There's out and then there's OUT out

So things have been a little... difficult for a while now.

I came out to myself in a very dramatic fashion back in June of last year. I drove my dinky car out to the river and cried my eyes out as I went over my life.

What sparked everything was just before I had headed to Michigan be a nun just one month before, my best guy friend kind of smacked me upside the head. He gave me the look that I have come to appreciate and dread: the look of 'you're not going to want to hear what I'm going to say, but you need to hear it anyways.'

"You know the way you look at her is not a in a normal friendship way."

So simple to say something, laugh it off. But for some reason I'll never know, I agreed with him. But instead of letting the realization hit me, I went right into suppression mode.

I went off, against my better judgement, in hopes to find something to make me normal. Oh boy was I wrong. Call it fate or destiny or whatever, but when I got there the nuns told me I was "called" to marriage instead. I could have told them that, but I was angry because their idea and my idea of a happy marriage were very different. What I had been told were my only options for a good life, and what I felt in my heart were very different.

So I came back and I did my research, I watched all of the youtube videos there were on coming out, I read every article I could find. And through it all, I was going back through every year, every inch of my life, trying to figure it out. I first told my best girlfriend that I thought I was bi and preferred girls but as we talked and as I delved deeper into my past I realized that it wasn't true. Though I might have thought I loved guys, the truth was I loved the idea of that fairy tale I had always been told, because I had been told it was the only one that could ever make me happy. But we all know that isn't true; it wasn't going to ever make me happy. And did I try. After all everyone desperately wants happiness.

So I came out to all my friends all at once and I got all the support I could ask for from them. But I thought it best I wait (possibly indefinitely) until I told my homophobic and transphobic and pretty much everything-phobic family.

I moved away for 6 months and I did so well. I was living and breathing finally. I was just learning to dispel the years of self-hatred that had built up over the years. When I found out my grandfather was sick I returned to where the family was to help. It worked to not say anything until my mother went through my belongings shortly after I came back to visit. She found a letter that I had wrote addressed to someone else and read it. Inside it I mentioned being an "angry pagan lesbian" We haven't talked much about it since she's also dealing with my brother who is very recently openly talking about being gay.

I'm pretty sure only my mother knows exactly what's going on from the homophobic side of the family. But my brother and my sister have been as supportive as possible without fallout within the family. My grandparents often make comments anymore about how much everyone is struggling with living a holy life. It hurts. It's not like I'm out partying every night and crashing cars or even anything even mildly unhealthy. The most I've done was kissed another girl.

Someday I want to be brave like my brother. I want to have the courage to take on whatever comes my way and just tell everyone in the family. I want to live my life without the fear of being outed outside of my time. I want to love wholly and fully with everything I am. I've never put much weight in blood relations, and though I hope things will change, I won't count on it. I am going to find my way.

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"I had a dream about the one I love and then there was nothing I could do." ~Shigure