From Past to Present

For 20 years now, I've been very confused with my sexuality.   I couldn't understand why I liked boy toys and wearing boy clothes.  Instead, I grew up wearing dresses and thought it was taboo to kiss other girls because I thought I'd be shunned or hated.  I pretended to have crushes on boy celebrities to "fit in".  I was always curious about girls and it was something I wanted to explore. 

Fast forward to 2001 when I was 17.  I had my first girl crush who is still a friend of mine til this day.  We shared intimacy and it opened a door to a part of me I had always repressed.  Without these moments she and I shared, I would probably still be in the closet.  I soon came out to my friends as bisexual. 

After graduating highschool and going off to college, I had a few boyfriends (who later became fiances) but much more few relationships with women.  This disappointed me greatly.  After every breakup with a boyfriend I said I was a lesbian.  I wanted badly to identify myself as gay.  Sex with men and relationships with them did nothing for me.  Yet I kept going back to them out of fear of being rejected by my family. 

January 2012:  I came out to my family!  I told my relatives privately that I was in fact a lesbian.  They accepted me with open arms.  It was the best feeling in the world, so much weight lifted off my shoulders.  I feel so lucky and blessed I have such an accepting family. 

And then I met Marcus.  He is the most loving, open minded, wonderful transman I want to spend the rest of my life with.  We married after only 6 months of dating each other.  I couldn't be happier!  However, my sexual identity has changed again.  I now identify as pansexual. 

I'm currently struggling with another part of myself, the part that stems from childhood (from feeling confused to being sexually abused).  I feel "safe" wearing men's clothes and having a masculine haircut.  I feel like it's "right" and that no one can hurt me anymore (even though the abuse stopped 10 years ago).  I've discovered I'm GenderQueer.  I identify as both genders.  I try not to look down so I don't see my biological parts, so I cover myself in men's clothes.  Right now I'm new at this.  And I'm lucky I'm still loved for me.