#bidentity

👥 — bidentity

When one wants to be two people at once or is two people at once.

This is a repost from my deleted blog pawpularity and Instagram queercoric!

It’s going to be hard talking about a sad piece of my past when today is such an amazing day with marriage equality being legalized in the entirety of the USA. But its the next piece of my pretty much 8 year journey of identity exploration. So on I shall go.

As I started coming out to people, I met a guy (who was actually dating a friend briefly at the time) who I felt automatic attraction to. He felt the same way but we were dating other people. Finally in May both single and clearly still interested we begin to date and the first year is incredible. I was honest from the beginning with him about being bisexual and he was supportive of me as he had been bicurious, dated another man and found that it wasn’t for him. He said he had no place for judgement and that meant a lot to me. He never asked about a threesome which helped establish that I am completely a monogamous person. We had a nice honest relationship with each other.

Soon into the relationship I meet his family. I want to be accepted so badly and they love me instantly. Which is great right? Not necessarily. After the first year I start to spend more time at his place and his family because mine at the time was going through divorce and re marriage (it was just a mess). What I found was that not only they were religious, they were religious to an extent that made me uncomfortable.

They were prepared for the world to end SOON and that even things such as psychology (which was what I intended to study and actually did study in college) were not right in the eyes of the Lord. So it was enough to say that being open to them might not be a good idea. I was sure I wouldn’t be in any harm but I also did not know what they might have done had they found out of my sexual orientation. They would say things to me like “I swear my son was a homo if he wasn’t dating you.“ So not only was I unable to be who I was, their perception of orientation was completely off and even my boyfriend could never even admit he was bicurious at one point in his life. This further contributed to my lack of a bidentity because they enforced what my friend had said to me about me not being bi. It all went to the idea that maybe I’m not bi if I’m in a hetero relationship..

With two years into the relationship and college on the way, the family started pushing for us to fully commit to each other. By commit they were talking about when we would get married and start a family. The thought was exciting at first as most big decisions are but reality set in. Did I want to get married now? I’m only 18 with a month before college starts and I don’t even know if kids are a good idea right after I get out of college. What would I do with a degree if I couldn’t work with kids on the way? It was pretty obvious that I didn’t want any of that right then but we managed to ease them with the idea that after my junior year of college we would be married and kids a few years later. I received an unofficial engagement on my 19th birthday with a proposal in secret and a ring that could pass for an engagement ring that I would wear on my left pinky. We would wait a little while to let anyone know, the only people that did know were his parents.

Then my boyfriend started acting weird. We were already having relationship issues before I went to college but then when I was there it got worse. He kept arguing that he wasn’t sure if I was going to stay faithful and if I wasn’t he wouldn’t know if I was with a girl or a guy. I wasn’t cheating for one and what did gender matter if I did? I ignored it and just thought this was an adjustment until January of my freshman year of college. At this point I am very open and speak about my support for equal marriage rights. I never mentioned that I may want these rights for myself but I appear as a mighty LGBT ally. I start to be a little more vocal again that I am bisexual to the new friends I have made and received amazing support from them. The boyfriend and I fight more frequently and he visits less often which angered me more. I then receive a letter from his mother which I thought would either be a nice letter to see how I’m doing, or apologizing that my relationship was rocky. It was not.

The letter contained six pages. Four pages of Bible verses and two pages of her own personal message. Basically she was concerned for my salvation and the verses were a reminder of where God stood on homosexuality. It could have been written because she found out I identified as bi or it could have been because I supported gay rights and that was just as bad in her eyes. Either way the letter had me in tears because I was just starting to understand of where God was in my life with who I am and my sexual orientation. I believed in a God that made me who I am, loved me for it, and led me to live a life with a challenge but to fight for it, because I could not change. She believed in a God that hates fags...and fag allies. I called my boyfriend to express my upset and try to understand why she would send this letter to me and I received nothing. He did not listen or give advice, he did not support me, he accused me of being rude to his mother and thought I was overreacting when I said I didn’t feel comfortable being around his parents right now. He also told me I didn’t ever have to admit I was bi because we were together so what did it matter. What’s the point when we are getting married?

That conversation only left me feeling worse than before. I am in this new life of trying to be myself once and for all and this old life where I continually hid my identity to certain groups of people because I feared their judgement or their reaction. My boyfriend who was so supportive in the beginning had changed. It wasn’t until after our breakup that I realized he had also sexually abused me which should have been the sign to get out a lot earlier and save myself the heartbreak. I ended our relationship in March of my freshman year for a multitude of reasons.

Ughhh my favorite four years ever! Please note the sarcasm as I move forward in this mini bio. Six years ago I’m 16. Thanks to the internet and my high school’s GSA (god bless those things) I understand that I fit very well into a bi identity and there are many of us! I am in my first ever relationship with a guy that I ended up dating for maybe four months before it became really obvious that he was gay and this was not going to work. During our time together I end up meeting some people that to this day I consider to be some of my greatest friends (even though distance has altered the friendship dynamic but that is life). My boyfriend and I broke up in February of my sophomore year in high school and just like that I am ready to move on. I also decide that it is time everyone is clear about who I am.

