#I dont know if its wrong to tag this as byler but im sure someone will tell me LMAO | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

noihavenosanitythanksforasking · 2 months ago

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tldr: the story of how i figured out im gay and why i relate to byler so much. aka why its good rep

this was not supposed to be this long

my best friend doesnt like stranger things bc she thinks the metaphorical texture of the show is gross feeling(valid) but she follows me on here and has had to block the byler tag bc its all i post about these days and shes not into it.

anyways it made me think about why i love byler so much and it definitely has to do with the fact that as a queer person i relate super heavily to their story. being gay is way more acceptable now and i was born in 07 so its not like its was considered a death sentence to be gay in general. however i grew up in the classical church. my mom was part of a religious cult in highschool and i was my parents first kid and they were super protective of me. Im also autistic and i spent most of my childhood very worried about doing and acting the right way to make people accept me. my parents favorite story to tell people about my childhood is that when i finally graduated my crib and got a toddler bed they were worried that i would never let them sleep again. that didnt happen tho, in fact i refused to get out of bed with out express permission and would lay there until they came told me i could get up.

id like to say that i was homophobic growing up but not in the traditional sense. it was more that i was actually afraid of gay people. No one around me ever really said anything blatantly homophobic or had radical ideas about the subject but we were so deep into the church and i was always afraid of everything. when i was in elementary school we would do drills. call and response cult like stuff. theyd ask us to define sin and wed spout off this memorized line about going agaisnt gods will in action or thought or intention. i didnt even know what a gay meant until i got to middle school and the entire idea terrified me. because thats not allowed and when someone brings it up all the adults get that one look on their face and the pastor says that homosexuality is a sin or wtv.

i had this one friend, lets call her jane, at the time. i really liked her but she was kind of a delinquent, she didnt have the best home life and she was kind if an angry kid so when she came out to our friend group as bisexual in i think 7th grade, we (the rest of the group was v religious ) were concerned about it but not really surprised. we werent supportive but we werent angry either. it was more like we werent sure what to do. she had always been a problem child so it didnt seem to out of the blue for someone like her to like girls so we just kind of tried not to talk about it again.

I was a pretty big drama kid at the time( still am) (i swear i have a point to this) and i became friends with this one girl. lets call her belle. anyways i reallllyyyy liked belle i dont think i had a crush on her but i thought she was really cool and fun and liked hanging around her. we werent really close much to my past and present dismay but when i did hang out with her i always had a fun time. a few years later she told me that she was bisexual. this pretty much broke my little brain. because belle was cool and fun and normal and it was the first time when i realized that maybe there was something wrong with the way my church worked. they had to be wrong because there was no way belle was evil and going to hell. i loved being friends with her and i couldn't accept the fact that her liking girls changed anything. she still felt like the same person. still the topic was terrifying to me, i was so afraid that i was wrong or maybe just not smart enough to see the truth. so many people around me that i grew up being told knew what was right, knew what god was telling us said that it was wrong so maybe i just didnt get it. maybe i wasnt close enough to god to understand what made gay people so bad. still something changed from then and the next year i ended up being close to this girl, lets call her beth, (all my other friends had either moved on or were on different sides of our grade and tbh i was terrified of her but i had no one else). Anyways beth also had a crazy homelife she talked a lot about how she hated her family and how she would kill her dad if she could. she also ate highlighters, just drew on her tongue, and sold pictures of her feet on instagram to make money. needless to say as soon as i hit highschool i never spoke to her again, she freaked me out. anyway one day me and beth were walking at recess and she turns to me and tells me that im gay. i knew she was pan at this point and i didnt really care though looking back on it she was definitely flirting with me. I got freaked out and told her there was no way i was gay and assumed that she just wanted me to like her back but id had a crush on a guy before so i couldnt be gay.

speaking of this guy, he sat next to belle in my science class in 6th grade. i sat behind them and they were good friends. we were sort of a trio in that class and i thought he was really nice and funny. he was the first guy id ever been friends with and i assumed that the fact that i enjoyed hanging out with him and having fun meant that i must have a crush on him. because girls and boys cant just be friends. thats what everyone always said at least. one day we were texting and he told me that he liked me and wanted to go out. i csnt describe the feeling i got then. it was this werid mix of anxiety and fear and knowing that i should be excited but instead i was disappointed. and i didnt know why. i told him i wasnt allowed to date til 16 and if he still wanted me then whe could date then. i cried about it for almost a year. which doesnt make any sense because i rejected him not the other way around. but i felt heartbroken. im still not really sure why.

when beth told me i was gay i p much told her to f off in the most good christian way possible but i still thought about it. the idea felt so overwhelming and i couldnt think about it without wanting to have a panic attack so i stopped thinking about it. then i had a gay dream about jane and honestly i should have figured it out then but somehow i completely disregarded.

