Seeking Support and Advice?

Hello! I am new here and looking for a bit of support and advice. I would be most grateful for anyone to simply hear me out, because I feel like I need to spill what's been eating at my mind for awhile.

Really, I joined this site because at this current stage of my life, I am a "lone wolf" so to speak, I haven't really got anyone else to talk to. I guess it wasn't intentional for me to turn out this way, lonely that is, it's just, I feel as though I am at a crossroads, or caught in a bizarre intermission between this Act of my life and the next. Fairly recently graduated High School (May of 2012.) and also recently come to conclusion that I am a lesbian.

Which, really in all honesty terrifies me.

I guess I had always been the type to do anything to feel like I belong or to feel accepted. (of course who feel that way?) Even if it meant masking my own desires, and dreams. I have become quite skilled at self-suppression, and simply brushing off anything that came from within myself. Even if it meant being emotionally void and detached from my own heart. I followed often, and adopted the same views as my peers, I wanted to like what they liked, what they wanted, what they saw as "normal." I just wanted really, life to be easy, and I never wanted to be alone.
Of course now, and as I get older I realize more and more that life is anything but easy, and that pretty everything doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to. The way you thought it would.

I had always perceived the future me married to a man, having a child, and being a mother. I thought that was what I had to want in order to fulfill my duty as a human being. Play the part in which I thought I should play for myself, I held on to it and grasped that idea of that future tightly. It made me feel like everyone else, and thus gave me a sense of belonging. Really those thoughts, living happily ever after with the man of my dreams gave me a real sense of contentment and made me feel pleasant and at peace enough. Almost like it was what I should want and in that "should" I felt validated. (I hope I am making at least a little sense.) However, those ideas of future were missing something that I caught onto later on in life. As if the idea of being with a man was fine and dandy, but their was a strange and complicated piece missing. As I unraveled the empty spaces in the future I thought I wanted it turned out the adopted idea of the "norm" was not what my heart wanted.

Really it didn't take all that much time to realize that what was missing from that future, was not a him, but a her. For whatever reason, born within me, nurtured, or both (not that it matters because in the end it just is and something that cannot be changed nor chosen.) My heart, what came from inside me revealed that what I wanted, what I was attracted to was women.

Looking back at my life I could see the evidence all around. Instances in middle school and high school I did notice a feeling of attraction to other females however I dare not even question or begin to fathom what it meant, no I remember quickly shutting down the thoughts before they could go any further and severely suppressing them, I had no intention of figuring out what they meant at the time.
Not to say I didn't notice when a boy was physically appealing, or that I never was flirty with a male, it just never progressed beyond that because I wasn't really interested(boys could feel this too), that something was missing, and I could sense that it wouldn't work out even if I tried.(Which I tried to force a few times anyway.)
However I have always felt extremely comfortable in the presence of girls, I just felt at home, and almost all of my notable friendships have been ones shared with women. Two of the closest ending with me feeling completely heart broken and shattered because, well, I hadn't realized it at the time, but I cared for them far more than a friendship could hold and because of that those friendships became unhealthy for me and ended.
Whether in books, movies, television shows, video games, anime, manga, ect I have always been so heavily involved and have become so emotionally attached to female characters and their stories, the hardships, who they are, almost like a built in magnetism, extreme fascination.

Later upon the initial realization of what all this meant, once I opened my mind and allowed myself to explore, the intense physical attraction began to come fourth. I have always been able to look at a man and find whether he was attractive or not to me, but this, this is on a whole other level. It is magnetic, fierce, and electric. Sexually, for the first time, I began to imagine myself taking charge, lustfully none the less, but also at the same time being in awe. Almost, like, how could I not want to ravish every inch of her? That's what I began to feel.

Also, above all else, the connection I held to my own sex was spiritual, and very much romantic.

All that I had suppressed, all the feelings I had cut off, and allowed to be neglected were pouring fourth, little by little it became pretty obvious that I was gay. That I had the wrong idea of future for myself and that is where I started to become terrified.

I accepted and knew very quickly that I was lesbian, after all that I had come to realize, it was the point of no return. I couldn't just go back, I couldn't just wish for the norm, to be with man and try to be happy. No, after all I had come to learn about myself, in allowing and finding the courage, and I this sounds hella corny but, to follow what my heart was pulling me toward for once I find what I truly wanted out of the romantic aspect of my life. (Which is a pretty big deal, because I am a hopeless romantic really.)


The reason I became so terrified and is really the point I need help with is that I find myself almost in a surreal position. It is odd to feel like you discovered such an important part of yourself but at the same time feeling so misplaced by who you thought you would be. It's almost like, I am mourning the idea of what I thought I wanted, of what role I wanted to play. My dreams of the future were that of a typical heterosexual woman. (Nothing wrong with that of course!) Those dreams just simply turned out to be not own or my desires, and it feels like I have lost something that really was never mine, though it feels like a loss nonetheless.

Differentiating between who I really am, and who I wanted to be perceived as to fit this idea of a mold has put me in a strange position.
As I said at the beginning I feel like I am at a cross roads or the intermission between Acts I and II. All my life I have been living under what I was told to be, and what I was told to want not by who I was and leaving that security blanket and taking the steps to discovering who I am and what I actually want out of life is very scary and intimidating.

Not necessarily just in my realization of sexual orientation but in all aspects of who am, and finding the means to stop neglecting myself, sacrificing my own wants and desires, and to just being comfortable with who I truly am, and falling in love with that person.

I suppose what I am asking is, has anyone ever felt this way? Been in that weird in-between place? How have you overcome it, the fear of being different? How have you learned to fully embrace who you are?

If you managed to read all this, bless your soul. Apologies. haha.