Post #123488
May 04, 2018, 05:22:10 AM
I'm Barnes, otherwise known as Trainer James on our Discord chat. You can probably guess my real name from there.
I'm 19 and a cis gay guy. (I hesitate to say man since I look and act quite a bit younger.)
I'll admit my relationship with sexuality is rather complicated. For a long time as a kid, I genuinely thought I was straight, most likely by default and since all of my friends growing up were girls. Then I reached junior high, discovered porn, and started exploring my sexuality. (It was "the cool thing to do", as all of my best friends were questioning themselves as well.)
For a while my self-image fluctuated between ace (since I'd never been in a sexual relationship, and still haven't), bi (since I thought I had romantic feelings for girls as well as guys), and gay. This questioning had still continued for a while after I'd come out to a couple of my friends, but I did eventually settle on gay as a personal label. This is in spite of the fact that the Kinsey scale would probably put me closer to 5 than to 6, but I don't personally see myself being in a relationship with a woman any time soon.
I'm really not out to many people at all, which I feel shameful about. A couple of my best friends know, my mom knows (since she basically coerced it out of me), and my little brother (who's also gay and much more flamboyant than me) knows, and that's about it.
I live in one of the gayest cities in North America, and I haven't involved myself in gay culture at all. I haven't gone to pride, I haven't gone to any gay bars or drag shows, and I despise dating apps and websites. LGBT events "aren't really the place for me", since I neither feel like I fit in, nor do I really want to. (Forgive me, since I know that sounds insensitive.) The gayest thing about me other than my sexuality is when I did musical theater for a year in high school, and everyone still thought I was straight.
All in all I feel quite lonely in my sexuality. To say that I don't talk about it much is an understatement. Online is really the only way I express myself, and even then it's rather limited. I don't really believe I have any real hope of finding a long-term relationship, since I'm not actively looking and hate talking about myself.
It's actually gotten me into a pretty deep depression for a while, since I had nobody to turn to for expressing my feelings: that, and a lot of other personal things that stemmed from moving to a new town, the financial struggles of balancing both university and work, and personal lack of direction. I eventually did drop out of school and have tried therapy off and on (including an LGBT support group), and I luckily feel a lot better about my self-image now, but none of that has really addressed my sexuality, even the support group.
I'm not sure what else to say, since this dragged on a lot longer than I thought it would. I suppose writing this has been therapeutic in a way.