Rejected After Coming Out

Hello, I'm Mira. I'm pansexual, and I go by the pronouns she/her.

After being in denial for a while, I realized that no matter what, this part of myself is still there, so I decided to bury it deep inside me and never share it with anyone no matter what. It was because of religion and how the middle eastern society views people from the LGBTQ+ community overall.

This year, I decided to focus on my healing, and I came to realize how much guilt and shame I've been holding.. It really hurt me a lot to see how much I was hurting myself, so I decided to work on self-acceptance. As a way to practice releasing the shame about being pansexual, I decided to come out to my sister thinking that she'd accept me for who I am just as how much I accept her for who she is. In the beginning, she told me that she accepts me and everything, but two days later, the things she told me totally crushed me. I understand where she's coming from, but religion shouldn't be used as a reason to hurt people no matter what. She invalidated me and said things like "It's against nature". "Even if you can't control this part of you, you still have a choice of choosing your partner." "I won't accept it if you married a woman" and a lot more. It seriously broke my heart. I never thought that my sister out of everyone else would say those things to me. It took me so much to come out, and I told her about how tough it was for me to do that, yet she still chose to say those things and to literally cut me off....

I feel like going through all of this alone makes me wanna give up on life especially that people in my country hate on the LGBTQ+ community, and it's almost impossible to connect with people like me. Not to mention that I don't have the opportunity to go out and meet people. But, I decided today to try again, and so I came here. I really hope I get to make true friends who'd accept me wholeheartedly.