Whether you’ve been out for years, just started telling people, or are thinking about coming out, share your story or your feelings here.
No pressure, just support.

I realised that I liked girls when I was 14 years old. I had a crush on one of my friends but nothing became of it. I didn’t really know any other queer people, especially females, and my school wasn’t the best environment to be gay in so I kept it to very small friend circle. I used ‘bisexual’ as a soft term for it as I think part of the journey when you’re gay or lesbian is to accept that you don’t like the sex that you’re meant to by society. That’s the harder part than accepting that you like the same-sex. I remember the first friend I told about this and thankfully she took it well.

I had an e-flirty situation-ship when I was 16 and I think having that romantic connection solidified for me that I liked girls. But part of me wanted to also like guys even if I didn’t have intention to date them. I think it was more when girls talk about hot guys and stuff but that wasn’t me. Plus, male attention is a lot easier to obtain than female attention, in my opinion. I think that situationship gave me the confidence to tell a slightly bigger circle of people that I liked girls and connected me with a gay male friend. I remember he was like ‘do you like her?’. So it felt natural and smooth.

First female relationship was when I was 18 years old. Same with first female kiss versus first male kiss at 13 years old (whoops). The first girlfriend didn’t last long. At uni it was easier to say I was into girls because of fresh people who only knew me that way. Some guys would speculate about my sexual orientation as I am a bit of a stereotype, hahaha.

I’ll save more of my coming out stuff for later. But that’s my internal journey and early teenage years. My journey started around the time gay marriage was legalised here in the UK.