Open Closets

Clothes weren't the only things in my closet

A/N: Hi lovlies, here is the 11th chapter. and it's written by the wonderful ThePhandomOfTheOpera. She is so amazing and I'm really happy she helped me. A big thanks to you, girl. <3

Hi my names Emily and I'm here to tell you guys about my journey of discovering myself.

Discovering how I identified sexuality-wise was something that I always found quite tricky.
Right from an early age, back when I was even around 8/9 I was always uncomfortable when my family talked to me about boys. When they made offhand comments like, 'got a boyfriend yet?', I felt this jolt in my stomach because I didn't understand what they meant. I didn't like boys like that. Sure, I was friends with them but the idea of dating one made me feel weird, made me feel not quite right and I didn't understand that. Yet anyways, I brushed that off and ignored it, pretended to gossip about boys with my friends, choosing a random name from my class that I 'liked', while pretending that I wasn't overly fascinated with how small, freckled and pretty one of the girls in my class was.
I had never really considered being part of the LGBT+ community though. It wasn't like people around me didn't talk about it, it was just I had never really considered it or given it any thought, bearing in mind I wasn't even a teenager yet.

When I was around 12/13 however I had a sudden thought of: 'well what if?'. This 'what if' developed into more intense thinking around October of 2012 and I started to really think about it properly.
The thing was, I had never held a particular real attraction to anyone of either gender. For a fairly long time, around a period of maybe 3-4 months I was seriously debating on identifying as asexual and aromantic.

The beginning of 2013, however, I realised that I had a crush, as in an actual crush, on a boy. That feeling didn't last however, and funnily enough that boy is now one of my best friends, and also one of the few people in real life that I'm no longer closeted to.
After that experience, however, I decided I wanted to actually make a decision about how I was identifying.

This was during the beginning of 2014 and was probably not the best decisions of mine as I spent countless nights stressing myself out over it. My reason for stress wasn't a usual one, however. I had decided on the label 'bisexual' to describe who I was. I had figured, 'I like boys and girls, so this will work, right?'.
(wrong)

For me, identifying as bisexual never felt right. That's an odd feeling to explain but I just never quite felt comfortable with the label, hence the stress. This feeling of uncomfortableness led me also to stressful questions, such as: Well what if I'm lying to myself? What if I'm actually straight and doing this for attention? What if I don't want to identify like this anymore and so should go back to being straight?
All these questions were terrible to 14 year old me. They made me question myself and loathe the feeling of who I was. I was fortunate in the fact however that I never turned to self-harm. Quite honestly, I will say to you that I would have gotten pretty close if it wasn't for an internet friend that I made. I never talked to them about the stress I was dealing with but they gave me another option to turn to, another place to go and ramble about whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.

Then, at some point during the summer/autumn of 2014 I discovered the term pansexual.
If you don't know what that means, to put it simply it's not giving a fuck about the gender a person is or identifies as.
When I found this I felt like I wanted to cry; this term felt right on me. From then on I never looked back, started identifying as that immediately and felt comfortable with myself.

The first person I told about this in real life was my best friend. I sat on my bed with her at some point during April this year and made myself force the words out. After some explaining, I was lucky in how she said to me, "That's okay. I'm not going to judge you just because you like girls". While this sounds cliché as heck, that experience made us closer in a sense and I just know that it's going to be a friendship for life now, not just something that ends once you we go to college.

Since then, I've told a few people in my real life. A cousin, two other friends, and my mum and aunt very recently. Thankfully those were all positive experiences (albeit slightly awkward involving one friend but that's a story for another time), and I couldn't have asked for anything better.
My journey was a fairly easy one I would say. While there's still many, many people in my life that I need to tell, so far it's not been terribly hard. I expect my label to change at some point in the future. Quite honestly, I hold minimal attraction to boys and so who knows.

What I want to say to any young LGBT+ people is that you are not alone. The stress I went through was unnecessary and I wish I had known that at the time, not just suffered through it.
Please keep that in mind. If you are currently in a position where you don't know who you are and that's freaking you out then talk to someone. Whether that be someone you trust in real life, an internet friend or even a stranger on here or something. Don't hold it in and make yourself hurt, because from experience I can tell you that it is 100% not worth it.

Labelling as well isn't necessary if you don't want it to be. If you don't know who you are and don't care then don't bother.
You're you and that's what matters. You matter. Just remember that you are not alone, however cliché that sounds.
Stay strong. I love you.

[ps. I promise that you can always talk to me if you need to, about anything. im honestly not usually this formal & im actually lame as heck and v v annoying but i can try to help you I guess!!]

A/N: Thanks again to ThePhandomOfTheOpera for helping me. I'm really grateful that she so many other people helped me. I'm really sorry this is late but I came out to my mum yesterday, so I was kinda busy, sry 'bout that. (she reacted good btw, it was just really awkward)
Oh and it's really amazing we have over 2k reads, that is so crazy and ilysm and I can't thank you enough... it mean a lot and helped me too and I hope we can help as many people as possible with this.
If you ever need something please don't hesitate to message me or comment.
See ya soon with another update lovelies,
Byeee ♡♥♡