Authors Note: So first of all, my font on the backend seems to have changed. I have no idea if this will change things how you see them, but apologies if it makes it harder to read for anyone who has any reading challenges. Please let me know if that’s the case and I’ll try to fix it!

ANYWAY! HAPPY PRIDE Y’ALL! This post has been brewing a bit, and it’s moderately tempered because I am An Old. Therefore, it doesn’t speak for everyone (obviously) but it’s occurred to me recently there’s this history between Boomers and Gen Z and it’s… mine? But it’s not only the Millennial history it’s currently being played out in small towns and places that are not the internet all over America right now, so this Pride that’s what I wanted to talk about, I guess.

Trigger/Content Warnings: Discussion of homophobia, gaslighting, religious persecution, bigotry, domestic and sexual assault, and trauma.

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I came out as bisexual when I was 34 years old. On Twitter. Sort of.

Some of my closest friends (many of whom are bisexual as well) knew for awhile. My partner knew. My therapist and I had talked about it, but it was shut down for Reasons I’ll talk about in a minute. I didn’t come out to my family, although I’m sure some saw that tweet. We never talk about it. We probably won’t ever talk about it. To them, it probably doesn’t matter as I ended up with a man, so I look straight and appearance is everything. If my dad knew, he’d disown me. Though he’s an atheist, his Christian roots and hatreds run deep. The rest of my family is deeply religious. Appalachian coal country, Trump loving, right wing, bible thumping religious. IFYKYK.

I’ve struggled with my sexuality since high school, but I never talked about it. The one time I got brave drunk enough to mention it to a friend, I was promptly told not to worry, everyone dreamed about other girls every once in awhile. It was fine. I wasn’t a lesbian.

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It’s a purple area. Fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Not restrictive in the ways my parents who’d grown up in western Pennsylvania deep in church culture understand restrictive. Still, I didn’t know a bisexual until college. Not an out one anyway. I had gay and lesbian friends. I had friends who came out as one or the other. No trans friends. That was it. Gay or lesbian. I graduated high school in 2006. Which I guess might sound ancient but isn’t really.

In college, I hooked up with more girls than guys. No one batted an eye. Everyone did wild shit in college. It was “for the guys.” For their pleasure. So they could watch. I’m not shitting you. Nor am I endorsing this behavior, I’m simply explaining why everything got all confused in my head. Never mind I hooked up with plenty of girls when dudes weren’t present but okay I guess? My friends all said the same thing. Don’t worry, I wasn’t a lesbian. I was just drunk. Wild. Free. Everyone did it.

Everyone did seem to do it. Not everyone seemed to think about it the same way I did, though. To get jealous when the girl’s boyfriend came to take her away. To wish he would disappear. To watch them, fantasizing about being anywhere but there, hoping she’d pick me instead of him. But it was fine. I had a boyfriend, too. I was normal. Yeah, he beat the shit out of me, and insisted I do weird things I didn’t like, and paraded me around like a trophy, and told me I earned him “points” in the frat house because they could see my ribs and vertebrae in my bikini which was so hot, and fed me drugs to keep me thin. And yeah, his frat brothers cornered me and tried to do things with me I didn’t like, and yeah, I had bruises around my neck, and yeah, I had to do more drugs to cope with it all, but that was normal.

To me, it was. This was the life I’d watched. It was the family I’d grown up in. Still, I didn’t know any bisexuals.

Until I did.

For anonymity, I won’t use her real name. Let’s call her Jessi. A girlfriend of another frat brother. Fuck, she tore my world apart. Dominican, with these hips for days and this beautiful, golden brown skin that reminded me of the sand when the ocean kisses it. She had this amazing, thick, curly black hair that I wanted to sink my fingers into, and this smile that made shy, awkward me feel welcome. I loved being around her. She was gregarious, laughing loud and easy. Smart, sophisticated, calm. Most of all, she understood me without me ever saying a word. There were times we’d all be hanging out and she’d look at me and her smile would shift into something sad, and I knew she hurt for me. That she saw things others didn’t. She saw the pain I hid.

When my boyfriend told me Jessi liked me and he was okay with us “trying things” I did the absolute most obvious thing a damaged girl like me could do.

I stopped talking to her.

