Accepting Who I Am

This is the beginning of my coming out story.

I hope to open eyes, hearts, minds, and even arms to those who are outside of the community but also give a helping hand or be a louder voice to those who cannot speak for themselves within the community through this mini-series of posts to come.

“I never thought I’d be gay…” 

Love to me is definitely what I feel from the inside out. It’s a thousand words and sometimes it is nothing but action…but it is always filled with untamed emotions. One huge part of me is the fact that I love who I love.  I was always the kind of girl to be super proud of who I was as a human being except when it came down to this part of my life… it just wasn’t normal to me.

Growing up in a catholic family, it seemed like it was impossible for me to admit my curiosity about liking the same gender. It wasn’t like my parents were super strict or religious but those around me never even spoke the words “gay” or “LGBT”, it just never came up beside on social media later on in my teen years.

I can’t really remember too much about how I felt.. but I knew that around 10 years old I started getting butterflies for anyone who would tell me they had a crush on me or thought I was pretty. Whether it was a girl or a guy, it didn’t matter to me. I’d blush the same way, I’d feel the same butterflies, I smiled so hard so I knew if everything felt the same why would it be any different about who they were? I didn’t come clean to anyone because I felt kind of alone. Being under the age of 12 you kind of just think if you say anything, you’re in the wrong and you are just in a phase of life because you have no idea what’s right or wrong— according to society at least.

When I found someone that I met from church school who identified as Bi-Sexual, I had an opportunity to make conversation and start learning all that I needed to. I knew she was pretty and any time she smiled at me, I’d get warm inside. One day, I decided just to text her and let her know that I had some feelings for her but I wasn’t sure exactly how to go about it. She’s had experience, I didn’t. As this was a very, very long time ago I can’t exactly remember how it started but I do know that one day she kissed me and I just knew. 

Around this time, I hadn’t owned an iPhone (to my knowledge) and I was able to actually TEXT my tweets through my phone for Twitter. I was one of the first people on Twitter in my school, not sure why I loved it so much. Think it had to do with the fact that my parents nor their friends had it and I was able to connect to the LGBT community, it made it so much easier to ask questions and make friends in the community. So of course, the first people to know about my journey within accepting who I loved or liked were Twitter. I had never felt so accepted in my entire world. I received a lot of mentions and messages that day from people I had even just one conversation with. It felt amazing. I didn’t label myself as lesbian or bisexual. I didn’t even call myself straight or bicurious. I was just, Brianna. Months went on and I started to consider myself in this box of bi-sexual and the only reason was that society made it a “necessity” that anyone who didn’t label themselves was just confused… I didn’t want to be known as confused.

The hard part about accepting who I was when I was 11 years old through the age of 16 years old, was fitting into this box that everybody was looking inside from the outside. It wasn’t even just those who aren’t in the community but inside the community as well. There are so many battles a bisexual or pansexual has to come across. People don’t really educate themselves when it comes to labels (or anything really) they just speak upon their opinions when in reality their opinion is nothing without facts.

My high school years— freshman year (9th grade) until my Junior year (11th grade) — they were a bit complicated for me. I was still questioning if I was bisexual or lesbian. I went for more females than males but the crushes with males were much more ‘powerful’ if that makes sense. To put it this way, if there were literally butterflies in my stomach for guys and girls, more butterflies appeared for the guys. It wasn’t until mid-January of 2013 when I lost a dear friend of mine due to a health condition, I attended her funeral and saw someone for the very first time in person. She happened to be an ex-girlfriend of my friend. It was kind of hilarious to me that when we locked eyes a few times during that day, the feelings I felt were indescribable.

Upon leaving the funeral I went onto Twitter and indirectly tweeted about this certain female. We didn’t follow each other until she followed me first. Looking at her profile, she did the exact same thing; indirectly tweeted about me. I can’t remember for the life of me what was said but I do know that we both messaged each other and the rest is history. She was my first real girlfriend. Made it officially a relationship 3 weeks after knowing each other, crazy right? Our relationship ended almost four years later. She was my prom date. My best friend. Literally, the best thing that ever happened to me was her and her family. Because of my relationship with her, I came out of the closet to my family. This was actually the second time I came out to my family (you’ll get to read my coming-out story very soon in another post). That relationship made everything so clear to me, I wasn’t sure at first what my label was within the community but I knew that I was in love for the very first time and I couldn’t change that for the world. She helped me gain the confidence to hold hands out in public, to stick up to anyone who claimed she was a “friend” but really was my girlfriend. I shouted out to the entire world always about the love I had for her.

I accepted who I was because of the first woman I’ve ever truly fallen deeply in love with. And for that, I will always hold her in a special place in my heart.

XOX,

Brianna Anjelique