In some aspects, I’ve quite often felt like an older man in a younger person’s body. Perhaps it comes from learning one of the harsher realities of life from an early age. Or maybe it comes from developing an introspective mind. Or perhaps I’m just an idiot who thinks too much. But the fact of the matter is, I often catch myself ruminating on life as if I’m a scant few years from the end of it, rather than a fistful of decades.
On my walk home from work tonight I was thinking about human personality as a spectrum from “thinker” to “doer”. Now, I’m not saying that thinkers don’t do or that doers don’t think. Maybe most people exist in a healthy middle ground of both. But I’m certainly a little too far along the thinker end of this spectrum that I’ve just made up. I think myself in circles until I’m too dizzy to do.
That being said, I came here today to write about self acceptance. My reason for having such an introspective evening is that I was thinking back on my twenties so far, and comparing them against the rest of my life. I’ve still two years to live of this decade, but so far it’s looking like the general theme of this chapter in my life has been self acceptance. I hear a lot about how you spend your twenties figuring yourself out, and I think that comes from leaving education and leaving the established social routine for the first time in life. Who are we outside of school, outside of teenage society, with its hierarchy of popularity established through pre-empathetic judgements?
For me, I spent a lot of time in school being picked on and a lot of time afterwards telling myself I hadn’t had it that bad. But the more I age, the more I consider how I react to certain situations, the more I realise how damaging of an effect it is to be constantly told you’re not funny, not worth listening to, and being spun into the butt of every joke. As an adult, that has manifested in me as social anxiety, and paranoia that people are purposefully ignoring me if they don’t respond to messages. Even when my rational brain is able to assess my feelings as irrational and realise where they come from, it’s still a struggle to deal with.
The further away I get from school, though, the more confident I grow. There’s always that small, nagging part of me that worries about being the whelp of the social group, or gets irrationally defensive about “losing” a snark-off. But slowly over the years, I’ve come to realise that I’m quite universally liked at work. I’m not the weird outcast kid who makes jokes that need vetting from the popular kids before people are allowed to laugh anymore. And with that kind of power, the jerks who do come along hold less sway over me by being jerks. Suddenly, I’m not the weirdo for having my own hobbies and brand of humour, they’re the weirdo for taking exception to it.
Well… most of the time, at least. Turns out I’ve been cursed with a feeble human brain, and lessons learned aren’t always applied, depending on the day. Generally speaking, though, I feel like I’m changing as a person as I approach my thirties, becoming more myself than ever before. I have my limits, but those boundaries are moving and I’m feeling happier for the breathing room.
Before you head off, a quick note. Due to the creation of my writing blog, Excepts From A Multifarious Mind, I have also spun up a YouTube channel named Kritigri Writes. There, I post audio versions of my short stories. I’m now thinking of posting audio versions of these blogs posts there, too, so go subscribe if you haven’t already! There’s no audio version of this blog post at the time of publication as it’s currently 1am, but keep an eye out.
Month: June 2023
It Took Me 25 Years To Realise I’m Bi
For a quarter of a century, I was fairly convinced that I was squarely in the heterosexual camp. I mean, sure, I’d flirt with my male friends all the time, but that was just jokes. Sometimes I’d give the idea due consideration, but then I’d measure my personality against those of the sterotypically gay men I’d see in media and the like, and that shoe just didn’t fit for me. And whilst I’ve always been accepting of people from all walks of life, some awkward part of me always backed away from the notion of being queer because I was worried it would make me different.
There’s a reason I’ve kept my bisexuality largely to myself since I realised a few years ago. Firstly, I wanted to be certain. And while I’m still figuring out just where on the bisexuality spectrum I personally sit (heterosexual biromantic, heteroromantic bisexual, that kind of thing), I know enough to be comfortable calling myself bi without the risk of doubling back on myself a few years from now. Which is also totally fine. People can change their minds! I grew up in an era of sexuality being a binary absolute that defined your personality, which is a concept I’ve learned to be a societal falsity.
Ooh, societal falsity. We’re throwing out some fancy terms today.
The main thing I want to get across is the genuine euphoria I’ve felt since accepting myself as bi. And I’m talking from an identity standpoint. Once I accepted that I was bi, I felt this weight lifting from me that I didn’t know I was carrying before. I felt liberated from the burden of adhering to a personality I didn’t know I was trying to be. And the funny part is, I don’t think I’ve actually changed as a person since coming out to myself. I’m not suddenly flamboyant or effeminate; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being so, but that’s just not me. Society had taught me that this was the essence of being queer, but as many of us learn throughout life, the world is much more diverse and nuanced than any amount of portrayal within media would have us believe.
The other thing I didn’t realise about being bi is that it’s not a 50/50 split of attraction, if we’re talking fem and masc. (I mean, firstly, bisexuality is about attraction to all genders; the etymology of the word is a little outdated, and from my understanding pansexuality is a little different.) The best way I could phrase it is that I’m attracted to men in a different way to women, and I’m still kind of figuring out the shape of that. But also, since it took me 25 years to realise I was bi, you won’t be surprised to realise I still fall more on the side of being attracted to women. That’s not something I like to admit too often, because I feel like I’m trying to add some sort of heterosexual-appeasing qualifier to my sexuality, but since we’re talking about this in detail today, I don’t mind stating it. Similarly, I have bisexual friends who are more attracted to genders matching theirs. I’ve yet to meet anyone truly “50/50”.
The last thing I want to address is the people who may be reading this wondering, why should this matter? Hopefully you’ll have picked up on this reading some of what I’ve discussed above, but it’s mostly a personal thing. I want people to know who I am. Being bi isn’t just about who I’m attracted to, it’s part of my identity. It’s a lens through which I see the world. It’s something that may be a little hard to grasp if it’s something you’ve never personally wrestled with. But just being bi and knowing I’m bi has made me much happier as a person! Plus, coming out is exhausting, so if I can tell everyone at once that really lessens some of my workload, if you know what I’m saying.
If you took the time to read this, thank you so much! I’m in a rarely lucky position to be blessed with an amazing family who supports me in this, and some incredible friends who helped me come to terms with it myself from early on. My one request is that this doesn’t change the way you view me as a person. Not radically, anyway. You might be like, oh damn, Kristian’s bi? That’s pretty hot. That’s okay, you can have those thoughts, if you want. I mean, who am I to stop you? ahem what I mean to say is, I’m still me. I just mentioned those stereotypes as damaging things, so let’s not apply those to someone who didn’t fit them before! Haha, okay, catch you in the next one, happy Pride.
Perpetually Perturbed 