It wasn’t about Jessi. It was about him. He was grooming me for something I didn’t want, which I’m sure you’re all smart enough to put together. Because that’s what everyone thinks about bisexuals, right? But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him. I wanted her. But I wouldn’t have been “allowed” to have only her. So I said I didn’t “swing that way” and I stopped talking to her. Even when tragedy struck and her boyfriend was hurt in a terrible accident and everyone begged me to call her because she was crying for me. I swallowed another pill and shut my phone off. I had class. I was busy.

Busy being an asshole. Busy breaking my heart.

I regret not telling her the truth. Being too cowardly to find out if she was in the same position. I regret never asking if those smiles ripping through my pain were because she was trapped, too.

I hate that I ran. From her. From me.

Over the years, my friend group expanded to include more members of the LGBTQ+ community. My friends came out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, demi, aro, ace, transgender, genderfluid. I learned new names, new pronouns, new ways to conceptualize how love and sexuality worked. Mistakes were made. A lot of them. Shitty things were said and graciously forgiven. (Spoiler: Still happens). The world got brighter, bigger, bolder.

I cheered with my coworkers as we gathered around computers to watch SCOTUS overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, making marriage equality real for everyone, including our colleague who once swore she’d never marry her partner, now wife. We watched a generation sprout beneath us whose parents made them rainbow cakes for coming out parties, then where coming out didn’t even seem necessary. In some places, anyway.

We also saw shootings at LGBTQ+ nightclubs. Grieved when our friends in religious communities didn’t get rainbow cakes and coming out parties but were ostracized and disowned. I worked on paperwork to help that colleague legally adopt her own children because you never know and there were cases popping up all over the states where atrocious things were happening to tear LGBTQ+ families apart using means so manipulative if I put them in a book they’d be called unbelievable. Then, they’d ban the book. We went to Pride events and protests. We threw glitter while our friends took bullets. Change came in spits and starts, in two steps forward and back. It still does. I think it always will.

All this time, I hid from myself. My friends. Not my community. An ally. Not a member.

Alcohol was one shield. Drunk girl at the bar hooking up with another girl was still nothing to see here. I was wild. A partier. “Just like that.”

When I got sober, things changed. My touch aversion returned with the ferocity of a dragon. I couldn’t even touch my dog without getting nauseous. I confessed to my therapist I thought I might be asexual, and quite possibly bisexual.

Trauma, she said.

Another shield. It was fine. All I had to do was fix the trauma, and I would be normal. I would be a straight, cis, white girl with all the potential the world had to offer laid at my feet. If I worked hard enough, eventually I’d find the brain lost in childhood, and it wouldn’t be another thing I had to be afraid of. I wouldn’t have to run from myself anymore.

It’s an ugly thing, to be ashamed of yourself. That’s why Pride is so important. Why we call it Pride. It took me a long time to realize that. Some days I’m still realizing it.

The symbol for the LGBTQ+ community is a rainbow. Under it are so many beautiful, colorful stories begging to be heard. But so many of them aren’t neat. Or clean. They don’t start with rainbow cakes and glitter. Too many don’t even end that way. Out isn’t as solid as it sounds. It can be nebulous and shifting. It’s still not safe.

Our history isn’t perfect or pretty, but it’s something to be proud of. That it was ugly and horrible, and we got up and kept fighting anyway. That we still do. My history isn’t perfect or pretty, and in it are things I’m not proud of. There’s shame I carry, not about myself and who I am, not anymore, but about how I hid from who I was and still do. About how long it took me to get into the fight.

It’s shame I want to shed. To acknowledge and release. In our beautiful, colorful, bold, proud, community there are so many stories that aren’t neat with so many reasons not to be. There’s enough shame without us taking on or giving more.

I am enough. You are enough. We are enough.

Doing enough. Being enough. Giving enough. Loving enough.

So on this Pride, I want you all to BE proud. Of who you are and what you’ve done. Whether you’re leading a campaign in Washington DC or a Pride event in Portland. Whether you’re hiding in a closet (metaphorically or literally) in Kentucky and simply surviving. If you’re still trying to figure out where under the flag you fit. If your sexuality might have been informed by trauma or you were born knowing exactly who are you, screaming it to the world. If you’re testing your pronouns. If you have a toe out or do drag. I want you to be proud of your life. Of your breath. Of your beauty.

You are the rainbow. And I’m so glad you’re here.

Happy Pride, y’all!