Today is the day I officially came out to my mother, so I wanted to explore every single other time I've come out to people as different things over the course of my life.
The first time I ever came out to someone was in 7th grade on February 14th, 2019 to my best friend at the time. We were both in middle school band class together and for some reason that morning I decided that today was the day. It was a very spontaneous decision to come out, and the only real reason I considered it was because I knew that I would remember the date of when I first came out if it was already an important date, hence Valentines day. It is very ironic though considering I came out as AroAce in the form of a love poem "roses are red, violets are blue", not the exact words but I won't be sharing what I actually wrote cause it was cringe. I put the note in her band locker along with a stuffed animal and some candy. I tried to also do this with "Love interest #1" who I'll explain more about VERY soon, placing an identical note and candy, but someone stole the candy and probably threw away the note so it didn't work.
Coming out for the first time was a type of joy/nervous/excitement that I had never felt before. I remember happily sending my friend gay memes after because I finally could, being open in a way I had never been with another person, although in hindsight I wish it had been someone else, preferably "Love Interest #1" cause it could helped so much heartbreak later on.
The second time I came out to someone was through instagram dm's, and it was very awkward... I hadn't come out to anyone else at the time, and the best friend I first came out to and I had drifted apart naturally. She apparently stirred a lot of shit with other people, but never did with me to which I'm grateful. I had met this guy who transferred 8th grade and we hit it off as friends really well. By this time I was spending a lot of time with "Love Interest #1" and probably considered us best friends. The guy and I had been dming over insta, just random stuff like talking about video games and the like, when he said he had something to tell me, that he had a crush on me. Now surprisingly this is not the only man who has ever had a crush on me, but so far the only one who has outright told me about it. I was panicking and I didn't want to lose my friend so I just told him the partial truth, that I was Gay. Now if I knew what I did now back then, I would have explained the whole thing and not just summarized with "gay" since the next thing he did was immediately go to "Love Interest #1", who was by best friend at the time, to see if it was true and I wasn't just saying it to "Let him down easy". Now in retrospect this thought process makes sense to me, however, I still hadn't come out to "Love Interest #1" so this was news to them as well.
Basically, this man outed me to my best friend, but honestly I have never been good with words or coming out in person, so this was kind of my ideal situation in which I didn't have to do the work, but this led to other problems down the line. First I would like to state that sexuality is fluid so this is entirely possible, but when "Love Interest #1" asked me what was up the next day on the bus, I told them I was a Lesbian. I was experimenting with my feelings toward other and decided I was to young to know whether I was AroAce because I had never had experience with either romantic or sexual relationships, so I let that decision happen at a later time and decided I liked women more then men at the time, hence Lesbian. So I told that to "Love Interest #1" and I forgot what they said but it was probably along the lines of "Cool" or some shit like that. I also remember that after I came out to the 7th grade best friend, they kept calling me a lesbian, even though that is not what I came out as. It kind of struck me as weird, but I never said anything about it directly since we naturally drifted after that.
Looking back, I was the first out gay person that I knew at my middle school, but not fully by choice since I think my 7th grade best friend might have told some people cause I kept hearing different things like "Did [Lyer] make it official yet?" from people I didn't come out to, some of these being texts to the first best friend. But I really didn't care, I wanted to be out and not have to tell anyone, and I technically got what I wanted. Now I was the only out person I knew at school, but the first time someone came out to me was my older sibling. We have a 6 year age difference and they came out around the same age as me, so I grew up with someone like me to look up to, although I would never admit this to them, cause their ego is already fucking massive and doesn't need the help.
Anyway, I came out to "Love Interest #1" as a lesbian, not AroAce, and this caused problems(sort of). First, I did kind of have a small semblance of a crush on "Love Interest #1", however looking back it was more of a "Squish"/"Alterous attraction" sort of situation that I was not equipped to deal with at the time, seeing as I denied myself the right to be AroAce. We were kind of dancing around each other for a bit, doing all the gross "middle schooler with a crush" things like being touchy and having awkward conversations with each other. "Love Interest #1" came out to me as Asexual Biromantic, and the ball started rolling. Remember the guy I came out to? Well he was also friends with the love interest and started playing wing-man for them. I didn't really realize this at the time, but looking back the texts saying "So what do think of Love Interest? You ever thought about the two of you?" were a dead fucking give away. The ball finally rolls into the gutter when Love Interest finally confesses first, and I confess as well, and this is where I'm still confused about what happened, because no relationship came of it. We didn't magically start dating after confessing, and I was fine with that, (more than fine probably, cause even if I didn't know it, I was still AROace) but it was still confusing on where we stood, because we still had feelings, we just didn't act on them(or I didn't).
I continued on as a lesbian until my Junior year of high school I think? Not sure of an exact date, but this is the first time I came out to my mother as something, even though she knew WAY BEFORE I told her. I also did this in the worst way possible. Again I still couldn't use my words, but with my new found pride, I wanted to share with the world and what better way than with a pride flag, so I ordered one on amazon. All my orders had to be approved by my mother so she instantly saw what I was trying to buy. I knew this, of course, and she texted me to ask about it. I don't remember what she said, but I knew she would love me no matter what. To everyone else, I technically came out on instagram as Bi since I put the colored hearts in my bio.
This went on until I somehow got a boyfriend my Senior year of high school. Now all of this happened really fast so there is not a huge story here, but this guy from band that we'll call J asked me if he could join my homecoming group since his group was filled with couples and he was the only single one, and my group was all going as friends with no dates, so I asked my friends and they said sure. Since I was the one he asked, and since he didn't have his license, I picked him up and drove him. We stuck by each other the whole time and he was fun to be around. We went to IHop after and he paid for my food since I was driving him. We played Valorant together since we both liked it and he asked me out on a date for the next day, and of course we never said it was an official date, but we went to go get food, went to the aquarium, then to gamestop to buy a new pokemon card for my phone case, in that order so it was definitely a date. And to be fair to him it was a good one, and because of that I decided to kiss him on the cheek after I dropped him off. The next day we made it official and we started our month and a half long relationship, my longest one to date! After I dropped him off and was driving away, I remember thinking, "Hmm, I think kisses are supposed to make you have butterflies or something, idk maybe a sort of CRUSH on the person you kissed, instead of emptiness?", and of course I ignored this feeling and went ahead with the relationship. MISTAKE! Why the fuck would I do that? I remember writing in my journal after I broke up with him "You are AroAce, NEVER FORGET THAT AGAIN!!" and I never have since!!!
This specific post focused mostly on my sexuality, but on a different post I want to talk specifically about my experiences with gender, since that is a completely different can of worms. But toodles for now!
live, laugh, love,