Coming Out

So, like, I seem to do everything in reverse. I’m going into my junior year of high school and I’ve known that I’m gay (or queer or maybe bi or maybe pan idk I just know I’m not straight) since I was 12, but I didn’t accept until I was a freshman.

I think one of the most clarifying moments when I was in denial of it when I was talking to my cousin, and she just casually says, “I think I’m asexual” and I go “oh. I think bi” (because I thought I was then but home idk now, it’s a journey and sometimes labels make real frustrated). Then a year later, we’re talking again and she’s like “yeah, I’m most definitely ace” and I’m like, “I’m definitely bi” (how did I know and then accept it finally? Kissed a girl in my dreams. The classic.)

So, basically since I was 14,y cousin and I have talked really honestly about this, which is great ‘cause right now we’re both in a “what.” stage of Weird Hypothetical Feelings.

You’d think the next step would be coming out to my friends. Well you’d be wrong. Freshman year, I came out (really spontaneously) to my parents as “maybe bi”. We were at my (different) cousin’s wedding and I started thinking about my potential future wedding, and how I might (probably now) marry a woman and I just started spiraling cause like what if my family doesn’t accept me? Which was especially absurd of a thought at this particular wedding, cause my cousin’s now wife literally has two married moms. My family’s cool with it.

Anyway, the coming out resulted in my mom being really calm and cool about it, and my dad getting kinda quiet. It was weird between us the next couple of days, but honestly, I had never felt closer to my dad than I during the year after. Was it related at all to my coming out? Who knows. All I know is my dad and I are more chill with each other now.

So, I kinda came out twice, cause sometime last year, in the midst of having an actual full blown panic attack in my kitchen and it was not great. I just had a lot of anxiety and worry right then, and some of had to do with keeping it a secret, so I came out just as gay.

It felt pretty great to say, and when I refer to stuff now, like me complaining about my fiends’ weird “relationships” (if you’ve dated for five days and then you break up, you were not boyfriend and girlfriend) she asks about the gay version of it, which I don’t know, seeing as I’ve never been in a relationship.

Speaking of the friends, that’s where the issue is. I haven’t come out to them. I’ve come out to my parents and yet I haven’t to friends? This is the opposite of what I was told Life is. Or just the plot of Leah on the Offbeat. See, most of my close friend’s I’ve known since kindergarten, one since we were 2, and yet I can’t do it. I can’t work up the courage to say “I’m gay.”

I mean, with the amount I talk about the lgbtq+ community and how much weird, gay stuff I know, they should guess by now. (I mean, what straight girl talks endlessly about k.d.lang, Ruby Rose, or Hayley Kiyoko? Or maybe I’m just stereotyping)

I think that I’m just worried about this changing their view of me, which is what most of my anxiety’s about: things I do and people’s perceptions of me based on them. Which is how life works, but I can’t help putting a negative spin on it.

Anyway. It’s 2018, I’m allowed to be gay, my friends are chill with it: what can’t I be?

If anyone has any advice after that mess, I’d really, really appreciate it.