#growing up gay

[theonlydrewboo]

Um, yes please! 🙏🏻🙈

[butchaholic]

i love butches and it tears me up when butches don't love themselves. it tears me up because i get it. i understand. but i don't know how to help. and maybe this is selfish, but i worry, sometimes, that if i'd instead hate myself again too. because sometimes hating yourself (your body, your sexuality, your life) is a vice. an addiction. and one that's hard to quit. and easy to fall back into.

i love butches. i'm butch, and i love myself too.

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Source: Dyke Strippers; Lesbian Cartoonists A to Z , edited by Roz Warren

[apologeticallyfat]

The Girls That Carried The 90s/00s

[oshun67]

I was about 9 or 10 when I took that picture. I knew i was gay but also felt ashamed and was bullied relentlessly.

There was no social media, no internet, no accessible gay men of African descent to tell me that I’m ok, just me left to my own devices.

I was suicidal at times and very depressed. My parents were loving but in denial . My childhood was not a bed of roses but I survived and thrived!

I turn 56 in 2023 and I’m proud that I’ve overcome an AIDS diagnosis in my late 20s when so many of my friends did not.

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

Rereading 'old' LGBTQ books is like... so much of this stuff has always been The Same in the sense of somewhat universal experiences.

Your mom thinking your clothes/hairstyle is distasteful, not knowing how to cruise/get hit on by people you're into, trying to be ~desirable~ and feeling like you're doing it wrong, being Extremely Focused on finding The One Perfect Person, sometimes not being read as gay/queer/etc but feeling like you're The Most Different™️ in entirely straight contexts, having The Biggest Crush on someone who you're ~strongly connected to~ who is simply Not Into You At All (or, not like That), arguing with other queer people about how much their labels/what they're calling their relationships matter on a political scale, eventually going to fewer political meetings because you're more focused on your own life....

[poorschilpad]

i remember when i was a kid there were a couple big sunday school events every year and everyone sat in the gym on foldable chairs. afterwards we’d have to put them all back on big racks. y’all’ve seen the memes about boys trying to carry as many as they can to impress their crushes? i also did that but i was a girl and i remember someone telling me i should let some boy carry them so he could feel manly or whatever. and idk there’s not really anything more to the story i just thought of it for whatever reason. but i just think it’s funny how some silly little thing like that was used to enforce heteronormative gender roles among elementary kids. and also the assumption that i just didn’t get the memo that lifting extra chairs was something done to impress girls, and i must have just been trying to be useful. i was absolutely trying to impress girls and it’s honestly still annoying to me that my childish desire to do that was either not recognized or was considered less valid than a boy peer’s desire to do the same

[sunshine-on-marz]

I think that we deserve an apology. The world doesn’t treat us right.

-one lgbtq neurodivergent person to another

[kaddyssammlung]

This year I was looking for a special gift for my brother's wedding.

You know Instagram and all these apps kind of "use" everything that you do and show you more?

I klicked on of these suggestions and liked what I was seeing.

I was impressed.

I thought “ oh well my brother doesn't like cake so much, this would be great....a “cake” made out of salty dough and with some cheese or whatever”

I kept scrolling down and then I saw her.

The creator of these beauties.

I'm tearing up writing this and I don't even know why.

Yes it was the face of my first girlfriend looking at me.

She was always very creative. But no I did not expect that.

She does this professionaly.

[theonlydrewboo]

🥴🥴🥴🥴

[surayaandpoetry-andadashofhozier]

It's hard growing up in a home where your neighbours decide how you should act so you have to live your whole life as an act. It's not easy growing up in a house that is infested with rats that feed off your childhood and leave you to pick up the crumbs. Where you always scrub the floor abit harder than your sister hoping that one day you'll scrub off your 'filth' before anyone realizes it's on you; or when one day your mother hears it from a neighbour who heard it from her daughter who heard it from your best friend in school who heard it from you because you thought you could trust her...She'll remember you always cleaned better than your sister. She'll remember how you've never come home drunk...shit...you don't even leave the house. So you just sit there and you look her in the eye and you lie about it... ''it's just a stupid rumour my best friend doesn't have a sense of humour!'' Then when you go to bed and lay your head. As you try to sleep the thoughts creep and it occurs to you that you just lied without shaking a bone. See that's what happens when you live in what my mum calls a wardrobe for most of your life. It gets too comfortable but despite all the colours it's always dark.

A mother always takes pride in her child, until she realises her child's pride is a different kind, and her child is different!

[serenityinsabr]

This song was everything

“Cause when goodbyes

Get easy, we'll alI be alone

But why God, why?

Can't this one just be even though

That I'm gearing up for this battle

Even if I know that I may never win

When you throw yourself away

Just to throw yourself away again

All I want, wanted

Was to be want, wanted by you”

[traumarestaurant]

Honestly

tell me why being gay looking at any girl change makes you feel weird… even if you aren’t looking at them in like a pervy way yk BUT IT STILL FEELS LIKE YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL. and even if it doesn’t make the other person uncomfortable, you’re still standing there like “um……….. i will just stare intensely at my 0 notifications phone screen ig?”

[lgbtq-archives]

𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐒𝐚𝐮𝐥, a professional film maker reflects on 'growing up gay' and 'coming out' experiences.