My Glass Closet

I’m a bisexual girl. I think I’ve known since I was in middle school. I became obsessed with Little Mix and One Direction during quarantine, specifically with Perrie Edwards. My ex bestie described me as being “obsessed” with her, and I thought nothing of it. But when I thought a little bit, I realized that I liked her the way that I liked boys. I pretty much opened myself to this new sexuality, a little too soon in retrospective. But now, I’m comfortable with it. I’ve never been with a woman, but I have been attracted and had crushes on them.

Today I came out to my mother. She wasn’t aggressive or mean, she just didn’t understand. My mom has ideas about sexuality and gender that conflict mine immensely, so I knew that this conversation wouldn’t go over smoothly. I just wanted her to accept me, and she did. But not as a bisexual girl. I told her about my first crush, a girl we will call Sara. I liked Sara freshman year, as I instantly felt a connection with her and I found her cute. My mom stated that some people, she feels, are born gay and some are gay from the circumstances that life has thrown at them. She feels like my crush on Sara was like this because before I liked her, I was in an emotionally abusive situation with a boy that I was (strangely) infatuated with. I was saddened by her thinking this. She had told me that she thought that bisexuality and transsexuality were just spawns of confusion and low self esteem.

At the end of our conversation (mind you, after I had told her about my crush on a boy), she said that she didn’t think I was bisexual. She even told me again before I went to bed the same thing. I’m sad that I am not truly accepted by my mother. I don’t feel changed at all, I was basically in a glass closet before I revealed my bisexuality, so now I’m just stepped out. It’s not liberating, my I love and accept myself.