I Finally Have Accepted My Sexuality....Right?

     WARNING: There will be some sexual discussion in this post, but there will be nothing too detailed.

    Growing up, I never knew I was gay. Sure, I found myself looking at girls in the way that I was supposed to look at guys, but to me, it was merely envy. I thought it was my insecurities, forcing me to stare and think, "Wow, she is absolutely beautiful. I wish I looked like her". Perhaps that was true. Sometimes, it may have been envy. But mainly, it was desire. I wanted to be with these girls in the way "normal" girls wanted to be with boys. I didn't realize this, however, until much later in life. I didn't even begin considering the fact that I may be queer until I was 16. Then, I didn't accept it until I was 18. I didn't even fully come to terms with the fact that I was a lesbian until 2 years ago. To put it frankly, my journey to figuring out my sexuality has not exactly been simple. In fact, I'm still figuring it out. And that is what I will be talking about today. 

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    I had a couple crushes on boys throughout my childhood, but they always felt forced. Friends would be going around a circle, telling each other who their crushes were, and I would always get nervous and pause when they got to me. I would pause and think for a second. Which boy was nicest to me? He would be my crush. That's how I would decide. It was never based on feelings, always a calculated decision that I made. Whoever it was had been nice to me, and I nice back. That was all the evidence I needed to back it up! 

    I went about crushing on boys for a few years this way. Even though I never truly had a real crush, I still craved the attention of these boys. As all little girls are, I was indoctrinated under the idea that your worth equates to how they view you. However, being not only the tallest girl in the class, but the only Black one. I wasn't exactly the top pick. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I never got any attention from boys. For a long time, it didn't bother me. I was preoccupied with school, band, and sports. But as I got older, and went to middle school, and people began dating, I realized that I was being left behind. No one ever looked twice at me. I saw all my girlfriends having all this boy drama, and gave them advice. Watching each one of them be desired. All while I got....well, nothing. 

    There were only three times in middle school where I remember having interactions where a boy showed even the slightest interest in me. And spoiler alert, none of them ended well. The first happened when I was 12. A boy in my art class told me he had a crush, and when I pressed him (as all nosey girls do), he gave me the hint that I "know her very well". Yikes. We all have heard that one before! I panicked, and basically said I wasn't interested in a boyfriend. I wasn't, but truthfully the kid smelled bad, and wasn't the nicest either. I just wasn't interested. The second interaction happened one time on a bus ride. Some kids were joking around with this one boy, saying he had a crush on me. And do you know what this boy said? Well I'll tell you. He literally said to me, and I quote, "Ew I don't like you. And even if I did, my family would never let me date a Black person.". I was in shock. It was only the second time someone had said something racist like that to me in front of other people. I was embarrassed, and sad. That moment shifted my perspective on a lot. Quite a lesson to learn for a 13-year-old. I began to think maybe I would never find love, especially since I look how I do. My suspicions were reaffirmed a few months later, when a random boy came up to me during lunch, and said, "My friends wants to ask you out.". I was so confused. I didn't know this boy, nor the aforementioned friend he was referring to. I asked him to point out who he was talking about, and when he did I recognized the kid from my band class. However, I had no idea who he was, so I said no. The messenger returned to the table, and his buddies laughed. I didn't realize it until later, but that whole sitaution was a joke. It was an attempt to make fun of me, and if it had gone to plan, I would have said yes, and been humiliated when they revealed that it was a prank. When I realized this I felt so ashamed. The fact that people thought I was so undesirable, that it was a joke to even ask me out? Kids can be so cruel. 

    These experiences, plus what I was hearing at home from my parents, PLUS my own insecurities, all added up to a whole load of badness. I truly believed I was ugly, and completely undesirable. I was unsure if I would ever find love. When I went to high school, things shifted a bit. I told the story of how I was groomed before, and that was my first, uh "romantic" experience with a boy in high school. Yeah, yikes. My sophomore year was when I began to question my envy towards girls, and think about how it may be attraction. But I was still in denial. All girls felt attraction toward other girls, right? It had to be. I was straight. 

    Junior year was the year of prom. I dreaded the idea. Everyone was waiting to be asked, and I just knew I wouldn't be. But then something happened. I had an ACTUAL crush on a boy! Or so I thought. I had been friends with him since middle school. He was always super sweet to me. We were in band together, and soccer too. Our moms were friends. We always had a nice platonic friendship, until he told me friends he was going to ask me to prom. And they told me. I was shocked. I hadn't ever really had positive attention from a boy that wasn't predatory. AND this boy was just so sweet. So I naturally developed a crush, thinking this was it. I finally would have a boyfriend, and people could stop asking me if I was gay (yes, that kept happening). We even went on a "date" (I was so awkward on the whole date, probably because I subconsciously knew I was gay and that this wasn't gonna work out, so I talked to my friends the whole time bc we went to a school play. But I was so desperate for the male validation, okay. I needed to feel pretty, okay. LEAVE ME ALONE!). Inevitablely, however, this failed. He never ended up asking me to prom, probably too much pressure. He went with another girl, and I, once again, was left feeling undesired. I went to prom with my friends and tried to have fun. I did. 

