User blog:RulerOfTheRainbowMoons/Behind The Closet Door

Hi, I'm just a pansexual teenager. Wow, that feels so good to write down. But it also is so scary. Only four people know about this little secret of mine, one of whom is queer herself and can empathize with what I'm going through, and three of which I would quite literally tell anything to and trust them to keep the secret. So yeah, that's my life right now. This is so scary for me right now, because this is the most public I've ever been with my sexuality. So please be nice to me. This is terrifying.

Anyways, I started coming out this year. I don't know the day I started figuring out that I like girls too (I was AFAB), but looking back at all of my "really good friends" who were girls, I definitely liked quite a few of them. I stumbled across the term pansexual one day, and it all just clicked. I thought I was bi for a while, but that label never really worked for me so I just closetedly-identified as queer. That's how I first came out (to that other queer girl I know) and I just thought it was easier. But since then I have told those four people who I'm out to that I'm pan and they've all been really good about it. None of my friendships have been hurt, and nobody's said anything even remotely close to homophobic. Which is fantastic. But I'm terrified to tell my parents. They have always been kind of strict, and now I'm scared that they might not let me have friends over anymore (post pandemic of course), because how are they meant to know who I'm attracted to? I know the difference between platonic and romantic attraction, but I don't know if they trust me to know the difference. That's been eating me alive.

I keep seeing rainbows everywhere, though. Both metaphorically and literally. There's someone in my school who wears a rainbow apple watch band and cuffs her jeans. If that doesn't scream "QUEER!", I don't know what does. Maybe that's my terrible gaydar though. I keep wanting to tell all of these people I know who are LGBTQ+, "Hey, I'm queer too! Gay alliance?", and then we go about our days with a new LGBTQ+ friend we know we can talk to in identity crises. Is that too much to ask for, universe? But my school life and my home life are incredibly intertwined, and I'm nervous that anything I might say to someone at school will inevitably get back to my siblings or my parents.

That's where I am right now. I don't know how often I'm going to write on here, but I thought I'd start somewhere.