Somewhat less confused!

True enough!

When I'm not mooching like I was earlier I actually like admiring from afar and "knowing" nothing will ever happen. It's nice and safe..

 

We both very coolly looked away.



I am curious - very!....just used to disappointment, as well. No point in letting my imagination go totally crazy!

She notices things. Maybe she's noticed my bracelet.

 

I love that @rosemarythyme ! I'm definitely a highly sensitive person. Maybe she is too, she certainly has that vibe so far.

 

LOL It's a subtle lgbt bracelet.

 

It's really pretty. It's 17cm long with a clasp. It's divided into thirds. The outer thirds consist of small silver beads, and the mid-third is six larger glass beads: red, orange yellow, green, blue, purple. I bought it from Etsy. It suits me rather than the typical lgbt type of thing because it's the type of jewellery I go for, so doesn't look out of place with my other bits and pieces.

I'm now going to buy a keyring with a rainbow heart on it. A little less subtle but I'll use it for my car keys which means I can choose to keep them in my bag until I get to my car if I don't want to out myself, or if I do I can take my keys out before I'm leaving work (or wherever) in the presence of others. The keyring also has a double linked women's symbol on it, but I may decide that's too much and remove it! But I do like the two linked symbols.

 

I would love it if she was! She's got the loveliest brown hair and she wears it up in a little clasp and every time I'm standing behind her I want to take the clasp out and watch her hair fall down. I feel all fluttery looking at it and imagining that happening.

I was telling her about some research I was doing where a woman is very complimentary about another woman, I didn't tell her that it reflected my thoughts about her!

I'm quite liking that I'm doing these little things, too. It feels a gentle way to go about things.

 

So, I'm wandering around a local beauty spot this morning and I was just thinking about how much I've liked women over the years, and how into watching lesbian and gay themed movies and TV I've always been....etc etc. It wasn't unhealthy mulling, it was just random thoughts floating about. I smiled a lot, laughed sometimes at how I ever had ended up with men.

Then more thoughts came about why that might be. And one thing is that growing up and into my teens I had zero notion of what lesbianism was. I knew of no lesbians, never read anything that had lesbians in it, there was nothing on TV in the early eighties (I was a child so limited scope for watching TV even if there were lesbians around). From the mid 1980s I realised you could be gay if you were a man because there were so many TV programmes about AIDS, and there was the incident with a friend when I asked her what she would think if I was gay - but none of it ever made any sense to me at the time. I was incredibly confused! I must have discovered what lesbianism was at some point because by my early twenties women were all I could talk about!!! I remember rambling on at length about it to another friend.

I moved around a lot in my twenties, probably every six months, sometimes less, and sometimes I met people who became good friends and knew I liked women, other times not. In fact, just writing this down and I'm remembering having discussions about it with a couple of friends I made. And one time I worked with a totally out bisexual woman who kept talking about some other woman we knew and how she'd love to bare breasts with her. I remember going to the beach and going topless just me and this friend. I didn't fancy her at all, but it just felt like part of the lesbian experience somehow, not just the beach thing, but just being around her and talking about lovely breasts and trying to get off with other girls. And another friend from that time ended up going out with a woman. When we knew her she'd been with a guy.

Then when I settled down in one place I must have been out because another friend was telling me about the lgbt scene in a nearby city and where I could go to meet women. And I was even out as bi when I met my husband because he knew from the start.

But what I'm thinking now is that the men thing....I just never contemplated that I wasn't actually into men. It's making me laugh out loud right now whilst I'm typing this. It was all about the girls!!!! And I must just have assumed that men were the ones to settle down with because I never ever thought about settling down with a woman or contemplated it or even thought it was an option. But with men....there were times I knew certain guys liked me, but I just wasn't remotely interested in ever pursuing anything. It was like...in my head I had to settle down with a man, but for (now obvious) reasons I never made any move to make that happen.

I wonder why I was so dense. When my friends were all about Hugh Grant or Richard Gere or whoever, I was all about Kate Winslett or other women. Seriously, how could I have been so dim about this??????????? I've never been into men. Ever!

And now with my lovely colleague being the catalyst for me to remember who I actually am, I just feel so happy about meeting her even if nothing ever happens, because she's helped in the very final stages of getting over my marriage.

I now get my marriage. I met my ex husband when my mum had cancer, I was ill, and four of my close family had died in a very short space of time, plus my best friend had just been killed after falling down a flight of steps. I was very vulnerable, hurting and basically anyone who came along at that time and was nice to me, I would have fallen on in gratitude. I needed therapy, not a husband (who wasn't a very nice man once he thought he'd wooed me, but that's another story!).

Anyway tl;dr...... I'm not confused any more. Just joyful in this moment that it's all fallen into place, the whys and the wherefores. I understand now. I'm not going to waste any more time humming and hawing about being out. I will be out!

 

I've been mulling, and overeating as a result of mulling, ever since the first time I met my colleague and this all blew up! Thank god it was only 4 weeks ago!!!

I know I'll still have times where I'll wonder about stuff (especially about being married to a man), but I think for the most part I can move on now. *yippee*

 

Oh yes, totally, I was a bit swept away (not in a good way) after I met my colleague and everything just exploded in my head and I thought "WTF?!?!?!?" and "HELP!"

I think that's a good point you make about being afraid of your intense feelings. With men, I might have thought I was attracted, but there was an element of control. I've been obsessed by a couple of men since I divorced, but that's partly because they seemed to epitomise what I had decided was the kind of man I would settle down with, therefore I focused on them with that intent. (There was also an element of kickback from my marriage, I see that now, too.)