i changed schools for high school so i was with a lot of new people. i wanted a fresh start. at the time i felt like id been pretending to be someone else for my whole life and i hoped that starting over would help me find myself or something. I always sort of knew i was different from other kids i never felt like we had much in common or something but i could never put a finger of what it was (it was the autism). when i started highschool my main goal was to make friends on my own and conquer my social anxiety when had been crippling throughout middle and elementary. i ended up meeting this girl, lets call her cassie, (so many people ikik) and we became super close. she had a lot of issues as well bc apparently i attract unstable people. she was by far the worst id dealt with though. she was suicidal, ocd, anorexic and hurt her self a lot. it was a very codependent friendship but we were attached at the hip. she was my whole world at the time, nothing else really mattered more than her not killing herself. one day we were texting after midnight and she told me that she thought she might be bisexual and i told her a didnt care. i really didnt care i was more worried about her killing herself. she said she had a crush on someone but wouldnt tell me who and i let the topic die.

then heartstopper came out on netflix and i got DEAD sick. i couldnt even speak. it was very bad. anyways i had a computer at this point and was looking for something to watch. i settled on heartstopper because id heard so many good things about it and i was morbidly( at the time) curious. i watched the entire show in one sitting. i was scared my mom would find out and when she did find out she gave me this hesitant look and said she didnt love the idea of me watching that kind of stuff. i watched it anyways. i was mesmerized dude. the scene of nick nelson in his bedroom, on the verge of tears searching the internet for anwsers was so powerful to me and it was like something clicked in my brain.

what if i am gay??

id never let myself actually ask mysrlf that before. id never dared to even think it was a possibility because of course im straight. id know if i liked girls. but i sat there dead sick and dying slowly and looked over at my book case at all my favorite books. i looked up on youtube how to tell if your bisexual (bc ofc i like guys duh) and it said something about thinking about how you feel about fictional characters and i sat and i thought. it was a very overwhelming week. i thought back to middle school and the strange possessiveness i had over my best friend at the time, the feeling of hurt i always seemed to have when she hung out with someone else. i hated that part of myself. i felt validated in my feelings at the time but i never knew why i felt that way and it felt unfair to her.

at the time i was talking to a guy. he was nice and pretty chill but i sort of knew i didnt like him the way he liked me. i wanted to though. i wanted to like him so freaking badly. so i kept taking to him. id be on the phone with him for 5 hours just talking about nothing and tell myself that this was what its like to like someone. it wasnt a bad experience, he was nice and i liked to talk to him. but i didnt have feelings for him. one night i texted cassie back and told her that maybe i was bi too. she was from a christian household too and we talked for a while one what we should do.

my parents have always had this policy of being honest with each other when sometbing happens in our lives. which i think is pretty normal but my autistic ahh took it very seriously. almost as soon as i started questioning i told them. bad idea, was not ready. i was so scared that somehow theyd look at me and figure out that i was thinking about it, and that theyd be mad that i didnt talk to them about it. i said it at dinner and there was legit forks dropped. my mom took me on a 2 hour long walk to try and explain myself which was HELL because i couldnt even understand what was going on.

"why do you think you like girls??"

"idk"

they eventually dropped the subject.

soon after that me and cassies relationship started to get werid. after being so codependent for so long we had thsi strange sort of toxic need for each other to be sane or something. she confessed that she had a crush on me and i really wasnt sure how to feel about it. she was so important to me and the trauma and confusion and drama of our friendship got all jumbled in my head and we fell into some sort of homo romantic something. we never did anything besides holding hands a few times, but we did that before either of us came out anyways. we went to summer camp summer after freshmen year and shit really hit the fan and we ended up having a friendship breakup. she told me afterwards that she was a devoted christian now, that god had saved her from herself and that now she was straight. i was really lost the rest of that summer. i wasnt sure what to do at all, who i was or what i was supposed to do now that i left the person i had dedicated the past year of my life and my mental health too. i was really suicidal for a few months after that but slowly i got better.

second semester of sophomore year i had my first real crush on one of my close friends at the time. she was straight which sucked but those 6 months of my life were some of the most terrible exhilarating experiences of my life. thats how i knew i wasnt wrong. bc theres no heterosexual option for wanting to make out with a girl in a dirty school bathroom stall.

it was hard though, being in love with someone you know will never feel that way about you. even if at the time i had mostly gotten over the majority of my internalized homophobia theres still that feeling of guilt. you feel so gross and creepy and unwanted. this person doesnt want you, they dont even want your gender but you cant let it go. its a very lonely feeling.

it was around the same time that i figured out that i was a lesbian. after i felt what it was like to like someone, really like someone. to be able to identify that feeling as romantic feelings, it was pretty obvious that i didnt like guys. i felt really bad about the guy i was talking too. he had no idea and id just heen leading him on for almost a year. i felt super shitty about it.

idk if that was coherent but i guess thats why i love byler so much. it feels so raw and real to me. i watch the van scene and i see myself. i see how hard it was and how much i hated myself and wanted so badly to be normal and to be able to talk about boys with my friends without feeling uncomfortable. i see the way mike is with el and i see myself with that boy from middle school. so desperate for affection and so so confused. this feeling of guilt and regret, the heartbreak of loosing someone that you couldve had but you dont want. i want to want it but i dont and its so heartbreaking.

i almost think its a worse feeling that being broken up with. i fell in love with a girl recently and she ended up ending things. i was super upset about it cried for a long time. but still. its not the same hurt. it hurts but its not the same deep primal hurt. sitting on my bathroom floor at 13 years old sobbing my eyes out because im not with a boy that i rejected. wishing that things were different but not wanting to actually change. i broke my own heart and i didnt even mean too

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