    I talked about the boy I briefly dated my senior year before, so I'll skip over that tale. But after that relationship, I finally came to terms with my sexuality. I was bisexual (whomp, whomp, whomp.). Well, I thought I was. Due to how I was raised, and the environment that I spent so much time in, I never really had decentered men from my life. Bisexuality made the most sense for me at the time. I had just graduated high school, I was no longer stuck in that bigoted space, and at college, I was free to explore my identity more than I ever had before. I went to gender and women's studies classes, and Black studies classes, and quickly realized that when I start to decenter whiteness, and maleness from my life, I will open myself up to a whole new world of discoveries. Slowly, I began to backtrack through my life, wondering if I ever truly had romantic feelings for a man. When I finally came to a conclusion, my entire world was blown away. I realized that not only had I never truly had romantic feelings towards men, but the times I thought I did were only because they had been giving me the positive attention that I was so desperately craving. I had been measuring my self-worth based on what men thought of me, and that had left me broken. Once I came to that understanding, my life changed forever. I came out as a lesbian in 2022, and haven't looked back since. I now live my life completely decentered of men, the idea of motherhood, and the idea of the perfect "American dream". I feel more free than ever, and happy and secure in my identity. The End.

    Just kidding. Definitely not the end. Over the last year or so, as I have learned more about the LGBTQ+ community and about the complexities of sexuality and identity, I have been struggling with my relationship. Not my relationship with lesbianism or my relationship with my girlfriend, no. I've been struggling with my relationship with sex. The last 6 months in particular, I have been thinking about how when I was young, I NEVER thought about sex. It wasn't something I even considered participating in until I was probably 17. At the time, I was still closeted, of course, but the thought of engaging in that activity with a man grossed me out. And when I finally did, that thought was reaffirmed, lol. Not only was the thought of sex uninteresting to me, but hearing about it from others made me incredibly uncomfortable. In high school, friends would recount stories of their sexual endeavors to me, while I would just stand there, forcing myself to be a good friend and listen, dismissing the urge to plug my ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA.". 

    To me, sex is a private activity. Never would I think to discuss it with someone other than the person I'm engaging with, not even my closest friend. That information to me is intimate. To this day, I feel like this. Even though I've grown and am not nearly as, well, repulsed by it as I once was, I still feel anxious or uncomfortable if friends are sharing their sex stories openly. Especially in a group setting. Now, for a while, I thought this uninterest that I had in sex was simply because I was closeted, and hadn't considered the idea of engaging in it with girls. And that is true...but only partially. Even with girls, I have never found myself looking at someone who I find attractive, and thinking "Ooh I wanna have sex with her!". For most of my life, I thought that this was how it was for everyone. People need to have a connection with a potential partner before engaging in that sort of activity with them. But, of course, as I grew up I learned about one-night-stands, I learned about friends with benefits, and all the other scenarios where people have sex without having a romantic, or hell, ANY connection with the person they are having sex with. Not me, though. I only find myself sexually attracted to someone if I already have a close romantic relationship with them.

    This was not something that I really thought would bother me, or be something that I had to get off my chest. But the more I heard my friends talk, the more I realized I am just...not like them. Now, I'm not repulsed by sex. I engage in self-pleasure, as most people do. I am unbothered by sex scenes in television and movies as long as the scene has a narrative purpose. I completely understand that people are able to be intimate with someone solely based on their appearance. The only thing is, I just do not think about sex as often as a lot of the people around me seem to. I don't like hearing excruciating details about people's sex lives. And I don't find myself sexually attracted to anyone that I don't have a deep romantic connection with. I never have. That is why I think I never thought about sex until I was an adult, because I hadn't been IN a relationship like that yet. 

    During my desperate search to figure out if I am alone in this, I came across the Reddit page r/demisexuality. Listen, as a member of the community, I know I should be more versed in all of these identities. But in total transparency, I had no idea what the fuck demisexuality was. Give me a break, okay, I just got here like 3 years ago. Anyway, through research I learned that demisexuality is an identity that falls on the asexuality spectrum. When I first heard that, I shrugged it off. I still like having sex, and occasionally I even have a high libido. There's no way I fall on the asexuality spectrum, right? WRONG. Reddit promptly corrected me. Turns out, like gender and neurodivergence, the asexuality spectrum covers quite a bit of ground. Demisexuality is literally the definition of how I feel. I remember crying as I read through the Reddit page, so happy and relieved that I wasn't just some weird person. I realized then how much more I truly have to discover about myself and how I need to stop invaliding my own feelings by jumping to conclusions.

    I am proud to say now that I am demisexual. This most likely isn't something I will share aloud right away, as it is incredibly new. It also feels more intimate and personal than simply saying I am a lesbian. For now, this'll stay between us. However, I still wanted to share this discovery, as well as my journey to accepting my sexuality with you all. I have been keeping this to myself for a long time, and writing about it has definitely lifted a weight off me while also giving me clarity and confidence. To anyone who may be struggling with your sexuality, don't be afraid to research. Don't be afraid to ask quesitons. Don't be afraid to talk to your loved ones, like I was. I know it seems like a lot of pressure. There are so many labels, and we are all expected to fit into these boxes. It worked out for me, and I found a community. But you don't need to feel pressured to do what I did. There may not even be a community for how you feel about your gender or sexuality. And that is okay too. It doesn't make you any less valid. We are all just specs of DNA, living on a floating rock. In one of billions of galaxies. It's okay to just be you. It's okay to just be me. We only get one life, let's do our best to be happy in ours.

    This post was a little different than usual, but hey, this blog is all about self-discovery and my journey through adulthood, right? Anyway, if you're reading this, thank you. Y'all are the best. See you soon. 

XOXO

- Rach