![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Out of Some Closet, I guess.
Oct. 11th, 2005 07:58 pmThis is the fifth October that I've had my LJ. I scanned back through my calendar to see what I'd written previously about National Coming Out Day only to discover that it's really nothing.
I'm not sure what to say about coming out. I came out eleven years ago, when I was nineteen. I battled the interest I had in women for years, I can remember painfully and very consciously struggling with them, trying very hard to convince myself that it was bad, and inappropriate and unacceptable. As I've gotten older, I realize more and more how painful it was to go through that. I also marvel at how my high school changed. M school was grades ten through twelve, and when I was in tenth grade, there were no openly queer people among the student body. By the time I was a senior, there were a few people who were acknolwedged to be bisexual, but they were all part of the goth/freak/granola crowd that I hung around with. By the following year, when my brother started, there were a significant number of non-straight identified students (I don't know what the various orientations were) and the beginnings of a GSA (gay straight alliance.)
I know I walked a far easier path than many other people. And yet, it's 2005 and we're still battling over the second class status of people. I don't have patience for injustice...and I never did.
And yet, when I think about my own coming out...the decision to come out, to seek out resources brought so many fantastic people into my life...people who it's very likely I might not have met otherwise. People who became my "chosen family" who are my community, and who are still part of my life ten years later. If I hadn't chosen to be honest about my sexual orientation, I might never have crossed paths with people who taught me so much about how to live, to love, to deal. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am for them at this place in my life, and I'm still distressed about being so far away from all the things that rooted me.
I'm sitting here, musing over labels...over what labels fit me now, and how the identities I choose to subscribe to and share are a part of my life. I worried for quite a while about how my identitiy as a bisexual woman would be changed by the decision to get married. I bemoan my lack of queer community here in Florida, though I know it takes years to establish that.
Coming out helped me find a community that has, over the last ten years helped make me into the person I am. Sometimes I like me. Sometimes I wonder where I'm going. Sometimes I just am.
I'm not sure what to say about coming out. I came out eleven years ago, when I was nineteen. I battled the interest I had in women for years, I can remember painfully and very consciously struggling with them, trying very hard to convince myself that it was bad, and inappropriate and unacceptable. As I've gotten older, I realize more and more how painful it was to go through that. I also marvel at how my high school changed. M school was grades ten through twelve, and when I was in tenth grade, there were no openly queer people among the student body. By the time I was a senior, there were a few people who were acknolwedged to be bisexual, but they were all part of the goth/freak/granola crowd that I hung around with. By the following year, when my brother started, there were a significant number of non-straight identified students (I don't know what the various orientations were) and the beginnings of a GSA (gay straight alliance.)
I know I walked a far easier path than many other people. And yet, it's 2005 and we're still battling over the second class status of people. I don't have patience for injustice...and I never did.
And yet, when I think about my own coming out...the decision to come out, to seek out resources brought so many fantastic people into my life...people who it's very likely I might not have met otherwise. People who became my "chosen family" who are my community, and who are still part of my life ten years later. If I hadn't chosen to be honest about my sexual orientation, I might never have crossed paths with people who taught me so much about how to live, to love, to deal. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am for them at this place in my life, and I'm still distressed about being so far away from all the things that rooted me.
I'm sitting here, musing over labels...over what labels fit me now, and how the identities I choose to subscribe to and share are a part of my life. I worried for quite a while about how my identitiy as a bisexual woman would be changed by the decision to get married. I bemoan my lack of queer community here in Florida, though I know it takes years to establish that.
Coming out helped me find a community that has, over the last ten years helped make me into the person I am. Sometimes I like me. Sometimes I wonder where I'm going. Sometimes I just am.
