This has been something that has been plaguing me for sometime. I accepted a long time ago that I was bi-sexual, I think because to me it felt more socially acceptable. Let me explain. I'm 32, I would consider myself to be an athletically feminine woman. What does that mean? Well I like football, soccer and sports but also enjoy ballet and opera and I do love to get all gussied up in slinky dresses when the occasion warrants it. At seven years old I was jealous of boys, mostly because they didn't have to worry about the "plays like a girl " stuff on the playground, they just played and automatically were respected just because they were boys. I was incredibly competitive and oftentimes the top athlete (until I hit puberty an gah the girl-ness just came out in me) and tried to spend all my free time playing sports. I am one of many children in a family from the midwest (although I grew up on the west coast) and I think that something that happened to me when I was very young might be the reason that I have never even thought about truly contemplating that I, am, um... quite possibly, uh, a lesbian. At six years old I was more interested in the things that were associated with males and I made the very innocent (at that time) request to my Mother that I no longer wanted to wear dresses to school but shorts or pants. My Mother was livid and just started to scream at me over and over about how "No daughter of hers was going to be a d%ke" and immediately removed me from all the sports that I played, forced me to wear dresses to school every day (really frilly ones too... you know how the late 80's were! Ugh) and made everything in my bedroom pink (my bed frame, my covers, everything...) which was my least favorite color. She enlisted the help of my older sister to be my watchdog while at school and I was monitored at all times to make certain that my behavior was appropriate. I was placed in ballet (yes, lets put the lesbian in a class full of girls in tutu's!) and was only allowed barbie's and girl appropriate toys from then on. I think this was the time period in my life that I stopped sharing a certain part of me for fear of more physical and emotional abuse. I didn't know it at the time but my parents marriage was incredibly iffy and my mother had long suspected my father of being an in the closet homosexual... she admitted years later that after my father didn't come home some nights she would find him at his best friends house naked in the (out) man's bed. For years I avoided any sort of association with anything that wasn't "straight" as you might put it but was incredibly supportive of gay rights. Throughout middle school and high school I wasn't particularly interested in dating guys but I did it because most of the time they were cute and I did enjoy their company... but I kept wondering where the passion was. I looked at girls and found I always identified more with them and I cared more about the plot lines of female characters than the mens. I knew that I found women attractive around age 19 and accepted this but decided that I would just label myself as into both sexes but in order to please people I said I preferred men. This has been a fairly large outright lie and its been tearing me apart. Honestly I had a lot of other things going on life so I was able to fine. I've been in an off/on again relationship with a man for almost 10 years now (we met in college) but I always felt something was missing. I at first thought perhaps I wasn't being pleased because he was lazy in bed but my experiences with other men haven't been fully satisfying either... So here's the deal, I almost died two years ago of a 3rd world disease that I randomly contracted by getting bitten by a bug. I spent two weeks in the icu and quite literally was on my death bed. One of the many things that I promised myself was to be more true to myself if I lived. It's been a tough road to recovery but I really want to fulfill that promise since I only had a 25% chance of living and less than 2% chance of living without the loss of any limbs or permanent cognitive functional loss (septic shock and multi organ failure are no joke people!). I never took the time to analyze my feelings and I've done the googling and reading of multiple articles and of course still cannot get a definitive answer. Sometimes I wonder if I dated men just because it was what was programmed into me by family and society. Am I attracted to women? Yes. Do you want to get physical with them? Yes Am I attracted to men? Yes Do I want to get physical with them? Yes, but after I do I'm just totally over it and wonder why I bothered in the first place. Would I like to be in a relationship with a woman? Yes, I think I would... but the type of woman that I'm attracted to is somewhat similar to myself in that she doesn't have any tell tale signs of queer leanings... Gah! Also this may or may not be relevant but I have never been able to *ahem* get there during sex with a man (or anything else with them) only with the thought of a woman. I only have dreams involving women as well. So what the heck am I? How do I go about this? I'm terrified because it seems that coming out at age 32 is practically granny aged these days... and if I come out as a bi-sexual (I'm not sure anyone ever took me seriously when I said I was bi-sexual) what will the gay community think? It actually seems somewhat harsh to women that are trying to figure things out and the last thing I want to experience is cruel judgement. I know I don't fit the stereotype that a lot of people put in their heads (I'm very feminine and am attracted to very feminine women) but I desperately want to be happy and I just don't know how to go about this. I'm sorry this is so jumbly... The irony is that my best friend came out of the closet in 2008 and I have been incredibly supportive of him throughout the process but I haven't been able to tell him how I have been feeling (I thought he was gay when I first met him more than 14 years ago but then he asked me out on a date... lol). This was incredibly long and I'm sure I have left out some sort of major detail but if anyone has any questions or help please post because I'm not quite sure I can take much more of this. Thank you so much for reading through this novel!
