Saturday, 12.17.2016 - 12:05 pm.
My PhD issues didn't get any better after my last entry. I didn't get any more participants for this year. When I return from the holidays, on January 6th, I have the massive burden of going after hundreds, literally hundreds of people to beg them to be part of my studies. I'm really looking forward to having data but NOT looking forward to the long and winding road that has to lead me to that.
I am happy, however, to be on holiday. We had the Psych Department Holiday Party on Thursday night and it went well. It was my first time being part of a committee and organizing such a thing. It helped that there was someone else who took on matters on her own hands, though, I just played support.
I was supposed to keep working on Friday but really, there wasn't much to do. Instead, Andrew and I went to see Rogue One. I spent the day feeling really tired from the party last night, but I was also looking forward to a get-together with Chilean women in the evening. The first one was great, slightly eye-opening to me, privately, and I was hoping this one would be equally enjoyable. It was not. It was painfully disappointing. The most cringing conversations for me were those about shaming 14-year-olds for wearing a lot of make-up, and their endless complaints about how this country is, well, not like their own country.
I mostly nodded last night. I looked women in the eye as they spoke but I wasn't paying attention to what they were saying. Except to a few: one who is very laid-back and understanding (it may help that she's feminist); my friend N, who is like my friend Virginia and is also very relaxed and tends not to judge others based on petty stuff; and S, for two reasons. One, she comes from Mexico; these get-togethers of Chilean people have also a few Mexican guests who are part of the community, and culturally I feel closer to the latter than to the former. Second, she's gorgeous and sweet. My crush M didn't show up this time, and if it wasn't for S, perhaps I would have left earlier. I should have, really, but, well, shit.
A week or so after discussing something I've mentioned in this diary with my friend Virginia, she sent me this with the sole message: "Scientific accuracy". My train of thought after looking at that (besides smiling and having small hearts floating around my head) went like this: I wasn't sure what my friend was trying to say to me, but then again, I thought that uncertainty was much like the woman in the interview. My friend sent me that but she did not have the answer for me, or at least I think she'd say that. But I've asked, I've felt the need to ask and I gave myself the obvious answer over and over, and it just did not feel right to me.
So I asked again.
I've answered the question.
I am bisexual.
I cannot explain what came after saying that. It was like that satisfying moment when a Tetris piece fits and matches and all the blocks cluttering your screen disappear. I felt happy, I swore my face started glowing. I felt in peace, I felt a lot of things now made sense. I felt I made sense.
All that in case I had overlooked the fact that one of my earliest memories is having fun being on top of a girl (she was the daughter of a friend of my mom's? And we were playing, I think, based on the running around before falling, and the vague dialogue that memory echoes). Or that my first heartbreak came in 8th grade from losing my best friend of four years to another girl, and suffering from their lesbian-like affair for years (the other girl, best friend of mine as well, is a lesbian but came out years after that), kind of like I suffered with Joseph less than a decade later. Or feeling invisible for boys and for girls for so long, since middle school. Or thinking of a friend from my last years of university as my Art School Girlfriend, like the Stone Temple Pilots song. I won't mention the browser history in the rare occasions that I explored porn, or half the contents and the people of my sexual fantasies.
That last one bit, I thought it was normal, like, "everybody does". Then again, I always thought sex with penetration hurting like it was rape was normal.
Heteronormativity wrecked my sex life, the musical.
I've felt the need to tell Andrew. I've felt the need to explain to him why our bedroom activities are becoming more frequent and more pleasing (bear in mind that my questioning didn't start last week). I've wanted to explain that my good mood, regardless of my PhD woes, not only come from the holidays or traveling to see my family. I've felt more confident and happy with myself these days.
I don't know how he'd take it. I was telling my friend Virginia that he has helped me to "unwreck" many of my issues like very few men in this world could, because of the way he is. But then this news may be asking too much of him. This week we ran into his second supervisor in the elevator, and, still reeling from the fresh air that I did not have while inside the closet, I told him afterwards "she's very good looking". He looked at me surprised and confused, like my comment came out of nowhere. Which probably did.
I'm also afraid that no one would believe me if I told. Sure, my friend Virginia knows better and she does, but I indeed lack the street cred, the empirical evidence. I imagine telling Joseph, for often he remains a harsh voice in my head, and he just laughs at me. Nevermind that I used to joke that I wanted to hook up with his wife to get back at him, or how focused I was on her looks, and not always to compare to me but to get a taste of them. So I can't really come out. I have nothing tangible to show for it.
The reason why I was so looking forward to last night's get-together with the women was hard for me to explain. I couldn't say what was that thing that made me enjoy the first one so much and had me with high hopes for the second one. I've never been a social person, why would I go to these things? Then I realized it was because I enjoyed feeling not heterosexual for a while. I don't mean hooking up, but I can't help looking at guys and girls, and finding a few that I'd like to get close to. I wouldn't "get close" to anyone, I'm married, but you don't lose your sexual orientation with marriage.
Anyway. I know this self-awareness process involves many factors, but I feel I owe most of it to the story I'm writing, specifically, to one character that helped me faced a part of me that has been invisible for so long. That character was not supposed to be me. Hell, it was supposed to be not me. Now I feel I owe him my life. He set me free, the way someone else set him free in the story.
This is all so strange and funny and scary and happy.
Anyway! I'm traveling to Houston on Tuesday. I'm excited but I have a few things to do to prepare for the trip, so I'll go get my hands on that. I'll write again before Christmas, from the other side, my side of the pond.