Hidden Layers

"I'm completely straight," I told myself while sitting in the school classroom trying to keep my eyes on my work to avoid staring at the beautiful girl sitting on the table opposite me.

It didn't just happen on one day, it happened for three solid years. The girl was called Jane. She was petite with long flowing dark blonde hair, beautiful green eyes, and she could get the attention of the classroom with just one smile.

When we stopped working, I tried to distract myself by staring at a boy who was sitting by himself three tables down from where I was. He was short, with dark brown hair and he had piercing blue-green eyes. He caught me staring and he smiled at me. I looked down, pretending to read. I tried hard to resist making eye contact with him. I was confused and embarrassed.

I had no idea why I felt this way. I had been brought up believing that 'straight' was normal, and anything else wasn't.

I spent most of my life from around eleven years to adulthood denying my attraction to both sexes, even though I did have a relationship with a female when I was fifteen years old. I lost that girlfriend in traumatic circumstances, but this is not a story about that, so I will focus on the relationship.

My girlfriend was called Karen. I never told anyone about our relationship, because I had come to learn that being in love with a female meant that society would reject us, and nobody thought that a fifteen-year-old was capable of having a serious relationship in the 90s, anyway.

I and Karen were very close, and we never kept anything from each other. We enjoyed our time together, and we were happy until that one horrible trauma took her away from me.

Karen understood me better than I did. She knew that I also had a boyfriend, but she accepted it as being natural for my sexual orientation. She got on well with my boyfriend, and she ended up in a relationship with my boyfriend's best friend.

We all kept this a deep secret, because in our days we would have been scrutinized by everyone who came near us, and we would have been labeled as dirty for it.

It was Christmas Morning, and we all decided that we were going to spend the day together. I sat on the couch cuddling with Tony who was my boyfriend, while Karen cuddled with Simon, who was hers. five minutes later we were all sitting with each other and cuddling together. We were laughing, joking, and kissing each other. I will never forget this day, because I broke into tears on Karen's shoulder and I said, "I'm straight.''

I didn't truly believe this statement, though my parents had only ever seen me with boyfriends. In truthfulness, I knew that I was attracted to both, but I never felt comfortable talking about it with my parents because I was never sure as to what their stance on it was. I'd only ever been around men and women who were couples in my family. I had never seen a female-only couple or a polyamorous couple.

Conversations with family were a no-go area, because my family believed in strict monogamy, and they would not have understood my relationships or the boundaries within them at all. Conversations such as these would have left me and my partners in a very awkward situation which in my opinion, would not have ended well at all.

Karen was the one who piped up and said, "I know, you are bisexual, and that is okay. Open relationships are not a crime. I love you, you don't have to feel ashamed."

The problem was and still is, that I do feel ashamed. I have felt ashamed all of my life, and because of that, I did not open up to my husband until the day before we married; although he has accepted it, I still feel the need to push the whole identity back down, deep inside, underneath the layers of a false identity, because the world still makes me fear who I am.

Every time I read something online, especially regarding the LGBTQ community, I see stories that make me want to stay in the closet forever. There are negative stories about transexual communities not being fully accepted, and I will admit that I find the debate over the use of toilets horrifying. I mean, yes, there is a need to protect women and men from abuse and violence, but I am a woman who has been raped by both

Who protects me?

When I try to bring this up, I get told "It is very rare for a woman to be raped by a female."

This is not the point. The point is it happened to me more than once, from both sides. I still have feelings of disgust, shame, and horror because of that, and I still suffer from PTSD because of it. However, just because I am affected, does not mean that I have to accept the version of 'one fits all' in a black-and-white society that rejects people because they do not fit the social norms of everyone else or the tradition of how people are supposed to be, whether people like to hear this or not; that is the main problem, the world is based on traditions from centuries ago, and they follow these traditions with such power, that they are not open to change, so they tarnish everyone with the same brush, which hurts the LGBTQ community in unthinkable ways.

Another point that still makes me feel unsafe is that while people from my community are told it is ok for them to have children, they are scrutinized beyond belief.

This is something that people never talk about.

I have had children, and I was asked about my sexual orientation when I had my first child in the 90s. I decided to tell the health professionals involved with my care that I was straight because I was afraid that I would be judged based on my sexuality.

I tried hard to break the ice after having my third baby, and for the first time, I let them know that I was bisexual.

I was asked about how many female partners I had slept with, and humiliated with multiple tests for Chlamydia.

I still get asked to do these tests, every time I book a smear.

I usually get told it's because of my orientation.

I was barraged with questions and advice about my sexual life, including cautions about safe sex, and what was and wasn't right for my children to see.

It was then decided that my sexual identity was distorted because of my mental health problems, which sent me back into the closet for a long time.

I still come out and go back into the closet today, often feeling the need to pretend to be straight sometimes, and then feeling the need to just be who I am the next.

It is confusing for me and those around me because the people who I love want me to be completely open and fully embracing of my sexuality, but how am I supposed to feel safe doing that, when the media are always telling us about those in higher power pulling the LGBTQ communities apart like toys?

It makes me feel degraded, to see myself and the many friends I have being torn over their sexualities and gender identities, just because the world has developed its myths around us all.

If there is one thing I have learned from this, it is that

it is difficult to be human in a world that makes us feel anything but human.