#the kicker is whenever i am in the dream i remember all the details from the past dream

[astromechs]

there’s nothing grand or revolutionary here, but i wanted to write down some pieces of my journey to... self-acceptance, i guess, before pride month 2019 is over. i never had a sweeping, cinematic moment of a big realization of my sexuality or anything like that, i didn’t have a dramatic coming out moment, so this story won’t be particularly interesting. but:

i kind of wanted to get it out of my own head, and

if it helps someone who’s struggling with similar things, i think that would be awesome, because i wish i had more of this when i was younger

i’ll put this under a read more for potential length to save your dashes.

i grew up, and still live, in the southeastern united states -- north carolina, to be specific. while i grew up in a fairly liberal urban area of the state that’s accepting of a lot of progressive values, i’m surrounded by a pretty conservative (and homophobic) southern culture. my immediate family consists of some fairly progressive and open-minded people, but the stock “southern” values do apply to my extended family, as well as to friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc who have been part of my life at various points. my state still doesn’t have laws in place to ensure protections for lgbtq+ individuals in terms of employment, housing, and other areas, and we are the state that passed the infamous “bathroom bill” a few years back.

this gives you an idea of the context from which i’m coming. a lot of self-acceptance among lgbtq+ individuals growing up in contexts such as these involves overcoming your own internalized homophobia instituted by the environment around you, and i’m no exception.

as a child and adolescent, i always knew something was “different” about me, but i could never put a finger on it -- it would take until adulthood before i really had the tools to do so. when i was in elementary school, the majority of my friends were boys, because at that time, i simply felt more comfortable around them; with a few notable exceptions of girls i formed intense friendships with (i’ll get to this more in a second), girls tended to make me... nervous, almost. i was very much against wanting to be boxed into stereotypes of traditional femininity, so i wanted to reject things like the color pink and playing with “girl toys” and “girl games” -- my emergence into adulthood and as a feminist has involved overcoming a lot of internalized misogyny; i’ve always been set in my gender identity as a cis female, but i resented gendered expectations put forth by society -- but upon further reflection, i think something else was going on there, too.

the “something else” involves multiple examples of very intense friendships with other girls that i can remember taking place through my late elementary school years and up through the end of high school. i won’t go into those in detail, but looking back, they had a lot of the same features -- the feeling that people described as “butterflies” that i desperately tried to feel for a boy and never did, intense connections, feeling like it was a true “breakup” whenever i encountered a falling out in one of these friendships. i bring up that last point, because i actually did date a boy when i was 17 (the one and only time i ever did), and when we broke up, i was sadder about losing the friendship i had with this boy than the relationship -- and my “friend breakups” with the other girls had felt much more devastating. (it’s also telling that i’m 30 now and have had zero desire to try to date a guy again since i was 17 but... you know.)

throughout high school as well, i had multiple “crushes” on guys that were either unavailable or turned out to be gay, and looking back, i think i did that very intentionally. there was a sense that i had to “fit in” with the other girls who were constantly talking about boys. i felt excluded during conversations about actors people thought were hot, so i definitely convinced myself to like a few of those, too; i was still doing this in the marvel fandom up until about a couple of years ago, but deep down, i honestly don’t care about which chris is more attractive than the other or whatever the hell. so this is how i’ve gone through many aspects of life: performative “crushes”, really trying to convince myself to like guys because i thought i was supposed to (and some guys, i really thought i did like).

i never closely examined that i could be anything other than straight until i hit college -- that was, you know, the default, what was expected of me by everyone around me. in my initial reflections, i determined that i was not, really, in fact attracted to men, a conclusion that i know to be true at this point in time, so that idea’s really been with me for a long time. i decided that if i wasn’t attracted to men, i had to be asexual, and in discovering that there was actually a label you could put on something that meant “i’m not really attracted to men and i don’t want to have sex with men like everyone else around me does”, i started to feel more secure about myself. i did a lot of reading about the asexual community at the time, about all the different places on the ace spectrum. it was awesome, people were welcoming, and i’m still grateful to the ace community for making me feel like something different could be “accepted” for the first time.

to any aces out there reading this -- you’re beautiful and valid, and i’ll fight anyone who gives you shit.

but here’s the kicker, y’all; in all that time, in the years between around 20 and 25 or so that i identified as ace, i had never, not once, considered that i could be attracted to women in a romantic/sexual way. oh, i had lots of dreams in my early-mid 20s about women (very often romantic/sexual) -- which i totally tried to repress, i talked extensively about how women were “aesthetically attractive” to me because they’re pretty and you can totally appreciate anyone who’s pretty without anything else attached right?, and i tried long and hard to convince myself that that was it. and by god, i kept trying.

i tabled this for the next three years, though, because there wasn’t a lot of time in my life for personal reflection or anything else; i was trying to get through an intense master’s program while simultaneously trying to keep my family from falling apart through the news of my father’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent hell with treatment, and it was really all i could do to keep my head above water. dating, relationships, how comfortable i felt in my own skin were all about the last things on my mind. it was “i don’t really need a label, anyway” and i left it at that.

after my father’s death, i went through a period of deep self-reflection. i think that’s a natural part of grief, to evaluate where you are in your own life when confronted with mortality much earlier than you expect to be like that. and in that self-reflection, i admitted to myself, finally, at the tender age of 28 years old, that i was attracted to women.

and that admission was terrifying.

i came to accept it, though, came to love it and embrace it as a part of myself, and i felt more comfortable in my own skin than i ever had. there was one lingering piece, though -- any attraction to men, or lack thereof. i pointed to all the times that i’d had crushes on guys, thought i felt attracted to them, and said, well, yes, i have these instances of being attracted to guys, so therefore i’m bi. that was the identity i carried for the next two years.

that label never felt 100% right, though. i knew that i had an overwhelmingly strong preference for women, and i was constantly interrogating the little slice of attraction to men that could potentially exist. was it genuine? was it compulsory heterosexuality? and the more and more i thought about it, the more and more i interrogated it, i realized -- it was the latter. i thought back to my experience of being in a relationship with a guy, and how everything felt fake. i thought about all the “crushes” on guys i really tried so hard to convince myself of. every single instance came back with the same thing: it was performative, rather than genuine.

about three weeks ago, at 30 years old, i called myself a lesbian for the first time in my life. standing in front of the mirror on a sunday morning, the word left my mouth with a rush of anxiety, the same rush that had come with the realization of my attraction to women, but after that passed -- i felt calm. at peace. like something had finally, finally clicked into place.

this pride month, i feel proud of myself and who i am. i’ve learned to love myself as a woman, and i’ve learned to love my love for other women. these things are beautiful.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading.