I'm Laughing At My Own Jokes

Chapter Eleven: The "Me" No One Can Even Believe

When people look at me, I know what they see. They see a quiet, antisocial girl. I know that, I've heard people say it. I'm okay with that too. I'm not annoying anyone this way. I'm not being obnoxious this way. I get embarrassed less this way.

I'm the type of person who would have cancer and depression and anxiety and every single disease in the entire world if it meant no one else would. I want everyone to be happy and get the life they deserve.

For my birthday, my mom bought ice cream and a giant chocolate cookie. I didn't care about the ice cream, but I was looking forward to the cookie. It was awesome. We were celebrating my birthday and Christmas. I haven't had my own birthday in years. The first couple years, I was kinda upset, but I just don't care anymore. It was time for dessert and everyone was screaming. We were at my Grandparent's house with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, my mom, dad, sister, and obviously my grandparents. My mom asked me first what I wanted. I refused. I told her I wanted everyone else to get theirs first. All the adults objected, but I continued to refuse. After she got all the kids their dessert, my mom tried again, I still refused. I wanted to make sure everyone else had theirs first. So my mom gave everyone else theirs and then I finally agreed. I ate it in silence, like always. I wasn't trying to be in a bad mood or anything, I just didn't want to say something and get in trouble again like I had earlier that day. I wanted to enjoy my birthday.

The way I put everyone else, even if I hate them, even if I can't stand them, even if i don't even know them, it's how I am nowadays. My grandparents have a camper (Update: they got a new camper!) and it has a queen bed and a pull out couch. The bed was for my grandparents and the couch was for us. We once took a tent, since we couldn't fit four preteens/teenagers in the camper, but we forgot the poles, so we had to all stay in the camper. A couple years ago, I would argue with my sister, demand that I got the couch and she would have to take the floor. I told them I didn't care about sleeping on the floor, even though I knew I would be miserable the next day, because my back would hurt. I didn't care, someone else's back might hurt more. I barely slept that night, but I didn't complain, I didn't let anyone know, I walked and swam and played all day with my cousin even when I was absolutely miserable. I wanted to go and sit in the camper for a while, but I didn't. There was once when I went and sat alone for a bit. My sister and cousin came and wouldn't leave me alone, so I ran to hide, they found me again and I yelled at them. They left and went to the camper where my grandma asked where I was. They told her, she got concerned, and came and talked to me.

I said I was fine, just wanted to be alone. She ended up calling my mom who told her it was completely normal for me to do that. This was near the end of my depression. I was trying to fix myself, but I hated myself with such a passion, it wouldn't happen for at least seven or eight more months. I was good at pretending to be okay sometimes. This depression and constant self-hatred led me to this quiet state.

Another thing that led to this quietness my friends have become accustomed to is something that also made me hate my existence. It's something that took me about a year to finally admit to myself. My parents don't know. My friends don't know. Only my best friends and my sister and I have regretted telling my sister since I told her, because of her reaction.
I'm pansexual, which means I have the potential to feel attraction to any gender or sex combination. Basically, I don't like someone because of their genitals, I like them for their personality.

There are many people who aren't supportive of same-sex marriage, including my dad. My dad is the biggest reason I haven't told my parents. I came out for the first time on January 28th, 2015. I came out to my best friends at the time. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. In January 2014, I began to question my sexual orientation when I first began thinking about how nice it would be to have a girlfriend. At first I thought it was just because I was at that age where you begin to question everything. I was going through my emo phase at that point. I knew I liked boys, I had a crush on a boy at that time, a crush that would last a year and a half. It was obvious I liked boys. I had only know about three sexualities. Gay, straight, and bisexual. I didn't even know that homosexual and heterosexual were the technical names for gay and straight. It wasn't long before that that I had heard about bisexuality.

Anyway, the recurring thought began to frighten me. At the time, I thought I was so cool and different for being "emo", but really, I was just a dork, like I still am. I wanted desperately to be different, but not this kind of different, so I pushed the thought away until June. It wasn't hard since I was so focused on not failing seventh grade. My grades weren't that good.

June rolled around and I had managed to pass seventh grade luckily. I hadn't really thought about the whole 'Am I bisexual' thing, until one day, while searching through Facebook on my mom's computer while watching the Office, I saw one of those dorky post that are like, "Comment a :) if you're homosexual, comment a ;) if you're..." etc., etc. And I knew what none of them were. The list was like homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, bicurious, asexual, pansexual, and polysexual. And since I didn't know what anything on the list was I googled them all.

The minute I saw pansexual's definition, I had this strange sense in the pit of my stomach. This was it. This is what I am. But then I thought, I just want to be different. And from that day forward, I refused to acknowledge that there was even a possibility. To this day, I wonder if this is all in my head, but I don't think it is. I really don't.

On December 8th, 2014, my idol, someone I've looked up to since the summer of 2013, came out as gay. Connor Franta, blogger, author, entrepreneur, etc., is gay. Through one of his weekly videos, he explained his journey to this self-discovery. It wasn't long after that that I finally admitted to myself what I had already known. I am pansexual. I think it was something about Connor sitting down, coming out, crying in the process, and just sharing this piece of his life, it really made me more willing to realize who I was.

January rolled around and it was time. I needed to come out to someone. I decided on my best friend's as I had begun to realize how homophobic my dad is. I tried over and over for a few weeks to just come out and say it, so I could be one foot out of the closet. But, as you can imagine, it was a scary process.

January 28th, 2015, I decided that it was time. I wrote each friend a note, coming out and explaining. I put M's in her locker where I knew she would see it and handed T's to her as she got off the bus. It was a terrifying and exciting process. Gave them the notes, gave them time to think, gave myself a few panic attacks, and finally, gave myself some relief. I walked into the school the next day and immediately was given a hug by T. It was so relieving to know she didn't hate me. She told me she would be there when I told my parents, and she keeps pushing me to tell them, but from fear that my dad would hate me, I refuse. It's my journey and I'm going to take it at my pace. M wasn't there that day after I revealed this part of my life to her. I've never gotten over the fact that she didn't come. She wasn't sick, she told me she wasn't, she should've come. This has been such a big part of my life and I still have mixed feelings about it now, because I know it'll just make my life harder, but I also know that I have people who support me. Being different is terrifying, but if I dealt with living with my own thoughts all this time, I can deal with being different.

I came out to my sister next, don't want to talk about it, not a good experience. I next came out to C. I hadn't planned it, but it happened like this. We were at lunch and C was telling us a pansexual joke. We laughed and she was surprised when we knew what pansexual meant. "You know what that means?" she asked. T and I started cracking up. I looked at T and said, "Tell her later." C looked at me and said, "Are you..." I nodded. "Me too!" she yelled.

I then told Haley. I saw her on a Friday night and I was going to tell her, but it never seemed like the right time, so I never did it. I then started getting anxious to do it, so I decided to tell her. I wrote this big, long story about it and was going to send it to her, but ended up just saying what I am and what it is. She proceeded to say, "I don't care if you're bisexual, pansexual, llamasexual, alien, you're still the same old Ciara I became friends with."

That was deep. Okay, joke time. My mom got a new smoke alarm and couldn't figure out how to make it work, so I said, "You've never used a smoke alarm? That's alarming."