One of the ways in which my experience of being bisexual is different and sometimes weird is that I was already married to a guy by the time I realized I was bi. This is, of course, more common than you’d think. There are lots of people who figure out their sexuality in their twenties or thirties, or later. And, just because of the size of the dating pool, an awful lot of bi people will end up with someone who is not their gender, having people sort of assume they’re straight.
This makes the whole concept of coming out a little weird for me. It shouldn’t feel like oversharing to say, “By the way, I’m bi,” but it often does. Spending more time in LGBTQ spaces has helped with that. When people are going around the room giving introductions and how they identify is a standard part of that, it’s a lot easier to stand up and say I’m bi. The fact that I bought a shirt that says “Bisexual and Still Not Into You” also helps.
I’ve reached the point, finally, where pretty much everyone who I feel *needs* to know that I’m bi knows. My husband knows and is supportive. Ditto for my brother. My mom knows, and is mostly confused, and we will probably never speak of it again. A few friends know, especially those who also fall somewhere in the queer universe. My dad doesn’t know, and while that’s sometimes a source of stress, I’ve pretty much accepted it as the status quo. When I told my mom, she made it a point to keep it from my dad, so I suspect that he’d be weirder about it than she was.
The concept of the closet, at least for me, is complicated. Most of the time I go about my daily life without actually caring whether people know I’m bi, or feeling like I’m hiding something, or worrying what will happen if someone finds out. Even at my pretty conservative workplace, I have at least one non-straight coworker, and people manage to not be assholes to her.
And yet, every once in a while, it hits me. It’s basically Schrodinger’s closet—simultaneously a closet and an actual room until a thing happens that makes the distinction clear. Like, for example, the aforementioned t-shirt. I had ordered it for Pride, but it didn’t arrive in time. So, when I got it, I wanted to show it off. I put it on, I agonized a bit about whether some stranger in my pretty red community would give me grief over it, and I ended up changing into something else. Oh, hey, is that a hanger pressed into my back, and a door a couple inches from my nose? And, wow, it smells kind of musty in here all of a sudden, doesn’t it?
So, between being pretty much sick of angsting over who to tell how and when and being in a position where I really don’t *want* to be out at work, but it’s not likely to torpedo my career, I’ve come up with the “fuck-it” approach to coming out. I’m not going to censor myself, or bring it up. I’m not wearing the bi shirt to the company picnic, but I’m going to wear it to the grocery store, and if I run into a coworker, oh, well. Likewise, I’m not planning any more big conversations where I tell people I’m bi and try to phrase it perfectly so they don’t freak out on me. If it comes up in passing, then I’ll roll with it and treat it as the non-issue that it really should be. If someone else wants to make a big deal out of it, that can be their problem.
That’s the theory anyway. We’ll see how it goes.
via Kelly Thinks Too Much http://ift.tt/2xq9der
