A Serious Blog Post About A Silly Girl

I've been toying around for the idea of this blog post for a long time. And today, I finally sat myself down, started playing my favorite song, and decided to just write it out.

This post will primarily be for all three of you who read my blog that I don't know in real life. I'm not sure if my parents want me posting about this, but last I checked they don't read my blog, and besides, I'm writing this because I feel like I need to.  So, let's get it out there, shall we?

I'm gay.

Pretty much. This is something that I've struggled with in all my whopping sixteen years of life, and I'm finally starting to accept myself for who I am. While I am still trying to find a label I feel comfortable with, I have come very far in the past few months. I do not plan on going into the specifics of all this, but I do feel like I should say I've not turned into some huge lesbian, or something akin to that. I still feel attracted to guys on some level. I'm just working my way through the muck trying to figure out who exactly I am, and who exactly I want to be.

Growing up, I'd always felt different than others around me. I could never quite place my finger on what it was though, which led to many years of insecurity. Sixth and seventh grade were pretty bad in particular for me. I had very few friends, and I felt so incredibly alone. I would go to school early every morning, study hard in all my classes, then come home and do all my homework. What a dreadful life I lead for those two very studious years.

In eighth grade I began to find my voice, which made things considerably different. I made more friends, I cut off ties from those who were not being nice to me. I thought I was gaining confidence, but really all I was doing was building up a mask. I was Hannah -the insanely happy and goofy girl- and that is far from what I felt like inside. I longed to know what was wrong with me, and to know why I felt so disconnected from everyone around me. I began to develop crushes, which I refused to acknowledge. I figured I was just not feeling well. But as I'm sure you know, feelings persist, and I just began to feel even worse about myself.

By the end of eighth grade my mask had been broken down to nothing. I hated myself, I hated life, and I hated the monotonous drone that it had taken on. I wanted to escape, to feel normal again, to feel like myself (a feeling I hadn't experienced in years). I started to have crippling anxiety attacks, which made me despise school and stress and life in general. It was all too much for me to handle. My relationship with my parents was strained, and I began keeping secrets from them. I would not use my computer in front of them, for fear that they would get upset with me (over what, I'm still not sure).

My anxiety stayed around, and by the time I began ninth grade, I wanted to die even more than ever before. I started this blog as a means of escape, but it didn't help much. I still felt like an outsider, I still hated myself, and I hated school. Every morning brought a new fight between my mother and I- me wanting to stay home and her refusing. It began to get so bad I started seeing a therapist to talk about what was stressing me out.

At first I didn't talk to my therapist about my fear that I might be gay. During the beginning of ninth grade I was still lying to myself. It took almost the entire year before I started to even consider the idea. It took me many months to figure out my feelings, and there were a lot of nights spent crying into my pillow. But it's been almost a year now and I'm finally at the point where I am comfortable enough with myself that I can talk about this.

I'm a sophomore now, and I feel more like myself than I have in a long while. I still have bad days. I still have days where I want to die. But it's not every day anymore. Once I figured out what was "different" about me, I began to feel much better. Not at first, necessarily. During the first few months I was a confused mess of emotions, but nowadays I am starting to feel like the version of me that I was always destined to be.