I've always said that I was so messily and chaotically Online™️ about coming out as #bi and being #kinky because no one that I could find was talking about these topics in a way that quite resonated with me. And I wanted to give voice to a lot of my feelings and struggles, if only because in being vocal about them, perhaps someone else who was struggling in the ways that I was could find them and at least feel a little bit less alone that I did. I felt like I couldn't give answers or closure or anything concrete like that, but there is at least some comfort in watching someone else wrestle with similarly difficult feelings and ambiguities. If nothing else, I wanted to give someone else that comfort.

And overall, the #kindness, #compassion and #gentleness that I received from so many people on this platform was truly generous! I feel a deep sense of gratitude to the Mastodon community, especially the #queer folks on this site, for your responses

Another thing that has helped me in getting to this point of #SelfAcceptance is #kink. Being into #BDSM is another huge part of my #sexuality that I denied and ignored for far too long, and for me at least, being #kinky and being #queer are closely tied together. There are multiple ways in which my #desires don't fit into what is mainstream, and while I think there are discussions to be had about whether kink is inherently queer, for me, it is. Accepting myself as kinky and accepting myself as bisexual and queer have gone hand-in-hand.

Plus, the kink community, by and large, has been, in my experience, much more accepting of the full range of experiences someone can have as a #bisexual, in a way that certain more maintsteam #LGBTQ spaces have, again, in my experience, not been. In many kink spaces, you are who you say you are. Full stop. There isn't the same gatekeeping I've faced in vanilla queer circles.

At least, in my experience, within the #kink community, there is a kind of #RadicalAcceptance that allows for a more diverse range of experiences around #sexuality, #desire and what #sex even is. So many vanilla #LGBTQ spaces I've been in have been overly concerned with being "the right kind" of #queer, whatever that means in a particular space. As a #bisexual who came out later in life, I felt like I was always failing at being whatever the "right" kind of queer might be.

In the kink community, most people, again, in my experience, aren't overly concerned with being the "right" kind of anything. They're more concerned with questions like, "Does this make you feel fulfilled and happy?" or "Does this feel authentically aligned with who you are and what you want?" or "Does this make you feel good without harming anyone else?" It's just been an entirely different way of thinking about and approaching the self and identity.

I began this thread with acknowledging that I was very messily online about my feelings around #ComingOut later in life as #bisexual, as #queer, because I wanted to leave something for someone else, anyone else, who might resonate with it. I was also doing it for my closeted self who wasn't able to grapple with those feelings.

I feel like this thread has been for my past self who was out but who was conflicted about her place in the #LGBTQ community, who was struggling with internalized #biphobia an a lot of #shame, and who was grieving who and what she could have been. I want to tell her it's okay. It's okay for her to feel all the confusion and grief and shame. I want to tell her that, even though she can't see it, there is a way through it all. It doesn't look like what she thinks it does. It's going to involve her shedding some maladaptive ways of thinking to deepen her understanding of love and of herself.