privately pretended I was desperately in love with him, though I knew that I wasn't. But told no-one about these. Never talked to or tried to make friends with boys. Freaked out periodically about the "gay thing", and my mom would have to comfort me and tell me it would all be okay, although I never quite believed her.

Eventually my middle school friends began to like boys, and I instantly felt betrayed and isolated. At first I behaved in a pretty immature way -- tried to get them to turn back, to agree with me that boys were scary and yucky. They wouldn't, of course. So that's when I first started to feel really horrible about myself and began to drive all this energy inward.

I think I thought that, if I was gay, all my friends would drop me instantly, and my family would be disappointed, and I'd be living this life of eternal pain and misery. In actual fact, I went to a progressive school with several gay teachers, and my family might have been a little surprised but wouldn't have minded. I was CONVINCED that being straight would be better than being gay, though. And this is an attitude I still struggle to shake.

I began to go through these weird thought cycles and rituals. If there was a boy I thought was good-looking, I would make sure to look at him multiple times a day, measuring my gut reaction. If I thought it was favorable, I would feel really good. If I wasn't sufficiently attracted, I would go home and be depressed and often freak out again. Same thing for girls -- if I thought a girl was pretty, I would watch her and then measure the way that I felt about her. And often freak out.

I should also point out that I had this extreme resistance to change. I really, really didn't want to grow up. Any kind of physical changes freaked me out hugely... I didn't want to be a "teenager"... the idea of everyone dating and so forth freaked me out in its own right, even without the whole gay worry. Even now, I'm not sure how much of it has been inborn sexuality and how much of it has been incredible resistance to change. I'm still trying to figure it out.

After a while, I had the courage to tell my best friend about my worries. She was SO nice about it, told me it didn't matter to her, that it shouldn't matter to anyone. This secured her role as the central non-family member in my life. I thought she must be a SAINT -- I didn't think anyone would ever be as accepting as she had been! So she really was the center of my world. I preferred to be with her than with anyone else, and became quite possessive.

Ninth grade was possibly the peak of hell. The thought struck me one day that I might have a crush on my best friend. And that was TOO MUCH. I started utterly loathing myself. I would sit on my carpet every night and go over all the feelings I'd had for everyone all day, analyzing and analyzing until my brain hurt. The idea of being in denial was awful -- honesty and truth are really important to me. I just didn't KNOW. And I would have panic attacks in the middle of the night and run into my parents' room to go wake them up, because I couldn't handle it on my own. They kept telling me over and over again that it was fine if I was gay, that it didn't matter, but I didn't believe them and I didn't know and it was horrible.

Eventually my mom took me to her psychologist, who told me she didn't think I was gay because I didn't have strong friendships with boys. Didn't help, of course.

Tenth grade was better because I lived in a kind of fantasy world for most of it. My best friend was into Harry Potter fanfiction that year (oh gosh, this is actually really embarrassing!), and convinced me to write it with her -- we would write one story a week, according to a set of rules we devised for each other. Somewhere along the way I became absolutely obsessed with Professor Lupin. To the point of dreaming about him and writing about him constantly and searching desperately for more stories about him. He really helped me, actually -- if it wasn't for that obsession, I might have gone downhill much faster. (I'm kind of wondering whether any of you have had Lupin obsessions, too. For me it was the fact that he faced his worst fears every month, no matter what; he had no choice in the matter -- and that was how I felt all the time. And it was probably also that so many people were prejudiced against him, which I worried about constantly. He made me feel like I had a friend in my battle.)

But we were getting older, and so the fantasy world faded, and it was back to real life by junior year. And my fears of being in love with my best friend grew ever-stronger. I started to think she smelled quite nice and enjoyed her hugs more than my other friends'. I did think a boy in my class was fairly attractive that year, and often watched him, but was still scared of boys and never wanted him to talk to me. I don't know what I would have done if he had.

I was also really bad about hugs, I remember. I would go all stiff and awkward if a friend hugged me, because I was worried I'd like it too much. Urrrrgh, it was awful.

