Thank you so much for this comment, it really made me feel a lot better to hear that you learned to accept all of this with time. It's just so hard because not only do you feel alienated for being a lesbian in and of itself, but also the mere experience of having to struggle with something like this is something unique to lesbian/gay people. Even bisexual can just sort of pretend and only act on their opposite sex attraction so it doesn't really count to the same extent. Having to grapple with such a huge part of most people's identity and make peace with something that straight people just take for granted, well no one gets it and how could they?

You have to carry around this secret in fear and shame because you never know how people are going to react, I feel like I can't even tell female friends without them thinking I'm hitting on them. It's this constant weight on my mind right now, probably because it's so new to me as a realisation and because i don't have any lesbian friends. It sucks that even in the most "progressive" countries there's so much lesbophobia and I'll always have to be wary of who I tell I have a girlfriend if I ever have one, that I'll have to be so careful with something straight people never even think about. I'm jealous honestly and it makes me sad. I hope this makes sense. I know people are discriminated for other things too, but those things are usually immediately apparent, like race and being disabled and being a woman, etc. The fact that you can't really tell who's gay or not makes it so much harder because you never know who will be cool with it and who won't, who's secretly a lesbian hater and who isn't, until you tell them and then you can't take it back...