For most of my life, I had no idea that I was attracted to women. It was buried beneath layers of trauma, internalized misogyny, and compulsive heterosexuality (comphet). Most importantly, I was completely cut off from the signals that my body was sending me.
Long before I reached an age where I’d feel physical attraction, I became disembodied. I learned to ignore my body’s needs and wants, to feel what I was expected to feel or nothing at all, to exist to be used by someone else. Before I developed physical desire, I developed the womanly body parts that men desired. Before I knew what I wanted, I went along with anyone who wanted me. Having never felt loved, I craved and chased attention. That was easily attained from men.
My own body was a source of shame, and girls’ and women’s bodies were a source of danger. I interpreted my feelings as envy. I was never friends with the pretty girls, and beautiful women in the media made me “uncomfortable.” I assumed that everyone thought women’s bodies were more attractive than men’s. I theorized that my fascination with breasts was an evolutionary pull toward a source of food.
I remember saying, “I think I could have sex with a woman, but I can’t imagine being in a relationship with one.” I had a mother and step-mother who could not or would not protect me from my father’s abuse, and I couldn’t help but see them as weak. My three older sisters were mean to me. I’d been bullied by girls in middle school. Even with my closest female friends, I maintained a level of emotional distance.
My first boyfriend was in 6th grade, and my first consensual sexual experience with a boy happened at age 14. By 15, I was dating men in their 20s. I got pregnant and gave birth to twin girls three weeks before I turned 19. Their father was 25. He was my last boyfriend, and the relationship was over by the time our twins were six months old.
After a period of chasing men who didn’t want me and giving myself to any man who did, I took myself out of the sexual world completely. I gained enough weight that no one would want me – or, more accurately, enough to convince myself that I was unwantable. Enough to convince myself to stop wanting.
I was alone for almost two decades. I thought I would be alone the rest of my life.
In 2017 I met the woman who would change my life, though it was nothing so dramatic at first. We lived in the same neighborhood and met walking our dogs along the beach. We eventually exchanged numbers, and I’d get a little thrill every time she’d want to meet up for a walk or a beer after work. I thought I was just happy to have a new friend – it had been so hard to make friends in Seattle.
She had a girlfriend I’d never met. When that girlfriend found out about the time we were spending together, my friend had to cut contact with me. For the first time I wondered, does she have feelings for me? Do I want her to? That last question was answered when I woke up from a dream that we had kissed, absolutely devastated that it hadn’t happened in real life.
For the next four years, I let myself think about her. Even after moving out of the neighborhood to a rural area far from the beach where we’d met, I’d fantasize about her breaking up with her girlfriend and getting in touch with me. In those fantasies, I’d lost the weight that kept me from acting on my wanting. At the end of 2020, I got a message from her on Instagram. On January 1, 2021, I started another attempt at losing weight, trying things a little differently than I had before, not pushing myself to extremes or to methods I hated. Even when I learned she was still with her girlfriend, the weight continued to come off. What had been awakened could no longer be quieted. My body was ready to lose what I’d been using to hide.
On May 10, 2021, my friend told me she and her girlfriend had broken up. Right then I knew. There was no more denying, no more questioning, no more skirting the edges of the truth. I wanted to be with her, and if it didn’t happen with her, I wanted to be with a different woman. I knew in that moment that I was gay.
And then I built the life that allowed that to be true.
Knowing who I was and what I wanted did not immediately tell me how to live as that person. I had to learn to listen to my own desires and stop trying to be what someone else wanted. I had to find my way back to the body I’d spent most of my life ignoring. Coming out was returning to my center, and I’ll do that over and over, the more I learn and know.
Now I have created Coming Out as Your Centered Self for women and non-binary people who, like me, are ready to stop hiding and start living. Over six sessions, we’ll explore the questions I had to find my own way through: What do you want that you’ve been afraid to admit? Who are you living for? How do you live the life that’s most true for you? I’ve designed it as part support group, part guided self-discovery. You don’t have to do it alone.