My Sexuality is Complicated

My sexuality is complicated.

I would love it if it wasn't complicated, but that’s because I’m a person who likes absolutes. For example, I’m hyper specific about the language of instructions and I hate the word “fine” as I find it extremely undescriptive. I struggle to respond to vague questions and I need feedback to be more explicit than 'good' or 'bad.' I also like when there is a clear right and wrong answer. It is then not surprising at all that I really like math. (It is a bit more questionable that I like statistics, but that’s a different conversation about how my love of statistics comes from trying to provide answers to questions that don’t have the absolute answers that I yearn for). Similarly, I would love for my sexual identity to be clear and defined. And growing up, I thought that’s how it worked - that my options were either straight or gay. One or the other. And I just needed to figure out which one.

Taking a step back, though, it took me a long time to even acknowledge to myself that there was something I had to figure out. As is part of my life, I have some control issues, which is one of the main conversation topics in therapy. (Side note: here is my pitch for therapy. Everyone should go, even if you think you don’t need it. Therapy is just a means of self improvement, and we could always be better versions of ourselves). Part of my control issues manifests itself in that I don’t like being told what I am or am not. I have this strong immediate need to prove someone wrong the second they tell me what I would or wouldn’t do in a given situation, or what I would or would not like - as if them telling me takes away my freedom to choose. But, whether I liked it or not, growing up, that’s what people did. Based on my voice, my numerous friendships with girls, my slight affinity for dramatics, or my desire to do art rather than sports, I spent my childhood being told what I was. And, rather than productively process that no one had the right to tell me who I was, I immediately jumped to prove everyone wrong. I shut out all possibilities of not being straight swiftly and absolutely - not just externally, but also internally. I was straight. End of discussion. No thoughts about it.

But, as life went on, I began to acknowledge that there were feelings I had to figure out. And I had to figure out what those feelings told me about who I was. Straight and gay felt so definitive. And binary. Labeling myself as bisexual felt like I was attracted to both and pansexual felt like I was attracted to all, when, most of the time, I felt I was attracted to none. And every time I felt like I had a realization that would end the confusion, I then had feelings that countered that. I kept looking for this absolute answer to define my feelings, the one box I could officially put myself in, the pair of shoes that I could wear perfectly. No matter how much I wanted them to, none of the shoes felt like they fit properly.

But then I remembered that I absolutely hate shoes - it’s the reason I have a pair of slippers at work and my parents used to get complaints from my teachers about me constantly taking my shoes off in class. So I decided I didn’t need a pair of metaphorical shoes. And, one evening, after a shabbat dinner, when walking home with my friend, I decided that I could share my feelings and confusion without having to share a specific label. I knew what I knew: I had situations in which I had been attracted to women, situations where I had been attracted to men, and many situations where I had been attracted to absolutely no one and couldn’t have been less interested. I also didn’t know what I didn’t know: how I would feel in 10 days, 10 months, or 10 years. As time went on, I started to realize that I didn’t need to answer this larger question of “What am I,” period, end of development. I needed to allow myself the freedom from having to “be” anything at all. So that’s what this is. This is me telling you that I’m queer - a label for not having a label (which is oxymoronic). I can be whatever I want, be with whomever I want, and have no idea where that will take me.

I also thought about how I would want to tell people without making it into a big deal. While this is my sexual identity, it's just a small piece of who I am. There is far more to know about me. For example: I am a vocal processor and every interaction or event or big conversation I have requires a full interactive debrief. I also get extremely distracted by my own curiosity. Just recently I spent 15-minutes in the middle of a conversation thinking about the first person that discovered triangles are the best shape for structural support and what must have been going through their head. Thus, I use this post as an FYI not a paradigm shift. In practice, this changes very little of my day-to-day life: it doesn't affect my relationships and who I am as a person - it's just one more thing that people now know about me.

For reference: I am in a great relationship with a wonderful woman, who is strong, supportive, goofy, and will call me (and my brother) on my/our shit. Nothing about this post changes that. Being in a relationship with a woman, though, made me question if it was worth posting this blog at all because it means I could go my entire life never having to confront this topic publicly.

I have spent my life working towards being fully myself and surrounding myself with people who will accept all of me. Maybe not all of me, as I do generally try to tone down some of my controlling tendencies, but you get the point. I have also spent so much time learning to love myself and the fact that I don’t need clear absolute labels on my life. (As my friend Avrumi pointed out, there are a lot of parallels here with my struggle to define my Judaism.) And while it took being comfortable with myself to be able to be comfortable in a serious relationship, I question if it is worth rocking the boat if I’m in a heterosexual relationship. We can’t pretend that life in a heteronormative society is easier for queer people, so why make it harder on myself? Being queer in a Jewish community is its own entire conversation, and I sometimes doubt there is a clear community to ‘welcome’ me as there is a lot of bi erasure within the LGBT community (if you don’t know what that is, read this). My first weekend in San Francisco, an openly gay friend made a comment that anyone who isn’t straight or gay is just lying to themselves - telling me there is no in-between or spectrum. So, it’s complicated. Why bother making a blog post and sharing it publicly if I really don’t need to?

For me, it’s simple. I have always thought that, in life, the people close to you should accept you for everything that you are, but I don't think I ever fully believed it. I'm at a point now where I think it's time to live my life being fully open with the people I care about. Also, I have spent a lot of time around people who feel completely uncomfortable with their gender or sexual identities, and every time I just want to reach out and be like, 'yo, I support you.' But how can I fully support them if I’m still not open about myself?

So, as is clear by everything I have just said, this is me saying that I'm not straight, I’m proud about it, and I'm pretty much the same person I’ve always been. What does that mean for my future? Who knows. What does that mean for my Judaism? I’ll figure it out. But I’m pretty excited to figure it out - I’ve always liked a bit of drama in my life anyway. To any friend who wished I told them personally, trust me, I really wanted to. I wanted everyone to know. But I didn’t know how to bring it up in conversation casually, thus, I decided this very casual blog post on my social media was the way to do it. But now you know, and I urge you to reach out to me to talk about it if you want to. Or you can shoot me a random text just to say you’ve read it - it doesn’t have to include any fancy wording or anything. This is a part of me, so would love for you to know it.

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