Weekly Prompt #3: What helped you understand and accept your sexuality/gender identity

@ASilentObserver I was always pretty aware of me being attracted to men lol

What was weird was realizing I was bisexual and then growing up(ish) and getting internalized homophobia because i don't wanna be weird..

nd there aren't gay uhh teens in my city I like or that I know I suppose.. apparently a guy had a crush on me once but he never said nothing so.. yeah idk ive come to realize I'm attractedd to what I'm attracted too even if it's uhh just an idea maybe sum I'm not sure of.. 🤔 and we'll *** see when the time comes I guess 

@ASilentObserver

I knew i was different when boys and girls my age started having crushes and being "boy-crazy/girl-crazy." I thought that the others were weird for being like that (grew up in a conservative community).

What helped me accept it was reading fiction about characters like me, who were on the asexual spectrum. Seeing i was part of a spectrum of how humans could present.

@ASilentObserver

The journey of self acceptance was pretty fast once I was in a safe place. I read a comic called "I Want to be a Cute Anime Girl" and it opened my eyes real fast. Before that I was reading a lot of gender bender and cross dressing manga. And before that back in high school I remember saying that I was a girl sometimes without me thinking about it.

My sexuality was really simple. I am a girl, who likes girls, easy. Not really sure if I like boys, but I don't really mind finding out more.
Being poly was also pretty simple for me. I like girls, why not date more girls? After coming out I lost everyone in my life so my girlfriends were the only people I had in my life, so the more the better.

I havent really come to terms with my sexuality or my identity. I always knew from a young age that I was different from that of my peers. I have disabilities, which adds another layer to this as well and for awhile I thought maybe that was the issue. I got involved with a church, and then got accepted into a religious school. While I will always be grateful that the church got me to get sober, it is and has been extremely difficult to deny/hate this part of myself. I went back to therapy and it’s been helpful for the past few years, but I’m lonely. I would say I’m a work in progress right now on this journey and I want to stop hating myself and start to embrace the fact that I’m not straight. I hate that I’ve tried so hard to be straight and found I couldn’t. 

@ASilentObserver
The crazy story is- i thought i was straight, at the time i also had a bf.
Then one random day my female friend (lets call her Tae), tae and i started getting super close like ultra besties (I didn't know that time that i was catching feelings.)
Tae was a proud Bi, everyone knew. 
And it just happened- i started liking her a lot and within like 2-3 months the confession happened. 
This was like 2 years ago- and my friends ask me "hey P, how did you not get scared? or worried- cuz it was a big jump from being straight for 19 years of my life to- getting a gf"

I said I don't know, guys- i just didn't care? To me, Tae didn't look like a "woman" (idk how to explain this). When I looked at her, I didn't see a human with a different body orientation. I just saw a human. no different from the other humans I had dated. So no, I never had the overthinking get to me.

To this day, I don't know how or why it was so easy for me. cuz its normal to go crazy when such a big change is happening. 

Maybe I'm the crazy/abnormal one? :")

@ASilentObserver

When I was in middle school, girls in my class started talking about boys. Crushes on actors, musicians, fictional characters, etc. I noticed really soon I did not feel any of it and couldn't relate. I thought it was because I wasn't at that stage of puberty yet, but very shortly realized these feelings towards the opposite gender that my classmates were describing I also felt, only towards my own gender. I realized I also had crushes on actors, musicians and fictional characters, but they were women. 

By that time I knew what homosexuality was, and I was very afraid, since I live in an unaccepting society. I went online to find out what to do and found a lot of info, good and bad. Mostly, I looked up whether it is possible to get "rid of it" or whether it is possible for it to go away on its own. Thankfully, I managed to meet queer people and read about similar experiences, which made me accept the fact that liking your own gender is completely fine. 

At some point I stopped fearing the fact I liked women, it was just important for me to find out how to start liking men, just so I could fit in somehow and not feel like an outcast, unable to relate to women around me. Where I live, girls get told about marriage from an early age, and often discuss the "roles of women" such as getting a man and having kids. I did not want any of it. When my friends asked me these questions I either had to lie and pretend, or see their faces change to a confused/weirded out expression. 

It seems like I was very bad at pretending to be attracted to men in the first place, lol, because they were often confused by my made-up preferences. Even then, not a single proud homophobe (out of those I was forced to be around) ever confronted me about it, so I assume they somehow never figured out that I was a lesbian. Some of my ex-friends said a lot of hurtful things about LGBT+, not knowing they were talking about me. By that time, I knew they were wrong, though it still hurt. I tried to force myself into liking men, but to no avail.

Thanks to resources online, I was slowly able to accept myself. It is nice to be able to read stories from women like me. Accepting myself was very stressful, and still is. I am still in the closet, but I no longer wish to change my sexual orientation, and I am out to some people.

@ASilentObserver

So, my whole life, I didn't necessarily hate being a guy, but I never exactly understood it. I always felt like male culture just didn't make any real sense, so I sort of just treated it as a joke I wasn't in on.

One day, a few months ago, I was doomscrolling on youtube, and I watched a video that said "You are probably trans". I thought it might be interesting, so I watched it, and it talked about "the button", which could change your biological sex. My first instinct was to weigh the pros and cons of being either, which led me to assume I was agender.

I thought I was agender for about 2 weeks, then I realized something: I envied women, and their gender euphoria. I realized that that isn't real, and after carefully looking inward, I realized that I would be happier as a woman