Around this time, I discovered HOCD on the Internet.

I know a lot of you don't believe that this is a real disorder. I do, actually -- but I don't think it quite applied to ME. However, aspects of it did. I think it's very possible to not be straight, and to have manifestations of OCD that affect the way you think about it. I'm not sure what I am if that isn't true.

At the time, however, I was absolutely convinced that I had HOCD and that was the reason for everything I'd gone through. I read online that the only way to recover from it was to be indifferent to the idea of being gay. To not be scared of it anymore. And that the only way to not be scared of it anymore was something called "exposure therapy", which sounded horrendous -- walking around your house in a shirt that said "I'm gay!" Reading gay books and watching gay movies! I couldn't even SAY the word "gay" without shaking uncontrollably.

But... I did want to get better, and so I began to do those things. And it did help. Being less sensitized to anything to do with gay people made me able to function much better. I vowed that, if I was still anxious at the end of the year, I would find a new therapist and talk it over with her. And I did that, too.

She was lovely. She did seem to think that I had a crush on my best friend, which was really hard for me and something that I never quite accepted (I still don't know. Which is hard.) She also seemed to think that I was bi, and that the main thing for me to do was relax and stop worrying so much. I think the obsessive fear around this time was that I was in DENIAL. I really, really hate the idea of being in denial. I want to know who I am! I don't want to be avoiding myself! Is it possible to be in denial if you're scared of being in denial? If you aren't labeling yourself? I don't know.

I also told a few more friends about my worries, and didn't have a negative reaction from a single one of them. They all hugged me and told me to stop worrying. But I was still scared that I might have a friend out there somewhere who would avoid me and think of me differently if I WAS gay. And making new friends has always been hard, too, because in the back of my mind, I keep wondering what they would think. This is something that's still hard for me to get past.

So... then I went to college. And I'd really wanted to overcome this before that. I had a plan that I would tell everyone I was bi, but I found I couldn't do it -- I didn't feel like I was being honest, and I was also too scared. I did talk myself into going to a Lambda meeting, though, for "exposure therapy".

It was the most miserable place I've ever been. Some people looked happy, but most people were anxiously glancing around the room, wondering if people were judging them. The really flamboyantly gay people made me uncomfortable. One boy who was quite obviously gay informed me that he was "an ally", which made me feel sick to my stomach -- he was lying to himself! I kept wondering what people outside that room would think if they knew I was inside that room. After a while, I noticed two girls from my German class were there, and we instantly gravitated towards each other with a huge measure of relief. I found out that one of them had a girlfriend, and the other was pansexual. I tried to explain "the whole OCD thing" the best I could. They didn't really understand but they accepted me.

I thought they would be my new college friends. I thought at least they wouldn't judge me, and we could be whatever-we-were together. But it didn't really work out that way. They both turned out to be hugely into anime and the show Supernatural, and would talk about it all the time, and I just wasn't interested. I made friends with a group of straight girls who lived in the hall below me and we got along much better. And so I kind of drifted apart from them, though I'll still give them hugs and stop to chat if I see them.

And now we're on to sophomore year. This is the first year of my life I've ever been able to make friends with boys. First semester, I still believed quite strongly that I had HOCD, and decided that the only thing to do was to BE OKAY WITH UNCERTAINTY, which is a thing you'll see a lot on OCD websites. Since the biggest thing with me seemed to be fear of being in denial, I thought "okay. I'm DONE trying to label myself. I'm just going to be me, and that's okay!" and proceeded to get fairly cocky and make tons of new friends and stop worrying for months at a time. It was amazing and I'd thought I was over all this worrying completely, that I would fall in love when the time came and with the person that was right.

Then came exams, a few weeks ago. Somehow I ended up clicking on "Lucy's Coming Out Video" on Youtube, and it freaked me out yet again. Some things really resonated with me, like never really being that interested in boys... and it was the way she just "realized" she was a lesbian -- I started wondering if I should have realized that, too. Even though I've gone over it in my head a thousand, thousand times since the age of twelve.

