I'd been doing a lot of thinking about my past lately, and how my beliefs and self understanding have changed. I had been working on a diary about my journey from religious dogma to atheism to a new spirituality, but then memories of my coming out, and examining gender roles all came back to me, so I figured I'd write this diary first. It's my first diary, so I hope it's pretty alright and actually makes a point, I can be prone to rambling. Enjoy!
I didn't have the slightest idea I was anything but straight during elementary and high school. I never dated, never really was attracted to anyone honestly. I spent my time reading, playing video games, and hanging with the 4 or 5 friends I made in high school. I was most certainly a geek, I spent my free time in driver's ed helping in the library. I had never felt any attraction to anyone at all until after I graduated, except for one girl one of my friends dated, and it was mostly for her personality. The summer after I graduated I was at a friend's house and her, me and a guy I had known since probly the 6th grade who had come out in high school and was a year below me, were looking through pictures, of prom I think. He was looking at a picture of me, and said something about me looking cute in it. *Cue butterflies* I had never felt anything like that moment before and gathered pretty quickly that I was getting feelings for him. We hung out a few times, then on the way to my car one night, he kissed me. Let me just say, first kisses are not something one forgets, or something one experiences again. That night was euphoric. We ended up kinda dating for 2 weeks or so, but he had big plans and was going to New York for college, and I was not. So he called it off, I was heartbroken as first times go, but moved on.
I considered myself something I now call a hypothetical bisexual, I'm pretty sure I would date women, but I've never tested the theory (: I dated one other guy my first year in college, but it ended nine months after it started and left me positively emotionally wrecked for years. While in college I never really met anyone I really felt like I would like to date because (a) I'm socially awkward, I don't meet people well, and I certainly don't do well with asking people out (b) I don't much care for feminine men. I'm not the most masculine guy in the world, but I come off as a well adjusted geek(I like to think), I don't devolve into fanboyism, and I'm not a queen. I don't come off as even a small blip on most people's gaydar. And as another strike, I don't care for the so called "gay culture" (clubbing, fashion, and other offensive stereotyping (: ) as it was presented to me in college and by those I met there. So when I joined the Lambda Association at my college, I really didn't fit in very well, and I didn't meet any guys I was really interested in, or that would be interested in me. So there's that.
While I was trying to understand my sexuality I also researched gender norms and expression. I'd always had a bit of contempt for gender roles, being a small framed boy growing up in the south with 4 brothers, and had no small amount of hostility towards the idea of manly men, and the expectation of me to conform. So when I came out, I first thought of experimenting with femininity, but that didn't ring true to me. I'd never really identified with the all of the female gender norms either, and had a decent bit of hostility towards girly girls to be honest. I really just couldn't stand people who conformed to a prebuilt idea of gender, I've always been a rather adamant non-conformist.
So finding nothing in either extreme, I looked into the concept of an androgyne, one who is gender neutral as it were. But this didn't ring true either. I found myself in the odd place of loving to grow a beard, yet enjoying how my long hair sometimes made me feel feminine. I did a lot of thinking and self reflection. Then finally decided I was thinking too hard, I decided I didn't need to find a label, I had been searching for a group to fit into, to find somewhere I could be accepted. I had pretty much spent my life as an outsider I realized. I didn't fit into my family, their religion, their ideas of how a person should be, their gender roles, their ideas of sexuality, and I'd pretty much let my opposition to them define my life.
This was a great turning point in my life. I decided to stop being defined by what I opposed, and/or wasn't, and decided to simply be who I was. I stopped looking for cubbyholes to fit myself into. I was me, somewhere in the middle of gay and straight, and somewhere in the middle of male and female. And I've found myself much happier since, for the most part anyway. It's still hard for me to meet guys I'm attracted to, but I've accepted that consequence of being outside the norm of an already small subset.
That's my story, I just thought I'd share in case it might help someone else who might be prone to the same type of over thinking I am. One should to learn to accept who they are, and not try to push themselves into little prepackaged boxes with labels. They can be comfy, but they can also be restricting.
Blessed Be.
(Edit #1: I have decided to clarify what I meant by gay culture, I know it is much broader than I thought, but this is how it seemed to me at the time)