Pride!

Your Coming Stories: 9

This is from @Heroes_are_us

"My name is Chandler, and I came out last year. I live in a pretty conservative town, with less than 800 people and like 3 black people, so lets just say that representation up and left when it came to my school. My parents, however, have always made it clear that every gender identity is valid, and being gay is absolutely normal, so I consider myself lucky. I identify as bisexual and non-binary. My bisexual coming out story: the first person I came out to was one of my good friends, who had recently came out to me as asexual. She was so amazing about it, even though she's Christian. The second person I came out to was my Mom. She was pretty great about it, but I couldn't find it in myself to come out to my dad. In the end, my mom had him come into my room and ask me, so I was sort of forced to. He was great about it, which I expected, but I've always worried about irrational things. After that, I came out to random people who I knew would be cool with it. I made a couple friends that way too! How I publicly came out is sort of weird, but I was debating with this really conservative boy about whether homosexuality is a choice, and I accidentally said "what, so you think I chose to be bisexual?" It was the worst 30 seconds of my life, I had to lie and say that I had wanted to come out. Looking back on it, I'm really glad that I did, because now I get to tease my English teacher with gay jokes (she's also super conservative and I enjoy the "omg she's going to hell" look on her face whenever I say I'm bisexual.)

As for being non-binary, the only people who know are my parents and my ex-bff, which is weird. I haven't yet asked them to call me Chandler, my preferred name, or use they/them pronouns, but hopefully it will happen soon. I really want a binder, my parents don't really understand dysphoria. I think they just think I don't like my boobs because of puberty or something, I don't know. It's hard, but hopefully one day I'll get one. In the end: I'm lucky, but coming out was and is still hard. Every time someone tells me i'm going to hell, I don't care, but when I loose friends because of it...that hurts. I hope to move out of this small town soon, and maybe I'll find other queer people in person, not just online.

Later guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Peace out, Chandler"