Scarleteen

is this thing common among LGBT people, feeling so totally alienated?

my relationship with faith, with my body, my peers, my academic success and even with my country used to be much simpler before realising i’m bisexual, mostly SGA.

i was raised orthodox christian and many of the people who impacted me were deeply religious. it was a place of comfort, now it’s not. i wake up some days feeling pure hatred towards the church that calls me a degenerate, but other days i can’t help but get on my knees and repent fervently for my sins.

this country, just like this religion, is rejecting me like a failed organ transplant. i’ve lived my whole life here but it feels hostile now, knowing this isn’t the place to start a family. i think i’ll have to move away for college (and maybe forever), but i’m not ready to give everything up, not my family, not my history and not my language. will i come home one day to see my grandma in a casket? will i forget the language in which i first said “i love you”? will i go from feeling like an outsider because of my sexuality from feeling like an outsider because i’ll be an immigrant, basically changing nothing?

i feel like i need to compensate for being into women, like i need to show i’m good enough to be respected despite it. i’m not that cool, or that nice, that pretty or anything, i’m perfectly and completely average. it always makes me be the last choice, i feel like i need be more than that to be okay, to compensate. it’s shameful and i feel it in every cell in my body, in every roll of fat and my brow ridge and my small eyes and my every joke that didn’t land, in my every B+ in school and i don’t think i could be ever loved for what i am.

i’m always disconnected from my friends. my feelings for other girls are either hidden away in my mind or communicated in the form of “no homo” jokes, all the while my friends can talk freely about whatever they like (not tiptoeing around in conversations, trying not to say anything ‘sus’ or ‘gross’).

does anyone else feel like this or am i just going absolutely mental?

Hi lalilieci,

I'm so sorry that realizing you're bi has lead to you feeling like an outsider in spaces that were once important and welcoming to you. While no experience is universal a lot of LGBT folks do have times when their sexual orientation isolates or alienates them from people. Which sucks, because LGBT identities are just one of the many ways humans can be, and in a perfect world they wouldn't be cause for rejection by people or places we love.

Since you mention this is affecting your relationship with your faith, I wanted to direct you towards a resource called Queer Grace. It's created by and for LGBT Christians, offers ways of looking at scripture and religious teachings that are LGBT inclusive: http://queergrace.com/.

Something else that may help with those feelings of isolation is finding other LGBT folks to spend time with. Have you ever explored doing that, either in person or online (I know in some places looking for in-person LGBT community can be risky)? If not, is it something you're interested in trying?

I also want to touch on feeling like you need to compensate for your identity in some way. Being bi isn't a flaw you need to make up for, and I promise you that there are people out there who will love and care about you, your sexual orientation included. But there's also the fact that, for people who do see bisexuality as a flaw or something shameful, no amount of proving yourself (or improving yourself) will change that in their eyes. They may say that there are ways LGBT people can earn their respect or be "one of the good ones" but it's a rigged game: they will always find reasons to look down on you. I don't say that to discourage you, but more to say that if there are changes you want to make or ways you want to try and better yourself, it's better to do them for your own sake than for the sake of people who cannot treat you with basic respect.