Discovering the Rainbow: My Steps Toward Bi Self Identity

There will come a time when we won’t have to ‘come out of the closet’. We’ll just say that we’re in love and that’s all it will matter. And with each passing day we move one step closer to that future.

One of the most important things to do for that to happen is being open and talking about it. I thought I’d share with everyone how I realized that I was bisexual.

Discovering one’s own sexuality doesn’t happen like flipping a coin. You don’t just wake up one morning and realize you’re bisexual. It goes through many stages. And the first stage is observation. It starts off by seeing things. The little aspects of people that you appreciate. Like I remember I always noticed guys and girls pretty much the same way. I thought it was just the feminist in me seeing everyone equally.

But at one point I started to question myself: ‘How do I feel about this?’ I remember not being able to understand what I was feeling. Even in movies I found the female MCs just as much or maybe more attractive than the male MCs. It was more than an admiration and more like a crush. When everyone was crushing on Iron man, I was more drawn to the black widow. I feel like the smaller aspects like that is how you start to realize you are not straight. But I didn’t really realize what it was until later on in life, and I started to realize that was my sexuality trying to kick drive into warming up into who I am as a person. And I believe it’s pretty much the same for boys and girls, if you’re bisexual you will start to notice these things.

I think the next stage is realization. Realizing that you are bisexual, or that you are gay, or that you are gender fluid. It’s the realization that you are different. I feel like my realization was when I had a crush on a girl for the first time. I kind of just felt like it was normal. I didn’t judge it as being Bi or being gay or anything like that. But I remember constantly talking about her to one of my closest friends, and he said that was kind of gay. There were also times when my friends would make fun of me by saying that I was a lesbian (not offensively), mainly because I was really tomboyish and most of the time hung out with guys.

But once, my teacher called out my two girl best friends and asked them to stay away from me because he thought I was gay.

That made me revert back to denial, and I think that’s the next stage, the stage where all of the major struggles take place for a lot of young people. This is the stage that leads to depression for a lot of the LGBT+ people. It’s the realization that you are different but you can’t do anything about it. This is who you are and you can’t change that. I would say that with realization you start to look at things and you feel like ‘Oh it’s inappropriate for me to look at’. It’s hard to describe what you go through. It’s like you wanna mask up who you are, you wanna keep yourself hidden.

I remember for the longest time I was afraid to socialize with girls, I was seriously nervous to even be around girls apart from my best friends. I was even scared to hug anyone because I was scared that I’d reveal who I really was. And I’m not a nervous person, so it was easy for people to notice that I was being nervous. It was likely one of the major reasons why I only hung out with guys for a long time, because if I wasn’t around girls they would never know. I feel like that was one of my problems in high school. I was friends with everybody but I was always with the boys. I’m not saying that it was bad, my guy friends were absolutely fun and amazing. It was just unnecessary for me to purposely avoid being close with the girls.

In that stage you’re gonna struggle unless you talk to someone about it. Just reach out to anybody you’re comfortable with. Whether they’re your best friend, siblings, boyfriend, girlfriend, someone you can trust. Just anyone. But as for me I didn’t. I didn’t reach out to anyone. Instead I turned to the internet, and I discovered a cruel world, one that was too much for me at that age. This was also the time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in our country, so that made things even worse for me. I tried to do a lot of stuff that would force people to believe that I was straight, because I just wanted to feel normal. Denial is the worst stage. It’s the stage that’s most hard to break past. I feel like that’s because of the society, and the negatives. But I feel like we’re changing, growing for the better. If you are someone who’s going through denial, please feel free to message me, ask anything, or just talk. I don’t want anyone else to feel isolated or to go through what I did, because no one deserves to feel that way.

Now comes the next stage, and I feel like it’s the greatest and most important one. Even if it’s slow you’ll get there. It’s the stage called acceptance. Realizing that you are bisexual, and realizing that it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong about it. Just because you’re bisexual doesn’t mean you have to live a completely different life. Once you start accepting yourself, you can start loving yourself. I know it sounds cliché but really, if you can’t love yourself how are you gonna ever love someone else? Because that’s the most important thing.

Just being bisexual doesn’t change your personality. This is something everyone needs to factor in. Once they come out people are gonna start going like ‘Oh wow, he’s like that’ or ‘ We’re gonna hangout with someone like that’. Most people would just go ‘Okay, that’s the way you live your life’. Remember, sexuality is not a lifestyle. It’s just a sexual attraction. Nobody calls being straight “a lifestyle”, so why is this any different?

I feel like acceptance is the most important stage and it took me a really long time to reach there. I’m not gonna say it was easy. It took me the age from mid-puberty to the age of 20 when I accepted it. There’s a lot of years in between, and that was a hard time. And I’m glad that I got through it. I’m so glad I’ve got friends who are very accepting. Once you come out, life is great. You can openly say ‘This is me’.

And I feel like the final stage is something you sort of reach without even realizing it, and that’s embracing it and owning it. Once you’ve come out, and told everybody, it makes you confident in who you are and it makes you a better stronger person. A lot of people go through the coming out period, and it’s hard and difficult. But they don’t realize how much it has built them up as a person. It makes them realize how difficult life can be, and they can still get through things.

Once you get to the stage of embracement, I feel like you can start helping others. I feel like that’s the most rewarding experience that I’ve ever had. Writing about it, talking about it, posting about it, I can pass on this information to other people who are within the spectrum. I’ve had quite a few people open up to me about how they are still closeted, and how knowing that they are not alone has made it a lot easier for them to believe that it’s okay to be who they are. Just letting them know that they are not alone is the most touching experience, that is the most important thing for me, and that is why I’m even writing this down. It’s not a lot to ask for, they just wanna feel safe and heard.

There are more people around us than we realize, who are still closeted and afraid to come out because they are still scared of being judged. So it’s up to us to make them feel comfortable, up to us to let them know that it’s perfectly okay, and that we love them for who they are.