Today’s Video Story was collected on the 50-state Story Tour. Check out the blog where you can follow us on our adventure. If you haven’t submitted a story yet to IFD, or if you want to submit another one, I’d love to read and publish it. Write one up and send it in.
I’m from Hawaii, and it took me about 40 years to become a lesbian. I always knew I was attracted to girls but didn’t know what that meant or what that was and had never actually experienced anything and never even kissed a girl. Lived very religiously, and very straight, the way I was supposed to live. And as I got older, it just got harder and harder to repress it, and push it down and went through a year at 40 and thought “you know, it’s now or never, I don’t want to spend another 10 years and not experience what I think I should experience.” I went away. I left Hawaii and left my life behind and started over. I was in a really bad marriage and I knew I needed to change one way or the other. I needed to get out of this situation, so I thought because it had come up so prevalently, for so long, so powerfully, I thought this would be the perfect time to actually just go “try it.” I thought I should test drive the car before I actually commit to making the payments for 5 years, just in case, so, I test drove the car and it was like “hallelujah.” I couldn’t believe how comfortable and how intimate and pure, and I didn’t feel like the things before were wrong necessarily but I’d never felt what was right before. So it was like putting on this pair of strappy, sexy heels that were also super comfortable that you could hike in them. But they were so sexy, and so cute, so beautiful, it was a very, very fulfilling experience. So after that I thought, there’s no way I could go back to my old way of living, ever. I could never be straight again. And after a while I was really surprised how, eventually, people accepted me and loved me just for who I was. The ones that didn’t just went away because I no longer cared. As soon as I was confident and accepting of it myself, everything changed and I tell you, at forty something now I wish I’d had the confidence and the courage to do that at a young age. Living your truth is the ultimate ultimate way to live, regardless of where you live or how much money you make, or what you do, or who you’re involved with – living your truth, there’s nothing like it. There’s no comparison.
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