Ara Ara’s Mind

{AN: I wrote this for my Creative Writing class, but the plot comes from an idea I had about 2 bi women falling in love while going through the trials and tribulations of college. This idea has turned into what I hope while be my first published novel Backbone. Enjoy!}

Being as honest as possible, here’s my take on coming out in college. Avoiding figuring out your sexuality until college, though difficult, might be the best thing to do. By doing so you can fit into the niche group of people who found out they were gay in college. This group is usually reserved for girls who were raised religious and boys who were raised like men, but your lack of either of those experiences will make you super unique. Also coming out in college will produce more friends than coming out in middle school, guaranteed. College is the place where these things can freely happen. Hookups, break-ups, trials, errors, failures, success. That’s all college is. You are there to learn about yourself enough to be able to survive on your own. Sure, it might not the best time to come out, school and all. But guess what, it has to happen sometime, so why not college.

Realizing your sexuality isn’t even the hardest part. Everything that comes after is, which is not helped by college either. You’ll have to deal with coming out to your family in the middle of midterms. Coming out, in general, is something you’ll have to deal with at the start of every semester. Within that, you have to question whether it’s important that people know, if they’ll care, if they’ll have a bad reaction, and if it’s even worth it to be that open with people you don’t know. It might be best not to say anything to anyone besides your immediate friends and let the other people assume or ask you. You’ll realize that this discovery is going to change a lot of things. Your view on people, how people view you, and how that will affect you. Don’t let that scare you, thought. Everything will be fine, eventually.

Once you have realized all that you can and have let the weight of your sexuality sit on your shoulders, chest, legs, or stomach and over take your mind until you are unable to think about it anymore. It might be time to reach out to a friend. Which might help or harm, but will be good for you to get some of that weight off. Then having lived through realization after realization, headaches, crushing anxiety, and even laying on the floor in tears, sometimes, just sometimes, you actually start living your life.