Open Closets

Undiscovered terms

A/N: Hey lovelies, this is the 14th chapter and it's written by the wonderful heatherverde.They are so sweet and caring and I'm so proud to call them a friend. Thank you so much for helping me, Verde <3.

I'm so sorry this is so late, but there is a lot of stuff going on rn and I also have a lot of stress in school...

~Please read the A/N at the end it's important.~

Hey. I'm Verde, 15 years old individual and I currently identify as polysexual demigirl. It's okay if you don't know what those words mean - neither did I a year ago. This story is not exactly about how to come out, but more about how to find your sexuality / gender / whatever you're searching and learning to accept that side of you.

For me identifying as something has been quite easy, but finding the right words and terms for how I felt and was suprisingly hard. Don't start doubting yourself - it can take many years to get there and you don't have to hurry. And you don't have to label yourself if you don't want to. I label myself because it makes me feel more okay with myself and that I belong to somewhere.

In my family sexuality has always been something we don't talk about and when I was younger I didn't question my sexuality. I liked boys and admired girls but for me it didn't mean that I was something else than straight - I didn't even know something else existed. I thought that other people also liked both in some way, but it was okay to only express the attraction to the other gender. So I had the same feelings towards girls than I had towards boys, but in my mind those were completely separate.

About five years ago I had a conversation with my friend and they told me that they might also like girls and not just boys. I obviously accepted them completely, but I didn't dare to say anything about me feeling the same way. Luckily their words made me think about what I was - I honestly don't know where I'd currently be without that turning point.

The turning point for me meant finally understanding that "oh my god not everyone likes many genders" and that most people just liked the other one. However soon after the turning point my grandpa died. That being mixed with not knowing what I was set me into some kind of depression. I somehow managed to get through it without telling anyone what I was going through by only focusing on getting better and getting all the "bad" emotions out of my system. Problem was that by pushing away the "bad" emotions, I kinda pushed away many other emotions and thoughts and it made it much harder for me to understand what I was attracted to.

After the depression I started to do some research and found out a lot about sexualities and genders. Now, to be able to find out how you felt, you kinda have to think about how you feel and in my case, it meant embracing those repressed emotions and that was hard. And what made it even harder was that my grandma died during those researches. We had been very close and she always talked about accepting your situation, so losing the support I had was tough. As I was trying to deal with the new situation I decided I should start using the term closest to what I was, instead of continuing the search without any terms for myself. So I ended up calling myself bisexual.

That term lasted for about a year and after finding the term pansexual. I had no better words for how I felt, so I used the term that was closest to it and at that time it was pansexual. I suggest that you also do that if you haven't found a good enough word for what you are. Even though it might be just temporary substitute, it's better than nothing and it helps you to get through stuff.
During those researches was also the first time for me to come out. It was about a year ago in this youth event I took part in. I was chatting with these amazing people in the hotel's lobby we were staying at. We started to talk about sexualities and I said "I kinda feel like I'm pansexual" and they casually answered "cool that's okay". After the situation I felt this weird feeling and after thinking about it for a while, I realized that that was what being completely accepted feels like. It might sound kinda sad, that before it I had been the only one to accept me, but that is part of nobody else truly knowing about me.