Thursday 24 March 2016

52 Weeks of Acknowledging Me

Sexuality & Me

When I decided to write MM romance I had to have a good look at myself, a look that was more about a wonder of what it’s like to think about your own sexuality and I mean really think about it.

I was a late bloomer, and even when sex became a part of my knowledge I was more fascinated with it then having it – still am. And its these facts that hasn’t made my life hard, it’s actually simplified it, especially growing up. Sorta. Not really.

I’m only just turning 30. I was 14-16 when lesbian’s became mainstream but as it was there were two types of sexualities heterosexual or homosexual, you were either or, and anything else landed you into one of those two parts.

I was 23 when I became happy with myself, body and soul. I would have changed things if I could but I didn’t seem to know why I needed to, where the “could” would come in. I’d had 2 kids by then and it just started really getting into the mind set of writing romance, mm romance.

Now to me I had learnt everything I could about the body, about the physical aspect that all there was left was to go into the mental. What I was getting at when I first started. As a mother of two in love with some dude I never really thought about my sexuality. I didn’t need to, because well, why would I, as far as I’m concerned I’m set until something happens and he’s no longer my partner. As far as I was concerned I was straight, though I never truly thought those words in association to myself.

Anyway, so I thought and I’d come to the conclusion that I’m bisexual. I love the look, feel of woman, however what did I really know, I’ve never been physical with a woman but man girl on girl action turns me on faster than heterosexual porn (male male too, honestly het porn bore me to tears).

However, the years past and I learnt more and I watched a documentary (the only type I watch other than animals) about sex therapy. They did test to figure out why woman had orgasms, what the reason behind it is, anyway, I digress if I let myself. This one therapist hooked up males and females and put them in front of photos to see what got them excited and how they looked at things. This was much more to do with sexuality than anything else. Her findings where that unlike ‘straight’ men who will look at other males to size them up, they are very solid on finding one type of things turns them on. Whereas woman are much more fluid in what turns them on, being mostly anything sexual.

It took a long time, thinking and reading new things to allow me to realise that I’m actually not bisexual, I’m not 100% sure on this, and I often wonder who I’d have ended up with if my partner hadn’t knocked me up and my life went in a completely different direction, but I don’t believe I’m simply bi. I don’t believe my head works that way.

I can’t be sure, because I do love the guy I’m with and I tend to not see attraction of other people, which causes a problem when you are trying to figure out your sexuality.

On long thought I’m not even sure I’m truly female though I asked my mother what I was like as a child and I was VERY girly. It’s not until later in life, and not even the last 5 years or so, but much earlier where I tended to become more fluid, probably more when puberty hit. I became resentful of being female, all the while hating that I wasn’t ‘female’ enough.
And sorry if that made no sense.

Anyway, there were questions; there were parts of me I wanted different, in different times. embarrassing to admit, but I have a memory of when I was about…10 or 11 I think, as I was still in a room with my sister, where I fell asleep with a teddy up my shirt for a baby, a sock down my pants as a penis. I experimented with quite a lot of different sexualities up until I was about 15-16 when I settled into my femaleness.

I believe  my sex is fluid and I’m never really sure when it switches, I’m not sure it’s ever mattered to me enough, as I’m not going to stop myself from being the way I am. I’m old enough to realise I can’t and well, why would I want to. It’s not hurting anyone and my partner has been with me for long enough that if he had a problem with who I am we wouldn’t still be together.

Sexuality wise I believe I’m more a pansexual because again I don’t believe it’s mattered to me who a person is when I fall in love. It’s just a matter of falling in love. Honestly, I know for a fact that I could happily love an asexual for the rest of my life and never have a problem with it. I don’t believe sex is actually an essential part of being in a relationship.

But on the other hand I will always probably defer to being bisexual, because that’s the time period I came from, though it didn’t exist anymore today than it did back then it was something floating around the edges, something people would use when experimenting I support, but it was there, alive and well. And because no one ever really thought it was real, though I had the idea in my head it wasn’t something I every truly thought I could possibly be until I became older and met more people.

I remembering when I was starting to masturbate that I had moments of thinking of women, not anyone I knew, not anything that specific just parts and feeling and I was harshly pushing them aside and make myself think of penis’. This didn’t happen as often as you would think, I’m not lesbian, I know this fact because in those years I would have been happy to become one, that way I would have had solid footing (and at our school there was actually a great support system for lesbians – I was friends with them too, I envied them.). Instead I was in this part of not quite knowing what was up and what was down.

It’s actually a confusing period of time when you having realised you’re allowed to be bisexual. And I’m talking about the private thoughts inside your head. Those moments when the outside world still breaks into, still tells you that you need to be this or that, however your mind is going but wait, “this week I’m lesbian” only to turn around and go “huh, oh nah you misunderstood, this week we are straight”.  It’s makes trying to understand yourself a wee bit difficult. Especially, like I say above, I never really had an ability to put the bisexual thought on it.

As I got older bisexual became much more commonplace. Or at least something that wasn’t so sneered upon. I honestly never had a huge problem, but then I never payed enough attention to what others thought; honestly it’s something I learnt coming out of high school and realising things weren’t the same way as I thought they were at the time. So I got away with it much easier, plus sex wasn’t something I tended to really lean towards while I wanted to know as much about it as I could.

So on the point I started this out. Since I was in my late teens, I’ve always thought of myself as bisexual. When I wanted to learn what sexuality I was I went back and forth, concluded that I was straight and then spent the next few months, maybe 6 unsettled in my own skin. Honestly I’d never felt like that before. Never. I may not have thought hard about what sexuality I was before. Not really, not deeply, but I was also okay with that. However when I went back to being bisexual that sigh in my head had my whole body settled, and with that true thought I became whole and settled as a person.

Note: this is a post that was going to be posted when I was still doing my weekly ME thing. I decided to post it this week because of the debates going on in the community. I haven’t read the debate; don’t even know what it’s truly about, or what started it. however I’m being brave