Oh god, basically i’ve been hiding my sexuality at work, not even hiding it but straight up lying!! Honestly i just can’t get over it because it’s so out of character for me. I’ve always been extremelyyyyy out and proud, especially as a femme who doesn’t come off as “gay” I’m usually honestly kind of excited to tell people, i enjoy the reactions. When i started my job i had a team of 50 people, casual day shift factory work and of course i made sure to let any guy who tried to advance on me or even mention boyfriend to me know that i am 100% a lesbian. Even then i did get nervous telling some people just because i thought they might’ve treated me a little different but it was still nothing to hide.

Ah flash forward, my lovely job randomly switched me to a different department, night shift at that. I get throw into this tiny team of 7, all guys and i’m immediately told that everyone there is realllly good friends and that they’ve all been there 1-3 years. I honestly can come off a bit weird and people mistake my lack of talking for much more than it is, so i knew going into this new job that i had to grasp what kind of people these guys were before i showed my full personality, and honestly at the time that had nothing to do with me being gay, had anyone mentioned a boyfriend or something like that i would’ve just mentioned it but of course that didn’t come up day one. And i don’t know but it was by the second week that i had already overheard my 3rd blatantly unprovoked homophobic conversation. The one that got me and made me go oh- i probably will keep my sexuality to myself was when they decided to discuss lesbian sex and how stupid it is and how if women use dildos they obviously just want a dick.

There’s honestly lots of side information, like me butting heads with some of them when i started and overhearing then talk about me, some of them being rude to me, taking advantage of my good work ethic etc and just the fact that they’re all really good friends and it’s a tiny group it’s not easy to just stand up for myself and make myself an outcast when i’m going to be working with these guys 12 hours a day, i see them so much. i don’t care if they like me but i’d rather not have some of these particularly aggressive men know i’m a lesbian

As for lying, it’s been little things, like saying boyfriend instead of girlfriend when i talk about my ex

Alright but main story, last week one of my co workers, vince told me that a boy from a different department liked me. I told him i knew already bc someone else had told me the same thing. Then the next day vince started asking if i’m seeing anyone, and then starts saying i should talk to that guy. Obviously my reasoning for not wanting to is bc i like women, but I kept just laughing it off and i told him i don’t want to date anyone right now, i work too much to date, and that i don’t sleep around so that i won’t pursue anything with him. But he kept pushing and saying that i’m young and pretty and single and i should give that kid a chance since he likes me. So then i started saying “i don’t even know what he looks like” (everytime i’ve seen him he had a mask) then he of course finds a picture and asked if i thought he was cute and honestly he was extremely handsome! but i could never date a boy, more like handsome enough to fantasy cast in a book i’m reading. and that’s when i started stuttering and couldn’t really come up with a good another excuse for not wanting to talk to this cute guy who had my same work schedule and likes me. And vince just kept pushing. Ah god i’m an idiot. It was such a dumb 5 minute back and forth conversation all because i won’t say i’m gay. When i walked away i said to please not tell the guy anything (since i said he was handsome) because i didn’t want him to come up to me and he just kept saying he was going to “say something “ and just ugh!!! i should’ve stood up for myself. That was last week. Today i kind of blew my cover, after just having a heated discussion over why black people don’t like doja cat and lil nas x (his reasoning for lil nas x being that black people stopped fw lil nas after he came out and said old town road was about two men and that black people don’t like gay people who hide that they’re gay) Literally not even 10 minutes after that we’re just talking about socials and twitter and for some reason snap chat comes up and he was talking about somethingggg and without saying anything he just handed me his phone with snap search on so i assumed that meant to add myself, while he’s still talking i put my user in and add myself and hand the phone back to him in a swift 5 seconds and when i do i kind of paused because i remembered my contact name on snapchat is “ari 🏳️‍🌈 “ and he stopped what he was saying and i saw him look at the name for a second then went back to talking and i was just like man ari. i think that was karma for not being my true little authentic gay self