Real stories from the World - LGBTQ+

J from Belgium

Hi I'm from Belgium.
I prefer to stay anonymous, since haven't come out yet. You can just call me J or something like that.

I prefer to be called with the pronouns she/her and I'm pretty sure I'm bisexual.
I'm 16 years old and I have a lovely and kind family, although my father has the terrible habit of making racist and homophobic jokes. Whenever he does I tell him it isn't funny, at all.
He also told me once that if me or my sister would turn out gay, he wouldn't know what to do and he thinks it must be weird. He explained that it is because he has this plan for his daughters, you know the usual thing: marrying, having children,... honestly I don't understand.

1. Maybe I don't want live that kind of life, it's my life after all

2. I can do all of these things, no matter what my sexuality

I've always known I want to adopt, but lately everyone seems to have something against adoption, everyone seems to think they aren't your "real" children, I know a lot of things can go wrong, but if you do a lot of research etc... there aren't as many risks left, plus I think giving someone a family, giving someone chances is worth the risk.
It's hard when no one seems to support you.

About homophobia: this trimester we talked a lot about sexuality and people seem supporting about it, in theory. It's high school after all: people gossip behind your back and smile and give compliments in your face. When last year a girl came out as gay people gossiped a lot, when she got her hair cut ("I'm sorry but that's such a lesbian haircut!"), people said it was weird or just said that she was weird. She didn't have any friends, but me and changed schools. She was rude, maybe to protect herself or she just didn't want to be friends with me. Anyway when she changed schools, she stopped answering my messages, I was worried, but soon I heard from a friend of mine that they were friends and with that I knew she was okay. However people still gossiped about her.

Being queer is still seen as something weird, something to gossip about, some sort of taboo.
I've already listed some of the reasons I'm scared of coming out: because of the gossip, because I'm scared people won't see me the way they saw me before, because I'm scared people will think I'm not myself anymore, because I don't people to feel uncomfortable around me, but mostly I'm scared that it's not true.

I'm scared that "it's just a phase" or that "I'm just confused." I'm terrified that it's not true and people will see me as some sort of attention seeker or even worse that they think I did it to laugh at the lgbt+ community. I guess I'm not sure yet, but it's okay to be questioning. And I'm not in hurry, I've got plenty of time to figure out my identity.

I currently have a crush on a boy, but I don't think he likes me. We live in the same village and take the same train to school. We don't talk that much because he's always with his friend and I'm always with my friends. He's kind, social, talkative and his smile is just gorgeous. But I'm going to stop talking about him, because you're probably not interested in a strangers crush.

I also want to add: not everyone is like this, there are plenty of supporting people (especially the younger generations). And our society is working on it as well, by sending people to schools to talk about these kind of "taboo" subjects, etc...

Thank you hopefully it's useful for your book and as I mentioned before I prefer to stay anonymous and I trust you in this. Because I really opened up, not a single other person knows about it.

Greetings from Belgium