Storytime/parallel lives

Meredith Baxter just came out and pretty much summed up my high school years in just a few sentences.

'But in an interview with Today show host Matt Lauer, she revealed that she had had a "later-in-life recognition" of her sexuality and has been in a relationship with her girlfriend for four years.

"Some people were saying, 'Were you living a lie?' You know, the truth is, not at all," Baxter told Lauer, saying she'd only been out for the last seven years.

Baxter said she'd always had a great deal of difficulty connecting with men in relationships, but she was also involved with people who made her think they were the problem.

"It never occurred with me to think, 'Oh, it's me."'

See the rest of the article here.

It's such a relief to know that some people never felt queer growing up. Most people I talk to say something along the lines of "by the time I was 15 I was experimenting and knew I was attracted to girls." That's just not the way it went for me. I was 17 before I even looked at girls with the possibility that I found them sexually attractive. I was almost 19 before I had a thought that there was a possibility that I would consider having sex with a woman. Gay? I didn't consider that possibility until I was the same age as most of my friends had already come out of the closet. Granted, I was never really in the closet. Once I realized "hey! I want to have sex with women!" my friends already knew and my mother and my sister were the first people I told. (Granted, my grandparents don't know, but they are old and fragile and I don't want to cause unnecessary heart attacks unless I'm bringing a girl home to them.)

I also found this quote from Teh Portly Dyke today

"And I think that's a big part of what's kept me from blogging. Part of what marks me as the "New Improved Portly Dyke -- Now More Functional!!" (in my mind, at least), is that...is no longer the central issue of my life every single day -- and I think that when peeling time comes around again, I get scared that it will subsume my life as it did 18 years ago."

This feels a lot like what is happening now. I don't expect to write about much more than my sexuality at the moment because it is still so new. It's also why my friends and family won't be reading this. This is a safe place for me to explore, to to bare myself without fear that the people who have predispositions about who I am or should be will contaminate this experimental area.

I'm obsessed right now with being gay. Obsessed because I don't understand it. Obsessed because I was introduced to it and then left out in the cold. Obsessed because I thought I would never enjoy being in a relationship, or loving, or having sex. Now I have the capacity and the urge to do all those things without having anyone to do them with. I think it's only reasonable that I am obsessed. So this is what I write about.