I spent a lot of time trying to pin down my sexuality in my late teens and early twenties. I've known since I was 16 and saw a picture of two women kissing that I thought it was hot. I mean. It was.
It didn't freak me out too much, and I realised that whenever I saw a couple kissing on TV, I always put myself in the man's place. I was imagining kissing women without even consciously realising it. And I think I might have been okay, and peaceful about all this - my parents are lovely and raised me to be open-minded - except that I didn't stop thinking about kissing guys, too.
My thoughts used to chase themselves around the following intersecting cycles:
1. Wherein women are attractive, and it confuses me.
- WOAH. (Not so much an actual thought as the momentarily stunned LACK of thinking I experience when I see an attractive woman.)
- I wish she would notice me. I wish she wanted to kiss me.
- OMG, what if she actually did want to kiss me. PANIC. PANIC. PANIC.
- Wait, so do I want to kiss her or not? Am I even a lesbian? Pretty sure I have to actually want to kiss a woman to be a lesbian, that is basically the definition.
- Wow, she is really pretty. (Interlude wherein I just stare at her hair for a while.)
- Oh no, she's looking this way! Avoid eye contact!
- Blush, scurry away, time passes, see another woman, WOAH.
2. Wherein men refuse to stop being attractive. Those jerks.
- Haha, this guy is so funny!
- Wow, I don't feel uncomfortable with him at all. (This is unusual and therefore noteworthy*.)
- I can totally see myself with him.
- He probably wouldn't be interested in me, though.
- Wow, he has nice arms. (Or hands, or tattoos, or abs, or whatever.)
- I can't quite tell what exact colour his eyes are. Maybe I can subtly get closer? (This never works.)
- Wait wait wait. Down, girl. Didn't you say you didn't want to date men? What happened to trying to date women? How will you ever figure out your sexuality if you never manage to even kiss a woman?
- Well, I mean, if I AM attracted to him, then there's no reason I shouldn't try to flirt with him.
- Hahaha, that was so funny! He looks cute in those jeans.
3. Wherein I try to reconcile these cycles and completely miss the obvious:
- Okay okay okay. So I saw a woman today and I totally felt attracted to her. That means I must be attracted to women.
- Well, I mean, I think what I felt was attraction? I don't know, I just kind of felt stunned and like I wanted to keep looking at her and I wanted her to pay attention to me and also I was afraid that she would look at me or talk to me or notice me at all.
- So basically I just wanted to look at her and think about her by myself, inside my head.
- That's attraction, right?
- Okay, but also there's that guy I keep talking to, and he's really nice and funny and cute. Am I attracted to him?
- Well, I mean, he's great, I really like him, but do I want to kiss him? Would that be weird? I think that would be weird.
- Maybe I'm not attracted to him at all - maybe I just feel this societal pressure to be attracted to men, and so I'm tricking myself into thinking I'm attracted to him because he's nice, and I want to fit in.
- Alright, so maybe I just like him as a person, and I'm actually attracted to women. I must be a lesbian! Oh thank god.
- ~Time passes ~ Some guy kisses me ~ I'm into it.
- Oooookay, what the hell was that.
- Clearly I am attracted to men - or at least this one here. Therefore I can't be a lesbian.
- Hmmmm, I like kissing. That was nice.
- So what's up with the whole attracted-to-women thing? Is it real? I'm attracted to this guy, obviously, so I guess I must be straight.
- Why would I spend so much time thinking about women if I'm straight?
- ~An attractive woman walks by~
- WOAH.
Sometime around the age of 23 or 24, I gave up on trying to figure out my sexuality. I figured it was just a total mystery, absolutely incomprehensible, like quantum physics, the offside rule, or why some people like cilantro. (Just watch. Someone is going to read this, and comment that cilantro is delicious. It's going to happen.) I decided to stop worrying about it, and just allow myself to feel attraction to whoever, and I made little mental notes whenever that happened.
I found that I was sometimes attracted to men, and sometimes I kissed them, and sometimes that was fun, and sometimes it was really awkward.
I was sometimes attracted to women, and I pretty much never kissed any, because I am scared. Why am I scared of rejection from a woman, so much so that I usually can't even bring myself to admit my attraction? That is definitely a subject for another post.
Slowly, I began to realise that I actually am attracted to some men, and some women, and that the attraction is definitely real in both cases. At some point, I remembered that there is actually a term for this phenomenon.
Hi. I'm Anne. I like books - like, a LOT - and I'm pretty sure I'm bisexual. You know. Whatever that means.
*Why am I uncomfortable around so many men? I don't know that either. I expect that this will be the topic for another post in this series.
No comments:
Post a Comment