I start with my close friends. Not bad, pretty easy actually. Then more mutual friends and people I talk to in my choir. I got a couple of the typical “Did you ever have a crush on me?” questions that got real old, real fast, and my answer was always a hefty no. I think I ended up trying to find a way to bring it in conversation with people but I was dead set at the time in letting people know that I was bi, not straight. I wanted my bi pride to flow through me and hit my peers in the face. I am queer and I am not leaving. I expected hatred, rejection. What I did get I was not expecting.

On the one hand I got recommendations for girls I should date and numbers. Girls throughout the remainder of my time in high school would say the words every woman attracted to the same sex loves to hear “If I liked girls ‘that way’ I would totally go for you!” Why thank you, I guess...I also got the chance to kiss a couple of girls which confirmed that yes, I still like girls very much. In a series of about 3 months (a period of time that felt like forever) there was Alora, Terra, Felicia and Gabby. All girls that I got rushed into trying to date without really seeing if I liked them first. Needless to say that did not work out so well.  Come May of sophomore year I was deciding whether or not to go out on a date with Gabby (who I did actually like without being forced) or the guy who ended up becoming my boyfriend of three years. I ended up choosing him and for a brief while I was very happy in that relationship.

The other response I received was disbelief.

-You, gay? nooooo.

Well yes but I still like guys, I just also like the ladies.

Noooo, you must be confused.

I had doubted it myself for awhile but no this is me.

All girls go through a curious/experimentation phase? You are definitely straight.

Am I really? You just know that? I think I know myself better than you and not ALL girls experiment...-

This was the gist of many frustrating conversations in my attempts to be “out”. It was like they were trying to put me back in the closet and I didn’t understand why. Then I realized that this was pretty typical for responding to bisexuality. It wasn’t just me they couldn’t believe, it was bisexuality in general because not many understand and to this day I still find people ignorant of the orientation. Yet even in my community that I identified with there was disbelief. One in particular stuck out the most.

In my choir there was this very out and proud lesbian that sang alto. She did the musicals too so fairly soon the group we were in was like a little family. I looked up to her because she was so open about who she was and our friends just loved her. In my junior year of high school I was in my serious relationship with my long term boyfriend and everyone knew us as a couple. During a choir break, I started talking about being bi to her and remembering all of the disbelief when I started coming out last year and then she said something that set me back.

“Hun you are not bi. You have a boyfriend you’ve been dating for months. The way I see it you are teetering on the fence and will end up falling over on the straight end.”

Seriously? So not only was there no in between in her mind, I had a boyfriend which automatically refuted my bisexuality. Because how can you be bi AND be in a hetero relationship? That just confuses my lady brain.

I have grown up never meeting my grandfather on my dad’s side. That is because he committed suicide when my dad was only ten years old. From what I was told he was a nice guy. He was a sailor in the navy, he was a brilliant pianist and working on becoming a notable composer, he led a boy’s choir that sounded gorgeous! He was also gay. He did not deny that he had feelings for men but he also could not be allowed to be out and it be okay. As a Catholic and a young man of the 50′s it was absolutely unacceptable. He met my grandmother and they felt that if he “acted straight” he would overcome his gayness and live a normal life. So they married and had two kids and prayed constantly. Try as he might it was just not enough to change him. My grandparents ended up getting a divorce (still not a good Catholic thing to do) and he started to live the bachelor life. It was rumored that the man he spent a good deal of time with after the divorce was a potential partner but could never be confirmed. Only a few years later did depression take its toll from not being able to freely be himself and frustrations with his music career, that led him to killing himself. After his suicide my grandmother started to open up about him being gay to close friends and family but was definitely meant to be kept quiet.

I always wondered how his life could have turned out if extreme homophobia did not hinder his true self. I certainly would not be here but he could have been happy. He could have found love with some musician and they spend their lives creating music together and traveling. But that was not to be, and he knew it. It makes me sad to think of what he must have been going through all those years of trying to become someone else because being gay was thought to be wrong. To think that your religion was against you and that it would also save you if you tried hard enough, only to feel helpless when it didn’t.

Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954), born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón

Badassness: Frida Kahlo was one of the most famous artists of the 20th century and is considered an icon for a variety of communities, including feminism, the disability community, those of Mexican indigenous heritage, and the bisexual community. Frida contracted polio as a child, and was in a serious bus crash as a teen that gave her numerous broken bones, spine injuries, damage to her uterus, and recurrent pain/surgeries for the rest of her life. It was during her recovery from the crash that Frida began to paint, as the medium gave her a means of expressing her pain. Frida’s art drew from her Mexican cultural heritage, and often featured herself, as well as other women, in uncompromising honesty. Of her art, she stated, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” Frida created over 140 paintings, and while her work was not well-known during her lifetime, she has since become one of the most recognizable artists of the New World. 

Bisexuality: Frida had a long and tumultuous relationship with her husband and fellow artist, Diego Rivera, but also had numerous love affairs with both men and women. Her lovers were rumored to include: artist/architect Isamu Noguchi, communist Leon Trotsky,  actress Josephine Baker, actress Paulette Goddard (with whom Rivera also had an affair), singer Chavela Vargas (pictured above), and fellow painter Georgia O’Keeffe.