Tag: sexuality

021a – bridge the gaps through personal conversations

Something new I’ve been realizing is that I’ve been intellectually starved. When you’re not talking to enough people who care about similar things as you do, you can forget that it’s a major part of satisfaction. I spend a lot of time thinking about things like gender, sexuality and mental health, stories and narratives but many people around me don’t. The sad thing about some of these topics like these is that they often come up only personally or when someone seems to be demanding things or pushing an “agenda”. And that’s maybe the unfortunate fact with anything that has a history of stigma associated with it, or a “minority” topic in general. For example, nobody questions anyone talking too much about travel, or money, or grades, or games or real estate or family. These are perfectly acceptable dinner table conversations. And yet, these other things can often be “too heavy” for most people. 

Talking to a couple friends yesterday about my personal history with anxiety and my sexuality, I realized that I enjoy talking about these things. But I also realized it doesn’t always have to be in the context of me or my history, I would probably enjoy talking about these things even “generally”. But I had to pave the way for these conversations through my own context. It makes me realize how much of “bridging the gap” might have to be done through personal conversations. Social media can be so loud about all of this in this day and age, and yet perhaps people end up paying attention only when they’re more involved, when they’re almost a bit personally (?) involved.

“Finding your people”, then seems to be an important pillar to keep in mind while navigating life. It takes time to realize how much you’re missing until you find the good stuff. Nilan has posed a nice question that caught my eye recently. What do I want my life to prove? Currently, authenticity is something that I really want to swear strongly by. Right now, I really want my life to prove that living authentically (more than we think we can hope to) has no limits. Calling a spade a spade doesn’t make you socially ignorant, there’s reasons why people don’t do it, and those reasons deserve to be questioned.

And while wanting to live authentically should need no justification, it seems like finding our people would also be 10x easier if we did operate extra authentically all the time?

This also seems to me like a nice spin on vulnerability. What is vulnerability if not simply being authentic? Let’s normalize being authentic. It doesn’t need to be an act of courage. It doesn’t need to be a conscious effort. There’s no limits, and the benefits seem worth it. I don’t think it always needs to happen through social media or the internet but I think these mediums make it easier to reach or find the people we wouldn’t have found as easily in our own limited circles.

Also, one thing I’d like to tell you if you’re someone who’s practicing authenticity but feel like it’s not always reciprocated – keep at it. Often the seeds of such efforts bear fruit only a few months later, but know that there’s always someone who’s noticing it, and getting themselves ready to reciprocate. 

002 – sexuality

Alright folks, today I want to write about something I’ve been sitting on for a while. And that is – my ~discovering my sexuality~ journey. It’s been terribly complex (still is), but I think I finally have some answers – answers that come with their sweet share of complex emotions – but for the last couple months as I’ve been riding down an intense heartbreak, I’ve also slowly been recognizing and accepting a new immense relief that’s been coming around. Something that must only mean that I’m at least somewhat beyond the muddy cloud of “WTF DO I WANT”. 

Weirdly, the last couple years have been full of a lot of open questions, most of which are still unanswered.. but over the last few months I’ve also just wanted to play around with writing a little bit more. @visakanv calls things like these word vomits, and i’d like to do the same. Right now this is just a note in my notes app, but I hope to set up a website or something in the next month or so, so I can start sharing them to a single sink.

So it seems that these answers come to me at a good time – a time where i’m motivated enough to try to make them coherent and share them out into the world. 

However, writing, thinking and talking about sexuality, though extremely interesting, carries a big obvious problem with it. It involves “coming out”. 

Now, coming out probably deserves a whole other word vomit by itself. It’s such a complex and personal act, so different for everyone. But I’ll try to write about it in the context of this piece. I was 18 when I’d realized that I’m not straight. So I picked the “bisexual” label for myself and then continued to do life “normally”. The people who needed to know knew about it and I was mostly comfortable enough with the idea of it. I did still operate on a “need to know” basis, and I think I still do, to a large extent, but I’ve been questioning it lately. I’ve always had a complex relation with “attention (seeking and receiving)” as well, and thus coming out was always something I’d been conflicted about. 

One of the biggest problems I always had with the idea of coming out was context. And I know now as I write about it that this is a problem with anything that is important or vulnerable to me. How do I, when I tell someone something about myself, capture the confusion and the story that exists behind that piece of information? How can I say “I’m queer” without always wanting to talk about the whole story? How can I say “I’m currently exclusively dating women” and yet hold back this simultaneous thought of “I know I sound really sure about what I want but I question this everyday.” And today I realize this comes from an unnecessary need of wanting to be exactly right, all the time. Wanting to be be precisely correct, to really live up to what I say, to not say something if I’m not sure about it. Only recently I’ve accepted that I cannot fulfill this need for myself. I can try my best, but of course my thoughts and feelings are subject to change. Nobody else holds this almost crazy expectation from me (as people rarely do), it was mostly inherent.

Apart from context, there’s the second big one. Shame. Any queer person (person who’s queer? i’m not sure what the correct usage is at this point) can probably go on for ages about shame, I’m sure, but I’ll save you, the reader, from that, for now. But in general, of course shame is a big rock. Even once I was beyond my “own” feelings of shame, there’s the collateral shame to think about (i.e. shame that my close ones might feel about my sexuality). I sound really chill in this paragraph I know, but I’ve only recently slightly risen above that. And I needed a really strong close person to truly help me see that.

The third one, and this one sucks a little for me to accept because I haven’t seen enough dialog around it – but the third one is a very selfish one – the risk of losing “free” attention from men (right now, and.. maybe even forever?). Addressing this opens two questions up – 1/ do I even want attention from men – if so in what ways? 2/ maybe I just don’t want it right now, and it’s probably okay if i realize that i do want it later? (The second one again ties back into the initial problem of context, and how hard it is for me to accept that “right now” is all there is.) This problem I think is very normal, and yet a little hard to accept. It’s probably the same as staying in a relationship someone’s not completely happy with – because they risk losing some of the things they like – generally comfort, normalcy, some sort of happiness, even if it’s not fully real? So, yep. It’s that. But of course I know what lies at the other end – probably, attention that I do want. Attention that I will maybe value more, maybe like more, maybe like in different ways. Possibly, real happiness. Or at least, more answers. Or at least, new questions.

Now that I’ve acknowledged and addressed the three big problems with coming out, I can safely come out. I don’t know where on the Kinsey scale I lie and I don’t know what my labels are – but for now I’m exclusively dating women and identifying as queer.

Now that I’ve addressed coming out, I come back to sexuality. (Do you see how amazing it is to unthread the levels of thoughts and feelings? ah I love it). (Re)discovering and accepting my sexuality has been so amazing. I’ve been developing new crushes left and right, I’ve been discovering how exciting it can be to have sustained eye contact with women, I’ve been discovering so much beauty in the world. I’m feeling super optimistic about the world and life. And the one that makes me the most happy – I’m finally accepting men for who they are. I’m excited about rediscovering them as equal members of the society who I might just not be sexually attracted to. This is the one I’m most excited to write more about, and hopefully I can do that in another piece.