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[–]LesChameleon 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Oh God, I admire your brave younger self for even putting those things on paper😂 I definitely wouldn't have the courage to do anything like that.

One of the reasons I didn't want to come to terms with being a lesbian was because there was so much like this in my past, a lot of which I had buried and tried to forget, and I didn't want my close friends who I have known since high school and are by and large conventionally attractive straight women to see me in a different light.

Me too. In fact, I think most of us struggle with this, but I say - if your female friends can't support you fully, then find new ones. I like hugging my friends, and as long as it's occasional and not mad tight and affectionate, it's totally platonic. There really is a big difference between me flirting and loving my friends. My friends are aware of it and I'm happy there are no misinterpretations.

[–]yousaythosethings[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

LOL I don't think it was courage. In my head I was just joking and it was written to be in a joking manner. Except I really wasn't, just in denial. And now when I read it, knowing what I know now and understanding how I felt then, the joking part just comes across as super flirtatious teasing. Thankfully this letter is from ~13 years ago so there are other things to be judged by since then, so I don't have to crawl in a hole and die.

My high school BFFs are still my BFFs now so they have accepted this part of me. But 13-15 years ago when our friendship was newer, when gay was still being used as an insult by the entire student body, where there were no out gay people there, and considering I had a very rocky home life and my friends were my family, I really didn't want to understand or accept my sexual orientation. I remember with some friends I did start a dialogue because the movie Kinsey had come out within the last few years and I brought up the Kinsey scale. I said that I thought I was a 2 and I remember my internal logic was "I'm not quite straight, but I'm closer to straight than gay." I still didn't think I was a lesbian. I just assumed I had some latent attraction toward boys/men, but I knew I wasn't straight-straight. Where I was, bisexual was not really part of the discourse. I know people talk about a time when everyone pretended they were bisexual but that never happened in the circles I ran in. People just thought in terms of straight or gay.

I also naturally tend to be affectionate toward friends but I am more mindful of how that looks now. And with the exception of this friend and even with her now, my feelings towards my friends are strictly platonic.