Queer Without Community

I grew up in a small rural town that consisted of mainly heteronormative citizens whose main focus was the high school Friday night football game. Everyone in town either worked as farmers, factory workers, or the just above minimum wage jobs of keeping the local stores running. As a kid the main entertainment was going to the park or a friend’s house, as a teenager it was driving around with no where to go on back roads avoiding horse and buggies, and as adults it was hitting one of the two places in town that served alcohol.

In town with minimal cultural diversity it comes as no surprise that we did not have an LGBTQ community nor was the subject mentioned and just remember, this was a time before social media and when families shared one computer, usually in the living room, so it wasn’t like I could have been exposed to it . Growing up I only saw heterosexual relationships and thought that was the only way there was. My earliest memory that I now know was a sign was standing in the lunch line in my elementary school behind another girl and thinking to myself “If I was a girl I would totally date her”. I developed “friend crushes” on other girls growing up and I just thought this was a normal thing that everyone experienced so I never brought it up. I still developed crushes on boys throughout my childhood years and I thought that even though the feelings were the same, they were somehow different.

Fast forward to to my late middle school years we had a new student arrive who was the first person I had ever heard of being “gay”. She was a lesbian moved here from an obviously bigger town and was the first time I was introduced to someone being attracted to the same gender as them. We ended up having different friend groups so I wasn’t able to talk to her much but honestly her coming raised more questions for me. She showed me that gay and lesbian people existed but I still had no clue that someone could be attracted to more than one gender (which I was) so I was even more confused because I didn’t fit in wither one of those groups.

Now I was in high school and we were the introduction to a more tech based schooling system so for the first time I had my own personal computer and access to the internet with a social media profile. This helped expose me more to the LGBTQ community but being 2009-2010 there still wasn’t a lot of exposure in my small town. I finally learned that bisexual people exist so I knew I wasn’t alone but the definition I had of bisexual was still limited but at least I had a definition for myself.

Now in my adult life when I moved out of the small town and social media was no longer limited to the people around you and fake profiles I was introduced to the scene but I felt like it was too late. Learning about pansexuality and not being sure which one I identified with anymore along with learning about the difference between sex and gender and meeting people in my life that were transgender and non-binary blew my mind and added more confusion to my life. I was going through the phase that most members of the LGBTQ community had already gone through and I was constantly feeling like I was behind. When I went out and tried to join the community in my area I was frequently met with biphobia from other women that made feel outcasted from the community that I was so desperate to join in order to discover more about myself that eventually just stopped trying.

Present day, I am engaged to a wonderful man that supports my sexuality, wonderful kids, and a small group of close friends that know my story and accept me for who I am. I stopped trying to reach out to the community and settled on the title “Queer” to describe my sexuality. This may have been a long story that doesn’t resonate with a lot of you, and I know my struggles may not have been as intense as others, but I want to get this story out there to hopefully reach those like me and let them know that not everybody has access to the community, but everyone does belong.