Mental Health Blog | Fight4mylife | United States

My coming out story…

It’s not as dark as they get, but it certainly didn’t go as I wished it would. I should start by going over the identity I have come to understand myself as now that I have the words to explain my feelings.

I identify myself as…

Nonbinary in gender identity, Asexual in sexual orientation, and Panromantic in romantic attraction.

That may seem a bit complicated to understand, and everyone’s understanding or their identity is a bit unique, but for me, my understanding of my nonbinary identity is that I don’t feel aligned to either the male or female genders, I sometimes feel like a mix of both. I seem more female in my expression, but I do have masculine presenting features and characteristics also.

Being Asexual for me means I don’t feel any sexual attraction or arousal to anyone, but I do recognize people as being attractive in an asthetic sense where I can see their beauty. While I don’t feel sexual feelings or arousal, I could genuinely see myself being in a romantic, loving  relationship with people of any gender or regardless of gender. That’s where the Panromantic part of my identity comes in.

Now for my story…

I need to start by saying I didn’t always know what terms matched my identity, and I can’t deny that my asexual nature could be due to a number of factors that may be different than for someone else who is asexual. I know for a fact, though, thar if I wasn’t asexual I would still be able to be in a relationship with anyone, so if things went differently, I may just identify as pansexual not panromantic.

A little random fact about me is that before, I knew there were terms like asexual for humans (there are asexual reproducing organisms I learned about in science) or pansexual I actually identified as bisexual.

I first came out at 14 in a weird way. At the time, I was experiencing a strange psychological issue, which led doctors to say I had multiple personality disorders. I did not actually have this, so I don’t know why it stuck, I never really changed identities. I just had trauma induced voices I heard in my head.

I need to say that I appreciate the hard work the doctors I have known do, but them labeling me with something so serous at such a young, impressionable age led me to act like I thought people with multiple personalities act. This went on until I was 16 and stopped hearing the voices. But back to the story. At 14 I had a friend, I’ll call her Heather so I don’t give away her actual name.

I had realized that I was developing a crush on Heather but I didn’t want her to think it was me that had it because I didn’t want her to get mad at me so I said it was one of my “personalities” I believe the name I gave him was Bob. This did not male her feel any more at ease. She actually got really angry. She ended up telling her parents, and they took her out of all my classes because they didn’t want their daughter around someone who was homosexual. It made me sad, and I believe Heather had gotten over it way before her parents did. Nothing would have worked between us, but we still at least could have been friends for a while longer.

This experience alone didn’t make me want to go back in the closet until I was in my first year of college.

But the next experience I had did. I told my biological father that I was bisexual. At the time, I was still in foster care and only had my birth parents. My dad said that I might as well sleep with a dog since u can’t decide to be fully straight or homosexual. That shattered me because, at the time, I highly valued his opinion and wanted him to love me and be proud of me. From then on, I lived mostly in the closet, bit with the door open.

I ended up coming out to my adoptive parents a couple of years after my mom was accepting and my dad said if I ended up with a girl he wouldn’t have to worry about me getting pregnant, so it was a much better reception than me being kicked put of the house. I still wasn’t out to most of my family and not to anyone who wasn’t family. When I got to college, though I met a group of friends who were also part of the LGBTQIA+ community so I felt safe to explore my identity.

I started learning about all of the different identities and other information that I could, and I found the term asexual being used for people. I couldn’t decide at that time if that term actually fit me or if pansexual fit me. I knew bisexual no linger covered everything. At this time, I had never had willing sex, but I had started getting the urge to try it and experiment. I ended up trying out different experiences (many bad) and realized that while I would have sex with others, I never got any sexual gratification out of it, no matter what I tried. Over this time period, though, I got put on a number of different meds, so I never really knew if that was the reason or not.

I ended up realizing that I was having sex because I knew it was a way people connected, and I got to cuddle afterward, but I always looked at sex as a chore. That’s when I solidified my understanding of mt asexual identity. I didn’t realize until just a few years ago that other people felt both asexual and panromantic at the same time, but as soon as I learned about this identity, it’s like a light bulb went off in my head. I finally found the perfect words to describe how I felt about myself inside. It would take until just recently for me to comfortably be out of the closet, but now that I am, I can’t see myself ever going back.

Just like how I didn’t always know there were terms that fit my sexual and romantic feelings, I didn’t always know there was a term like nonbinary growing up. I do know for a fact that I have never seen the point of gender roles, but I have always seen myself as not just being a girl. As a kid, I was labeled a tomboy ( it doesn’t always mean anything identity wise but just seems significant for me). As a teen, I said I was allergic to pink (I now realize how silly that was). Through the years, I’ve challenged people trying to tell me how i should act or what i should do based on the fact that I was assigned female at birth. I started to feel comfortable with the nonbinary identity just last year, and I came out to my birth mom, my adoptive mom, and two of my brothers. They were all pretty understanding, and my adoptive mom even said she could see it. She doesn’t feel like labels of any kind are necessary or important, which is ok that she feels that way because she at least accepts that for me, finding terms that fit me that I was able to come to terms with on my own has made me feel less alone and even stronger.

What I’ve Learned…

I’ve already talked for quite a bit, but I feel this story would be missing something if I didn’t end it with the lessons I’ve learned on my self identity journey.

• 1. People are going to make automatic judgments and assessments and will label you automatically in the way they understand you. Don’t let those automatic judgments, assessments, or labeles discourage you from living your best life and speaking your truth.
• 2. There is no guarantee that everyone is going to love and accept you, and we aren’t able to force them to (I wouldn’t want someone to be forced to love me anyway), but you shouldn’t feel like you have to hide who you are or be ashamed of who you are just to make someone else happy. I understand there may be safety concerns with coming out, and you should never feel forced to come out either. They key is doing so when you’re ready.
• 3. You are never alone. While we are all unique in our own ways, I was wrong growing up when I thought I was the only one suffering from gender dysphoria or a different sexual orientation and romantic orientation than what is considered to be “normal” (there is no such thing as normal really). There will always be people who understand what you are going through. It may just take a little time to find them.