I talked about it to my dad last night -- cried about it, actually. He said he thinks I'm repressing my feelings, and that's why it's been so hard, and I agree. I guess I just don't know how to STOP. Or what to DO. Should I go back to that safe, happy place of uncertainty? If I do, will I ever get out -- will I ever be able to come to some sort of conclusion? I'm a shy person, and "experimenting" isn't quite up my alley -- I'm not sure how to do that, either.

And I'm so ignorant of boys, having avoided them for so many years. I don't know if any of this stems from that, either.

I guess... if I'm a lesbian, I just want to accept it NOW and be able to move on with my life. I understand that this is the battle I've been given in life and once I've overcome fear, I can do anything. I just want to be there. To know. To be able to get back on my feet and tackle it. I don't want to say "okay, well, I still don't know!" now, and then have this anxiety come roaring up again in another few months. I want to deal with the pain now, rather than later. Because accepting it will be painful, if I'm gay.

(Right now, in this moment, in my heart-of-hearts I do think I'm gay. But if you'd asked me three weeks ago, I'd have told you I was pretty sure I was straight. This constantly changing cycle -- it's something I've dealt with for years. I hate being so ignorant of myself.)

I'm a strong person. I know that I can deal with this. It's just that I don't know how to. What to do. Etc.

 

Hi Lex!

Thanks so much for responding... it's just so nice to know somebody has read what I was thinking of as an obscenely long post, and been so kind about it.

Yeah. I'm not seeing a therapist at the moment -- I was doing so well for most of the semester that I didn't think I needed to. It's complicated because I think I'd need to find someone who was both well-versed in OCD (which I haven't actually been diagnosed with) and sexual orientation issues. Which could be tricky. I know my college counseling center isn't up to it, so it would be something I'd look into for this summer. But as I said, until recently I was really feeling like I was doing awesomely, so I guess I'll see where things stand in a couple months' time. I can definitely hold up, though. I'm not in danger of a breakdown or anything -- have definitely improved since age sixteen or so. I guess I would just really like answers and for the whole thing to be over with.

Your comment about finding something that "explains everything" hits the nail on the head. I've had so many "epiphanies" in my life that I don't believe anything I think about this subject. :/ Analysis paralysis is a good term for it!! The part that bothers me is that I always do feel awful during the periods where I think I'm gay, and of course there have been women who I've thought I might feel attracted to. So it makes sense to me that it's something I might be but don't want to accept -- except that I'm constantly thinking about it, so denial doesn't feel like a possibility, either. Hmm...

At any rate, I definitely don't want to call myself straight. After a day of thinking, I will probably end up going back to what I did most of this semester -- trying to be okay with uncertainty. Except I'm going to try to add in a little more exposure to gay-related things -- maybe spending a little more time reading EC posts, that kind of thing -- in hopes of REALLY making myself okay with either outcome. Because that really is the trick to being happy, I think -- being okay with whatever I am, so that the urge to analyze is less invasive.

And I'm going to try to be more comfortable around boys, because I think my avoiding them was probably a disservice to myself. If I can meet and make friends with more of them, I might be able to sort out my affections a little better, too.

Urgh, if only life was less complicated, and painful at times! But it would be less interesting that way, too, wouldn't it.

 

@Lex -- Exactly. I don't seem to fit any sexuality label (maybe if I'm ever over the whole analysis-paralysis thing I will, but certainly not there yet), and I also don't fit the full HOCD label.
But seriously, thank you so much. I'm feeling a lot better now. I guess I do have a lot of pent-up angst over whether it's OKAY to "not know", whether that's the same thing as denial, and it's so nice to hear that it really is all right. (I hope.)

@TKM -- urrgh, I'm sorry to hear that you've dealt with OCD, too. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I'm happy to hear I've helped, though, and you sound like you've reached a good place in your life, so well done for that!