When I was growing up, words like “gay” and “fag” weren’t about identity or love. They were weapons, used for a punchline. A way to get a laugh by cutting someone down.
Everyone knew the rule: if you were anything other than straight, you were fair game.
Back then, no one talked about being bisexual. I didn’t even know it was a thing. In my world, you were either straight or gay. There was no room for anything in between. No space for people like me to exist.
So I did what a lot of people did. I buried it.
I told myself it didn’t matter. I knew I liked women, but there was something else there. Something I didn’t have language for. Something I definitely didn’t feel safe naming. With no examples and no one to talk to, staying quiet felt like survival.
I remember the questions looping in my head late at night.
Why do I feel this way?
What does this mean about me?
Am I broken?
When you don’t have anyone you trust enough to ask those questions out loud, they get heavier. Silence turns into shame. And shame convinces you that you’re alone, that you’re the only one who feels this way, and that something must be wrong with you.
It took me a long time to stop running from that part of myself, and I won’t pretend I did it alone. My wife’s support mattered more than I can ever fully explain. There wasn’t a big, dramatic “aha” moment, just a slow, sometimes painful unlearning of everything I’d been taught about what was acceptable, normal, or allowed.
Eventually, it clicked: the problem was never me. It was the narrow box the world kept trying to force me into.
The day I stopped trying to justify who I am was the day I realized how much air I’d been holding in my lungs. There’s a quiet kind of peace that comes from letting yourself exist without hiding. From letting yourself love who you are for the first time in your life.
Today, I don’t feel the need to split myself in half or sand down parts of who I am. I’m proud of myself. I’m proud to say I’m bisexual, not because it defines me, but because it’s a part of me I once locked away out of fear.
If you’re reading this and you’re stuck in that quiet, uncertain place, wondering if something is wrong with you, let me say this clearly: there isn’t. You’re not broken. You don’t owe clarity on anyone else’s timeline, and you don’t owe anyone an explanation for what feels true to you.
I used to think hiding was easier. It isn’t.
Nothing is heavier than pretending to be someone you’re not.
So here I am, not hiding, not apologizing, and not confused.
I’m just me. And that’s enough.
This article was originally published on Ethan Wechtaluk’s Substack. Republished on TANTV News with permission.
