MY COMING OUT STORY

Coming out to myself

We've gotta start from the beginning so here goes. At the beginning of freshman year, I had just graduated from a K-8 private school. I know what you're thinking "eww private school kids are weird and religious" but the school I went to wasn't religious AT ALL. The lead teacher was a lesbian even. So anyway I'd gone here for the pat nine years of my life and now I'm 14. I graduated with 14 other people who I have known since we were all 5 or 6, so yeah, were all pretty close.

Even so, coming from a school with 100 kids total to a school with over a thousand kids, can fuck anyone up a bit. So even though I've got a few close friends, I push them away, because I tend to do stupid stuff like that. So anyway there's this one boy, let's call him Ryan. Me and Ryan have known each other since we were 5, and I trust him, he trusts me, and we had the same best friend for a while.

So Ryan is gay. He's proud. He's amazing. He has a boyfriend. They're great together (for now. But that's not part of this story) and I guess we are starting to get closer. We eat lunch together on B days (this is block scheduling. If you don't know what that is, you're lucky). And we are getting closer as time goes on. And my group of new friends is the gay kids. Just because they're nice (mostly). And they don't judge the quiet girl who doesn't have people to sit with so sits with them.

And there's this girl. Let's call her Anna. She's amazing. She's an out lesbian, she's dating a girl, she's nice, if a little crazy. And I can't stop thinking about her.

Now at the time I was like "oh I just want to be friends with her because she's just so cool" but no.

So now I'm keeping myself awake at night doing research and texting Ryan and generally being confused. I start reading coming out stories and watching videos (MILES MCKENNA)

So yeah, I'm definitely not homophobic, and at this point I'm like 50% sure that I'm bi, pan, something that isn't straight. I keep thinking "what if I'm just making this up so that Ryan doesn't get bored of me so quickly"

And this part really isn't aptly named because I didn't come out to myself for a while after I came out to Ryan, but I'll put that in the next chapter.