(Content Warning – you’ve seen the title you know what’s coming)
I started this blog in my early twenties. I am now forty three. There has been turmoil about my sexuality and there have also been suicidal thoughts.
To be fair I’ve mostly tried to avoid or make light of the Swamp.
These days the suicidal is less of a direct problem and it’s more the massive amounts of dissociation. I don’t really have inner turmoil anymore about my sexuality, I feel settled in it, I know who I am as regards to liking men and women. Men as a whole make it quite difficult to keep liking them equally as much as I like women but if we’re talking about sheer attraction I’m still Kinsey 3.
I guess I’m just pickier when it comes to men these days, and looking for patience.
When I was younger a lot of the turmoil related to the idea that I was being influenced to be gay or straight by unseen forces. I think if that were the case then I wouldn’t have spent almost thirty years being attracted to both men and women, so time eases a lot of the self doubt. The constant is the outer pressure, there have been a glorious ten or fifteen years when being OUT has felt safe. Looking at the rainbow capitalism fading to a Pride Skittles white is a little nerve wracking now but this is familiar territory.
The inner turmoil is now the guilt about being a femme cis woman who can pass. I don’t have to out myself, I have to work hard to out myself in some situations but it does mean in others I can keep quiet and let the assumptions of others keep me safe.
I know who I am and my turmoil is all about how I still can’t afford to let everyone see that – and I have a choice about that.