(probably) bisexual me.

There was a time when I thought I was gay. In college I began to realize that I was attracted to women. Some women stirred something deep within me. Something as elusive as it was intense. I had crushes on men too, a professor at one time, a fellow student here and there, a flame from the past... they felt different. How different... I'm not sure. Perhaps less sexual, perhaps not. When you have been as sexually traumatized as I have, when you have been brainwashed, when your early attachments were as skewed as mine... knowing yourself (which is never an easy task) becomes rather monumental. And, as it happened, I was attending a religious college. There were of course pockets of acceptance and openness. As far as religious institutions go it was... tolerable in it's relating to the LGBTIQ community. As disinclined as I was to care how the institution as a whole viewed my morality this experience of myself as I related to some women could have been more fully explored in relational safety -- given the folks with whom I associated. But it never rose to a priorty. Surviving debilitating panic attacks (not that I knew them to be such), learning not only to survive day to day but to succeed, fuck - learning period (given how little of my primary and secondary educations had been absorbed). Dipping my toe in this particular water just never really happened.

The furthest it went was furtive glances at attractive women who somehow stirred this aura of homosexual desire in me. I never knew quite what to make of it and, unfortunately, never pursued it. I didn't know how to and men presented themselves to me, some of which I felt something for. I dated one young man my junior year of college and though we made out I, as often as not, didn't want him touching me. Sometimes it aroused me. Sometimes that was wanted (I think); often not. I broke up with hime for other reasons. He was a bit hypocritical and we differed widely in our religious and social-political ideologies. I was over him instantly, though he transferred schools in the hopes I would take him back. I was convinced that I was in love with a young man I had deeply resonated with as a junior high and later high school student when we eventually reconnected my senior year of college. Alas, the feeling was not mutual. I suppose it is the sum of those two experiences which caused me to resume an assumption of heterosexuality, to whatever degree that I did, when setting up the online dating profile which ultimately led to... well, marriage and kids. Had it given me the option of being bi-sexual I likely would have chosen that option, but it excluded same sex relationships for some reason...

Handsome has known from the beginning that I believed myself to be bisexual. He has known when my attraction to women flares up, even about the lesbian dating "it's complicated" profile I once created for about a week, a couple of years ago. One of his then favorite passtimes was catching up on the harmless crush I had on a female biologist from one of my kids nature shows "Big Cat Diary". She's cute, smart, and they showed her driving around the Masai Mara barefoot, which I apparently found irresistible.

So it was not entirely without precedent when I stumbled upon a showing of all the 1950's playboy centerfolds last night only to found myself extremely aroused. I couldn't get enough of these women's semi-naked bodies. The way the light played off their nipples, the curves of their buttocks. So much so that, as any good millennial would, I turned to google in a panic. Shit, shit, shit! Is this how I'm 'supposed' to feel about men's bodies? Because I don't. But why? Because men are abjectly terrifying? (well, on a subconscious and sometimes conscious level, they are to me...) or because I'm really just gay? Or because with my latest revelation (more to come on that later), I'm finally finding myself in a good spot again and my trauma formed brain simply can not compute this calm.

I love Handsome more deeply than I have ever loved anyone. I want nothing more than to want an ever deepening, ever gratifying relationship with this beautiful soul. And I think that I do. But, what if that's just not in my nature? What if that is not who I am or who I can be?  What if? What if I'm bisexual, which should be no surprise. and me figuring that out means dragging my family and beautiful, wonderful, steady, compassionate, hazel-eyed Handsome through yet another land mine in search of a peace I am incapable of experiencing. I want to close the book. The only, tiny, minuscule problem with closing the book and leaving the ending unknown to me, is that it will only work if I've been right about my bisexuality all along. But... what if I haven't?

As my tears begin to subside, I just want Handsome to hold me in his arms, to feel his heartbeat and I have no idea if that is fair. He reaches for my nipple and I push his hand away. "ooooohhh (dramatically disappointed) ladies are gonna want to touch your nipples too, dear..." Said with a smile and followed up with a kiss to the top of my head.

I adore him.

Is my sexuality just another casualty of a series of despicable men (and women?)  Am I doomed to a series of derailments in this only slightly mitigated train wreck I call "making it?" Growth seems to demand growing, but for my part, I want off. At least for today, for this lifetime. Is happy enough the same as happy? Just like "good enough" is supposedly "good enough?" Fuuuuuuuuck!!! fuck! FUCK! fuck!!!!!!

fuck!