apparently, the 11th of octber is ‘national coming out day’. i debated writing this for two days. i debated this in part because i don’t want to upset or offend people who are still uncomfortable with the idea that some guys are attracted to other guys.
i used to be incredibly uncomfortable with this concept myself, and it too me a very long time to accept it and then appreciate how hard it is for people whose sexual preferences differ from the ones our society says are normal. i think a big reason it took me so long to come around was the fact that i was constantly told by gay rights supporters that i was a bigot, that i was afraid of gay people, or worse. i understand now that i wasn’t afraid of gay people – i was afraid of the possibility that i might be among their number, so much so that i would refuse to consider this a possibility.
now, anyone who knows me well is aware that i am kind of really attracted to women. probably moreso than is healthy, but i’m working on that…
anyhow, i’ve come to realize, in the past six months or so, that i’m also attracted to men on occasion. most of the internal debate over whether i should post this was about whether i was really comfortable with announcing this to the entire world, when i’m still trying to make sense of it to myself. in the end, though, i figured i had told some people, but not others, and that a lot of people i told might have been confused or had their doubts because i haven’t really talked about it much outside of certain circles.
the first time i became convinced that i was into guys was this spring. i was incredibly manic at the time, though, and when the mania subsided, so did the certainty that i had about my new-found sexual identity.
it resurfaced a bit in june – again during a manic episode – and then went away again after i calmed down and came back to reality. i have come to realize, after a lot of therapy, introspection, and meditation – especially during all the time i spent alone in kiev – that the intensely convincing (and usually wildly sexual) psychoses i can experience during manic episodes are the result of different parts of who i am ‘fighting it out’ with each other, trying to establish a sense of peace with one another.
for years, i really didn’t like a lot of the parts of who i was. i’ve always been very impulsive, which has gotten me into trouble on more than a few occasions. i hated myself for not being able to think through the possible implications of what i felt the strongest instinctive urge to do before i did it, instead of simply being convinced i was choosing the right course of action. i’ve always been wildly emotionally erratic, which has had me seriously considering, planning, or attempting suicide more times than i’d care to talk about. i hated myself for being too weak to deal with my emotions the same way everybody else seemed to be able to.
when the psyhcoses started getting more and more intense, i grew to hate the part of my mind that caused them more than anything else. they gradually moved from ‘i can save the world if it starts to get too bad’ to ‘i am communicating directly with the entire universe via my intuition and impulses’ to ‘i am going to cause the singularity by starting a spontaneous dance party in the streets, which will lead to a public orgy, and when everybody climaxes simultaneously, the resulting brain wave frequencies emitted will trigger a massive standing electromagnetic wave in the earth’s atmosphere, acting as a carrier frequency for all of the waves emitted by all sentient beings on the planet, and causing a global subconsciousness to wake up from its slumber. somehow this is connected to math, music, dna, recursive self reference, and zen buddhism. also, i’m going to do this RIGHT NOW!’
the more intense the psychoses became, the more convincing they were. i had auditory hallucinations whenever i heard white noise – which is all over the place – when you tear a sheet of paper, that ripping sound is white noise. when it rains heavily, that pouring sound is white noise. when you hear static on the radio, that is white noise. even the sound of urine tinkling in the toilet bowl as you pee is white noise – and for some reason that was usually the noise that i found most convincing. i was even convinced i could hear the noise of air molecules bumping into each other at random, and that in all of this noise were the voices of my friends and family, all telling me that they loved me and cared about me and that things in the world were going to be ok because i would make it all better.
when my logical mind would try to counter these thoughts by insisting that events like an orgy-induced electromagnetic atmospheric standing wave were impossible, the intuitive parts of my mind came up with physics-based explanations for how they could happen. the scariest part of all the psychoses was when i’d do so some research online to convince myself that what they were suggesting was impossible. i almost always found that the explanations were within the realm of plausibility, but very difficult to test. for example, i looked up the possiblity of a standing electromagentic wave in the earth’s atmosphere, and learned about the schumman resonances – standing electromagentic waves in the earth’s atmosphere, with frequencies predominately between 3 and 60 hz - the same frequency range as the waves emitted by our brains in various states.
so for months, i alternated between two wildly different thinking patterns. sometimes, i was a prophet whose purpose was to save the world from destroying itself by triggering the singularity and uniting all minds to a single consciousness, so that we would realize that we are all the same and stop fighting each other so much. other times, i was gradually losing my grip on my sanity and would eventually become one of the homeless people i walked by every day, covered in the stench of my own urine.
going to kiev and spending a lot of time alone in a new place, while starting to get into the groove of things at my new role as cto of a gaming startup – which was basically fulfilling a dream i’ve had my whole life – i started to make sense of things a lot better, with the help of a lot of meditation and therapy. i understand now that these psychoses were the parts of my mind that felt terrified of the world, constantly alone, and powerless to stop what i saw (and still see) as a worsening geopolitical and economic climate. when they realized that telling me i could make things better improved my mood and gave me hope for a bit, these parts of my mind started suggesting such things whenever i felt depressed, which was quite often. because i hated them for doing this, they felt more terrified, more alone, and more powerless – so they increased the frequency and intensity of their suggestions.
when i finally came to understand what was going on, i started talking to them whenever they made these suggestions to me. they answered back, not in words, but in feelings and intuitive notions. they confirmed my understanding, and i explained to them why what they were doing wasn’t helping and promised to listen to them more in the future, and to comfort them with love instead of getting angry at them for trying to help me. i also insisted that i would now see all of their suggestions about me being secretly omnipotent and unaware of the fact as coming from a place of fear and loneliness, instead of coming from the universe as a whole. i explained that doing so would prevent those thoughts from making me feel better, and allow me to address the fear and loneliness directly instead of running from it. as a result of those conversations, the thoughts of omnipotence have largely stopped, and when they do occur, i am neither persuaded by them, nor upset by them – i simply observe them for what they are and take the action necessary to comfort the part of me that is generating those thoughts.
with this new understanding of what was causing my psychoses, i went back and revisited my memories of being incredibly manic, and things really started to make sense. to this day, i am still unsure exactly which things i experienced were real, but misinterpreted by my mind as having incredible significance, and which things were simply hallucinations. the feelings of attraction to men, which only seemed to surface when i was manic, seemed to be coming from a place of desiring to be protected and saved from the dangerous and scary things in the world. i realized that the only men i’d been attracted to were older, seemed a lot wiser, and made a lot more money than me. i figured that the only reason these feelings ‘came out’ when i was manic was due largely to the fact that i knew i had never had the same desires and sensations about guys that i did about girls i was attracted to. because i was under the impression that being attracted to a person would always feel the same regardless of their gender, i never considered that i was into guys, until my desire and yearning for protection and wisdom from someone stronger and more experienced than myself came out in full force.
so … yeah… to sum it all up, i understand now that i am bisexual, and that i didn’t understand this for so long because my attraction to men is very different from my attraction to women. if this bothers or upsets you, please know that i have no intention of doing either of those things. instead of feeling angry or upset, i suggest that you have a conversation with the parts of yourself that are bothered or upset by knowing that i am who i am. ask them why they are upset, and what you can do to make them feel better. chances are, by doing so, you will improve your emotional well being significantly; you might even heal some emotional suffering that you never realized you were going through.
tl;dr: i have come to realize in recency, among other things, that i am bisexual. i am telling you not to make you feel uncomfortable or upset, but because i know a lot of people are aware that i’ve been going through some rough stuff lately, and i wanted to let you all know that i am doing much better as a result of understanding and accepting all of who i am.