24 M One of my earliest memories was when I was maybe 4 and I refused to drink cough syrup my mom was trying to give me, I didn’t like the taste. My dad heard me crying about this to my mom, got angry, walked in shirtless, flexed his arm and grabbed his bicep and yelled. “You gotta be strong!” That imprinted in my mind forever.

Since then my mom told me stories how when I was a kid I would wear dresses with my sister, which I remember doing, (I thought it was fun and funny.) She told me how my dad would be really concerned and ask the daycare teachers if my behavior was “normal,” (straight.) Said he’d get upset regularly about my behavior when I was small.

I was oblivious to his fears of me being gay till I was older. As far as who I was attracted to, it was women. Really early on I had two “girlfriends” in 2nd grade. Started watching straight porn when I was 9 after accidentally stumbling across a porno on the internet. Had a “girlfriend” in fifth grade. Crushes in middle school. Three girlfriends in high school. Im hypersexual, have done stuff with like 12 girls in person and 20 online. Yeah, my pattern of liking women continued.

(Btw, I’m ashamed of how many people I’ve done stuff with. Only cause my intentions were never to be a hypersexual person, I always wanted to find true love but I used sexual flings to temporarily and barely fill my heart.)

As far as other people thinking I’m gay, throughout high school, in community theater, in college, when I was in the army, just like 6 weeks ago on my birthday I was asked. I remember when I was around 14ish my best friend told me his parents bet I would come out as gay at some point.

There was one time when I was 17, my guy best friend and I hung out all summer together. We worked together as lifeguards and he lived by the pool so we hungout and slept over 24/7 that summer. I remember watching him the one morning thinking, yanno, I could marry this guy. We were just best friends and really happy. But interestingly, I couldn’t imagine us doing sexual things together. I’m not sexually attracted to men. Could I imagine kissing him, maybe. Still feel uncomfortable about that, but I think I could’ve.

The truth is, I could love a man. But generally I am not attracted to men and 7 years after this summer, I haven’t had that feeling about any other guy. I don’t really want to.

All in all, I’ve felt disappointed in people I look up to that questioned if I was straight or not just cause Im odd. I kind of beat to my own drum as they say. It’s not that I would care about their opinion if I was gay, but I think what hurts is that people are judging me without really even getting to know me. Including my dad.