Something I neglected to address in my last post was that being a lesbian around straight women made me feel even worse. I felt that it deserved its own few paragraphs because so many lesbians and other WLW experience this and can relate to it. Upon realising I had feelings for women, I started becoming self conscious of straight women feeling threatened by me. Getting changed before and after PE felt like I was intruding on their privacy, I had to keep quiet in case people knew and would start feeling uncomfortable. I avoided all eye contact until I stopped doing PE entirely, just to stay safe. I got changed in a different room because i felt so ashamed of not only my body but because I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. When i came out, my best friend at the time refused to hug me for too long because 'that's gay'. Any platonic intimacy I had within the friend group deteriorated because it was 'gay'. I was seen as a predator. I was seen as someone that'd try hit on every single girl in my year, someone that, if I tried to do anything with them, would be seen as flirting or anything like that. I couldn't compliment them because it was seen as flirting. I couldn't BE complimented because they didn't want to lead me on. This made my self esteem even worse. Even if I had a girlfriend I couldn't do anything like that because it was gay and being gay was wrong. I grew up around subtle homophobia without even realising it. Not from my family, however, but from the outside world. From people I thought were my friends. From people I thought I could trust. From people I loved platonically. Perhaps that's one of the reasons all my friends are LGBT. They understand the struggle, and won't judge me because they've been through the same thing. I'm not a threat to them, unlike with straight girls. I'm grateful for all of my friends, because they don't judge me or put labels on me because of my sexuality.
