I arrived on campus unsure of myself in almost every possible way. Am I good enough to be here? Will my roommates like me? Will I be able to make friends? Should I join a band? Do I want to drink at college? There were so many questions, I felt as though I didn’t have the capacity to address all of them, even in my head. So, I forced to the back the one issue that has plagued me since the fourth grade.
As it turns out, my roommates are great, I’ve already met some amazing people, I have joined the band, and I’m not as worried about classes as I used to be. As I meet people around campus, I realize, more and more, that these are people I’m going to get along with…people like me, and I do belong here. But with all that mental space cleared up, it was harder to push away the question that I just wasn’t ready to handle. With effort, I succeeded in keeping it at bay…for three whole days. Then, I checked my mail.
There were three colorful and eye-catching pieces in my mailbox that I couldn’t well ignore. The first, a bright blue handbook: Allies 101. That was safe enough, I was sure. There was nothing wrong with reading an allies pamphlet. No one could hold that against me.
I read it cover to cover.
The second was a small, hot pink little rectangle of paper. The GSC was welcoming me. Well, there was nothing wrong with that. I tried to ignore how excited the welcome and introduction to the Gender and Sexuality Center made me. How excited the very idea of the GSC made me.
Third, there was an orange slip of paper...about the Queer Peers program. I was incredibly interested in what it had to say…but there was no doubt in my mind that reading this was decidedly unsafe. So, locking the door to my triple, so I could hear my roommates were they to come by, I sat on my bed and read it, ready to stash it away and look innocent should anyone interrupt my reading.
While reading the Queer Peers mini-flyer as furtively as possible, I realized how wrong what I was doing was…and just how badly I needed to talk with someone confidentially.
I have been well aware of my attraction to other women since fourth grade. I used to cry myself to sleep over it back then, when all I had thought I wanted was a family and a nice house with a white picket fence, where I could sing and all the woodland creatures would come around and help me clean. I knew, even back then, that my life would be a lot harder than all of that. I wouldn’t have the family I wanted…at least not easily. Even adopting kids, as had always been my plan, would be much more difficult…if not straight out impossible.
I decided that I wouldn’t give up on what I wanted…I would just change what my ideal life and aspirations were. I didn’t really want a family, I told myself. Nor did I want that little house with the white picket fence. I wanted to live in the city, be successful and work-oriented, and just a strong, forthright woman. As a matter of fact, I decided, I didn’t need anyone, male or female. I would be single and powerful, because only weak, dependent people needed relationships.
All this I decided in fourth grade. I was going to be a recluse with no sexual orientation, since it couldn’t be what I wanted it to be.
In sixth grade, two major things happened. First, rumors started to fly that I was gay. Second, I discovered that my uncle (my favorite uncle, too) was gay. My world conflicted. I realized that there was nothing wrong with homosexuality. If my uncle, a great and brilliant man, was gay, then there couldn’t be anything wrong with it. In truth, the fact that he was gay was not a shocking revelation, but the factual affirmation of it to me made me want to declare to others how okay it was to be gay. But the rumors were hard. Knowing they were true, but having made the decision already to never acknowledge that side of myself, it was very hard for me to stand up for the okay-ness of homosexuality without damning myself. In short, it was okay for other people to be gay, but it was not okay for me.
I lived in a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and attended high school in a cow town turned new money central by the presence of a millionaire who had made his money off of a rather popular clothing store. The population was not stacked in my favor, as I saw it. The whole town was either farmers that lived in a very closed off world, or the nouveau riche, with their strong desire to be accepted by the hard-hearted, conservative old money (or, at least, that was how I saw it).
Throughout high school, I had several boyfriends…each relationship failed miserably, largely due to the fact that my acceptance of myself kept oscillating between self-loathing and perfect acceptance. I broke up with my first major boyfriend because I had admitted to myself that I was gay, and just not attracted to him. I told him that I was dealing with something internal, that I had a big secret eating away at me, but I couldn’t tell him what it was. He begged me back, stating that he could live with me having a secret…that no secret was worth a break up. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what sort of secret was worth the breakup, and due to all sorts of pressure and my inability to fully accept myself, I went back. Our relationship carried on for six more months, during which I was more miserable than I had ever been.
After my final breakup with boyfriend number one, I entered into a largely abusive relationship with my second boyfriend. Every relationship I had was somehow unhealthy or self-destructive, but I couldn’t find the real will power to leave. This second relationship only fell through when he moved away. I had never been so relieved in my life.
A few failed first dates later, I decided that relationships were not for me. After all, hetero-relationships certainly weren’t working out, and…well…there was no other option.
My senior year of high school, one of my long-time friends came out as bisexual. Then gay, and adamantly against bisexuality. Then bisexual again. Then, anthropansexual (a term I helped her craft, since she strongly disliked the reception of the word “bisexual” in high school). Initially, her courage inspired me to try coming out as well…and then the rest of her actions threw me back in deeper than I had ever been before. If bisexuality was as wishy-washy as she seemed to be to me, then I would have nothing to do with it.
This was my attitude when I came to Carleton, and, sadly, and attitude which I cannot shake, despite all my better efforts. I will admit, in this manner of anonymity, that I am bisexual. I wish I could feel how you just shifted your opinion of me.
Gay is one thing, after all. Bisexual is quite another.
I wish very hard that I could ignore part of what I am. I would be more willing to accept myself as gay than I would be to accept myself as bisexual. There is something courageous about being gay…whereas bisexuality is either indecisive or greedy.
But, if I were really to express what I want, it would be this: I want to be what people expect me to be. I want to be heterosexual. I want to enjoy all of the benefits of heterosexism while fighting against them. I want to be on the other side of the fight. Most of all, I want not to be homophobic. I want it so badly…but there seems to be no doing it. I can’t accept this type of otherness in myself. My own self-loathing has become debilitating: I’m having panic attacks, I can’t focus enough to get any work done, I randomly blackout throughout the day, and I sometimes find myself completely lacking all willpower to move.
But I can’t get help. I’m terrified. I’m looking at my completed Queer Peers application and wondering if I’ll ever turn it in. I’m scared of the judgment. All of the judgment. I’m scared of what people will think if they seem me at Scoville, home to the GSC. I’m scared of what the GSC people will think when they see that I’m just some other college girl who’s calling herself bisexual. I’m terrified…horrified…paralyzed by what it will mean to me to take a step in the right direction and to get help.
I doubt I need to worry.
I’ll probably pull up the courage to go by Scoville tomorrow…
And walk right past as quickly as possible, like every other day.
I need to talk to someone confidentially. Carleton understands that need. There are more than enough opportunities to get that help.
Too bad I don’t have the courage for any of them.
I am only bisexual, after all.