#4-1-25

I am bi and I struggled quite a lot with my sexuality and I feel quite lonely with it. I had intense attraction to girls as a teenager and didn't realize I could also like guys (I guess the hormones for my crushes were too intense or something). So all I knew was that I am a girl who likes girls and that that's bad. I grew up in a time where the old kind of homophobia was socially very acceptable so I got bullied for it. To the point of physical harm and almost exclusively by other girls. It was horrific. I was outed by a "friend" who basically wanted me to be bullied into suicide because she was homophobic. And she almost succeeded. I felt like a predatory creepy piece of shit. For years I couldn't date girls (not that I had many opportunities but my bi and lesbian friends had more going on than me) because I always started to hate myself when I thought of actually touching them or flirting with them. I worked through all of that, got therapy, finally had sex and relationships with other women etc. I realized I was bi in the meantime but that was just a footnote in my journey, I continued to just date women because my attraction to men is quite mild and never blew me away as my love for women did. I don't like to talk about all of this with people because I had several instances of being told that what I experienced wasn't that bad because I could have, at any time, chosen to just date a man and be free of all of the hatred and bullying. I was told that by straight men and women, by lesbians and also by other bi people, especially other bi women. The latter hurt me the most. I do believe that bisexuality is a spectrum and one can fall on one far end of it. Somehow, people understand that quite easily with het-leaning bi women. "Of course they like men more and only see women as a quick distraction after a breakup! Of course they had five boyfriends before realizing they could like women as well!That's how bi women are!". But that it could be the other way around seems completely impossible to many people. Homophobia plays into that for sure. Maybe also that bi women like me often times just call themselves lesbians and thus are completely invisible as a role model for other ssa-leaning bi women. No idea. But I know my truth. And that is that I am bisexual and that I can't just choose to be with a man. I wish people who only like one sex could accept this, sure. But even more so, I wish other bisexual people who fall on a different spot on the bi-spectrum would accept that. Because right now I just feel like a failed bisexual, a failed person really.