Meem

I don’t remember when exactly the line between “making the choice” and “the actual feeling like it’s been there forever” got blurred…
One day I was straight the next I was bi and now… now it’s neither…
every day this gets more under my skin… and to say I’m having experiences and liking them would be wrong because I’m not… I don’t know what it is… I’m just more at ease discovering that person inside…I’m a lesbian… I’m not putting a label or a definition… I’m me a person who needs to love and be loved… hurts and heals… forgets and moves on… smiles and cries… I’m still me… but the me I’m just beginning to decode is a very different me than the one i thought i had figured out…
All that time I knew myself on the level of what I need… who I am… what I want… but never more so than right now… I could be going crazy and I could be about to make the biggest mistake of my life and the most life changing decision in my life… but the thing is not only it doesn’t feel wrong but it also puts me at peace with myself. And we’ll see what happens in 10 years… can’t worry about it just yet…
sometimes I try to think about why I am accepting this transition… accepting the feelings I’m having and listening to my heart, but as I say them out loud… they start to seem like an excuse for not being straight… they turn into alibis… and being gay doesn’t feel like an excuse to me nor does it feel like the easier path… I haven’t been on this road for too long so I’m not going to claim pride… I am proud of whom I am but I don’t think I am actually qualified yet to speak in the name of any lesbian woman by defending her pride, thus mine. But I think I am qualified to defend my pride and thus any lesbian woman’s pride as well. I don’t claim that I have been through many oppressions and humiliations for being gay and know what it feels like to have to fight for your rights, especially because I haven’t come out to my straight friends yet… but I have put up with discrimination from my straight friends towards my homosexual friends and stood my ground and took a stand on my “abnormal” friends’ side…
No I’m not experienced and I am finally just beginning to get the answers I was so longing for 3 years now… and no I haven’t been in many relationships to actually start knowing and feeling what a lesbian goes through everyday…
But I will! I think that the path towards sanity, self-respect, pride and happiness begins with you finding out who you are deep inside… when you do that, fulfilling yourself and your inner strength begins to take place… it might not be easy but it will be worth it because you would at least know where you stand and where you want to go… and most importantly… you will be proud for accepting the person you are…
I don’t think it matters whether you were born gay or you found out later in life or maybe even choosing this path for yourself… it doesn’t give either of us any privilege over the other… the fact is that in the end we all have to face the same discrimination and eventually we would all have the same experiences… however some of us go through these rough life experiences earlier in life… and that’s what makes the difference… so that’s why we need to be there for each other… guard each other’s back…
But then again I would like to apologize for using “us” and “our”…
No! You know what… I don’t want to apologize for finally accepting myself as a lesbian and for trying to be part of your “group”(um sorry for the loose use of the term group)
sure I am a “newbie” but the feeling within me that is urging to grow into a warm fire is getting greater and more powerful as each day goes by… and as each day goes by, I find myself more and more at home…
but what scares me is not being shut out by my lifelong friends and community for finally understanding why I’m different… my fear is not being accepted by you for discovering that I am just like you… a woman in search of herself.. A woman who found herself blossoming through “her”
And I can’t do this alone…
I thought there would be someone next to me… someone to tell me what to do… I never ask for help. I’m too proud for that but in this matter god knows how much I need help and all the help I can get. And I did find someone who told me exactly what to do. The right choice or rather the lack of choice and the only path I should take. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through pretending being “normal”. I couldn’t accept lying to myself anymore.
I need to be able to feel good about myself I have the right to feel good about myself. And I can’t. I simply can’t because there’s no one there to tell me:” ok you are who you are so?!”
I need to know that it’s ok for me to accept the person I am!
And all around me there’s this constant dilemma… tell my friends and risk losing them or keep quiet and keep the life I got accustomed to…
I don’t know where to go about it…
When I’m with my “friends” they always talk about how they “don’t have anything against” homosexuals but that this is considered as a psychological disease and needs to be treated.
And when we fight on whether or not gay people are entitled to their rights they actually argue that if you give gays their rights it would be like opening the gates for chaos corruption and immorality. They actually consider that a gay couple adopting is more dangerous than an alcoholic mom and a beating dad having a complete family. And when I put up a fight they start to see right through me. They start to look at me differently. And I get so scared because I see in their eyes the way they would look at me if they knew. And I want them to know. And maybe they’ll “shun” me for it… but when they find out. I don’t want to be “thrown” away. I want to be the one who walks away from them if they don’t accept me! I want to be the one who says I don’t want to hang out with you anymore if you think that way. I want to be the one who says good bye… but I can’t do that unless I have another place to go that accepts me… and right now I don’t have that… I have nowhere else to go…and so I’m accepting to live this lie, this fake friendship… being this half a person even less and I don’t know what to do because I can’t stand this situation anymore… I’m going nuts thinking about how I walk, how I dress, what I say, how I express my feelings…
It’s these little things that are divulging me and it’s more than I can take trying constantly to hide my feelings…
I can’t do this on my own anymore… I need help… but I don’t know where to ask!
Help… help… help… HELP!!!!!!!!!!

kim