How did you accepted yourself?

After I first started questioning I talked with my roommate about it. We talked about it nearly every day for a month. And if he noticed that I was refusing to talk about it he would make me do so. Which was annoying at times but it was really helpful.

 

I found myself fighting with myself for a while. EC and a stranger, who is now my best friend, really helped me make sense of what was going through my mind.

 

I agree completely, this quote was what helped me accept myself as well. It speaks so much power. I'm glad you are happy with yourself as well!

 

Well at some point I became a really big supporter of LGBT+ rights, but internally I kept insisting to myself that I was just a supportive straight person. Who happened to look at and think about girls a lot, and also was really interested in knowing about bisexual celebrities. And would occasionally ask herself, "Are you sure you're straight?"
And finally one day I just answered, "No. I am not."
And then it was like I'd just opened the door to a part of me that I'd been hesitant to visit at first.

 

When I realised that I wasn't weird for not wanting to be male or female, and that there were other people like me

 

During long bouts of depression, your only companion is loneliness. And at first loneliness is tolerable, because it is a justification for why you are depressed. Loneliness will always find an excuse as to why you shouldn't be happy, or why you could never be happy. Eventually though, loneliness will consume you until, finally, it practically is you. It goes from an obstacle to a self-defeating guarantee, and here it becomes practically mind and body-numbing to escape from it.

Loneliness, though, can force you to appreciate things. Things that seemed so mundane before, like being able to breathe deeply, or being able to have a witty or creative thought, are viewed as more than just passing glimpses of personality -- they become the multiple pieces of the puzzle that is your very being. Loneliness is both the worst mentor, but the best teacher. It can ruin you, or it can revitalize your passion. It will force you to either sulk in misery, or to stand up in acceptance. All pain becomes unbearable, at some point, despite our best attempts to enduring or holding out.

Just experiencing a period in my life where darkness and negativity collaborated in my every waking moment, and even continued when I would slumber, was enough for me to realize. You have to get up and love yourself, and what you can do, for yourself, for others, and for everything. Struggling is just wasting time -- time you will never get back from those who don't want you to rise up. You're basically feeding the very serpent that coils and constricts your ability to, well, be.

 

This is extremely difficult and length process. If i had been accepted by others, i'm sure i would have been fine at that point, as i've never been particularly religious, homophobic, or whatever.

But when all my friends rejected me and some crazy bullying started, i fell into deep depression that included self hate. I calmed down a bit with the negative thinking senior year, as i had transferred out of there and got into my dream college. I figured by the next year, things would improve. But things can't magically turn around after 4.5 years alone. I had social phobia for instance and no depression treatment worked at all.

I had to really work on projecting a likeable persona, forgetting as much as possible from the past several years, and not blaming myself or freaking out over ever little mishap. I was able to come out too and start looking for a bf and other friends and all that really built confidence. I saw an excellent therapist (finally) who also directed me to ECT. I had that done in the summer, which has made a huge diff. So to answer the ? and wrap this up, probly winter of 1st year of college.

 

I did go through sort've a denial phase. I never really tried to make myself act straight, seem straight, do masculine things or whatever. But, I was so vehement about my opposition to being gay when I was younger. Probably because of the environment I was in. If you said you were gay, you would feel the brunt of bullying. I started to question myself more and more until I just completely accepted what was fact.

 

It took a while, seven years in fact- from the time I figured it out to the time I accepted myself for who I am. The moment I went "okay" was when I saw a lesbian couple at my local mall holding hands, and no one cared. Some people even smiled at them. And I knew that what I wanted in my life was not so bad after all. Since then, I've dressed the way I want, cut my hair the way I wanted without feeling the need to tell people I donated to locks of love. I've gotten a lot happier.

 

It was a really hard process. I knew something was different, I knew I liked some guys in middle school, but I never accepted them. It also didn't help that I always had the same mindset as many Christians about homosexuality(not now) and I was bullied and called gay even when I didn't know anything about that(when I was 5), so I guess all of that made me repress myself. It took until early this year, on my 3rd year of college to finally start evaluating myself. I came to EC, read threads with similar situations and I had no doubt that I was gay.

It took a while to be able to say "I'm gay" to myself but, I guess that after realizing others had passed things similar and they ended up being gay, that was proof enough that I was too. I'm happy now, I still have trouble with my beliefs, but I've managed to change my views little by little. And like I said to my mom when I came out, "Satan may make me lust for objects, women, man, animals, or whatever, but I'm sure he'll never be able to make someone love another with sincerity because love is not something he can manipulate, because God is love."