I knew I was gay when... (Part 2)

Fall 2004:  Three years later, and I was still experiencing weird emotions that seemed beyond the typical spectrum of adolescent angst. I had absolutely denied myself the option to explore my feelings and had instead worked on suppressing and separating that seemingly traitorous part of myself. At night, I would ask to be attracted to boys in my prayers. Despite my conversation with myself at 13, I had done this every night since then. I wasn’t even religious, so praying to God meant I was desperate.

These weird emotions began to take a toll on me. I did my best to cover it up with my friends, school, and softball. But it lingered. And so, occasionally, I would try to explore what my feelings could potentially mean, casually of course. I grasped on to any indication that my feelings, none of which my friends seemed to be experiencing, were common for teenage girls. I would secretly take quizzes in magazines that declared “Could you be gay? Take this quiz to find out!”

It was a strange dichotomy that I lived. I felt equally strongly about the possibility that I could be gay and also what I thought to be the more likely reality that there was no way I was. I was so afraid of rejection from everyone and everything around me that I always kept my mask in place.

By the time I was 16, I was painfully aware of the fact that I had yet to feel butterflies again for anyone, let alone a boy (why this was such an important indicator for me, I’ll never know). On the one hand, it was great. No butterflies for girls meant that I wasn’t gay! On the other hand, I was worried that I wasn’t experiencing anything.

Of course, I had crushes on boys, which I knew was expected  of me. I found these crushes to be utterly exhausting at first. So much faked enthusiasm, but after a while I got the hang of it. The crushes fell into a pattern. I would flirt with him in school or over AIM, no problem, but the next step was always too daunting for me. Whenever I got too close to actually dating a boy, I became totally anxious and closed off. Quite the opposite of butterflies, I had a pit of dread in my stomach whenever I had to go on a date, which was admittedly rare. I was pretty good at shutting things down.

Gradually, those feelings of dread disappeared and were replaced with numbness, which I accepted as a welcome alternative. Numbness was not ideal, but it was preferable to overwhelming anxiety and fear. Numbness made it easier for me to fake fitting in with the social norm.

Looking back, these conclusions I drew seem dramatic, but I resigned myself to these feelings of numbness for the rest of my life. I was not ready to admit to possibly being gay, so I relied instead on the idea that maybe there was just something wrong with me. Nonetheless, I figured I would still get married to a man, have kids, and just never be truly happy. I honestly didn’t know that I had an alternative (again, NO Emily Fields and Paige McCullers with their puffy drapes and shared future). I couldn’t make myself picture a different future. Sometimes I thought about being alone for the rest of my life. I’m not sure which vision was worse, because I knew it wasn’t what I really wanted. I accepted this outcome reluctantly but usually comforted myself by pushing away the future and my feelings. Nothing to worry about…yet.