Some of my story

Hello all. My name is Johnny.

I'm posting because I'd like share some of myself here, some of my story. Maybe as a temporary means to lighten the load for just a little while. Like so many others I could probably type out a hundred pages without ceasing to type once, but I'll try to keep it a brief and easy read. I am bisexual, possibly bigender (a term I came across this morning), or have gender-dysphoria of some kind. And if this connects with and helps just one person it will have been worth it. *After I wrote everything below, it was worth it even if it doesn’t.

I was (kind of?) born to a Christian-religious family. My father converted originally at my mother's behest when I was around nine or ten years old. I recall early Sunday mornings beforehand when she would take me and my siblings to church and cry on the way over because they'd fight over it, and I knew at the time it was because she genuinely believed he was going to go to "hell" if he didn't convert. The year of his conversion, the months all around it, have faded very much from my memory. I blocked a lot of memories of my father out for a very long time. I'm not sure if I can get them back. The two most vivid memories I have of him from the time are him screaming that he owned me, like property (can't recall what prompted that), and another standing atop the steps in our house listening to my parents argue and my father screaming "to hell with them" in a very loud, shrill scream (referring to my younger brother and myself, because we didn't want to talk about school much around the dinner table earlier that evening - I was elementary, he may have been in kindergarten).

My father quit his job after a few years of church-goings in order to go to school to become an ordained minister. It was during this time he developed into a hypochondriac of sorts, the worst of his supposed "illnesses" being daily chronic migraine headaches. He became completely addicted to all kinds of painkillers. I couldn't list them all. I know at some point his doctors were all angry with him because he was using their slips to fill the same prescriptions multiple times-over. When I was in ninth or tenth grade, my mother started to sleep on the couch, and that became the norm until she accidentally came across the cache of gay porn on my then-minister father’s computer. This led to a chain of events that ended in very bad divorce. I would take my brother to visit him. We’d shoot hoops. My father was so drug-addled he could hardly lift the ball. He couldn’t shoot it further than about six inches out of his hands. I witnessed my brother's heart break that day (might have been 13) seeing his father like that and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him for it. I haven’t spoken to him since Christmas 2008.

During all of this, I became increasingly curious myself. I started looking at a mix of straight and gay porn, probably when I was 16 or 17 and did not jerk off once until I was 18, maybe even 19. If this sounds weird to some of you, I think it was because I began to homeschool the year my elementary school was going to start us on sex-ed, and my parents never had “the talk” with me. I transitioned from homeschooling to a Mennonite high school to a Christian university. Dropped out because of the goings-on at home. I felt I needed to be there, to be working, to be caring for my mother and my brother because my father never did. Not once. I attended other schools, but I was floundering, and could never finish. I was experiencing some kind of aphasia, a lonely disconnect between who I was and am, and who I very much believed, deep in my heart of hearts, I was supposed to be. The notion that “God” designed me to be straight and the fear instilled in me concerning hell was something I couldn’t shake for the longest time. I was cowed. Terrified. Deceived.

I so strictly compartmentalized my sexuality that I could no longer function. Not in a healthy way. Being gay, or bi, or different in any meaningful way; it was simply not an option. It wasn’t on the ballot. Sorry Charlie, but that’s a nugatory.

These feelings, all these desires, caused a confusion inside me that was compounded by the fact that I was also attracted to girls. Very much so. So I dated them exclusively for most of my life. But like anything bottled up, just like my father’s sexual identity, my sexual identity wasn’t something to be ignored, and doing so caused me to alienate most of my older friends. It wasn’t intentional. I still struggle through this one. Still struggle understanding why. I became increasingly hostile and angry toward a world I perceived as hating me, when in fact the only hatred that I ever needed to account for was the hate I felt, and often still do, toward myself. Just writing that last statement and knowing a few pairs of eyes will read it and understand helps tremendously.

I’m now beginning to better my understanding of myself, if that makes sense. I’m still working on accepting myself. Wholly. Not as a fractured, splintered, angry body, but as a body who refuses to latch onto hatred and let it sour the heart.

Some instances can stay with you, though.

Some years ago, well after the separation, I came across my mother watching an episode of House. Olivia Wilde and another girl were getting it on, and I stayed for the scene because Hot Damn. While they were having sex, Olivia Wilde’s character suffered an epileptic episode. She fell on the ground and started convulsing. Shaking uncontrollably. It was horrifying.

My mother looked at me and said, “That’s what she gets for being gay.”

I bawled my eyes out that night. I’m crying right now because I don’t like thinking about it. Rarely do. I don’t like thinking about those words coming out of her mouth. I know she’s since changed. She’s no longer strictly Christian, no longer thinks homosexuality is wrong, and is more open to other interpretations of the universe but because I bottled my identity up, those kinds of remarks got lodged deep inside and I know they won’t ever fully come out until I tell her.

This is getting long so I’m going to wrap it up. I just wanted to share something of me. I’ve come to understand I’m bisexual, bigender, with gender dysphoria. I’m a woman in a man’s body who is attracted to both men and women. I’m ambidextrous, probably bi-polar, and feel a hard separation between feminine-submissive urges to ones of masculinity and dominance with little to no ground in-between the two. I was going to claim how difficult this is for me, to share, even anonymously online, but the fact of the matter is I'm a few days away from 30 and have hardly come out to anyone at all so I'm not sure I know what the word difficult even means in this context.

I will someday, though. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it.

Johnny