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I wish I was straight.
It hurts to admit that. But I wish I could be the person people would accept without making me explain or defend myself.
I don’t trust men. I’ve never felt drawn to their bodies, and sex has been painful for me. I remember being married to a man and feeling so depressed that I couldn’t even bring myself to laugh. I can’t pretend that going back would make me happy.
But being honest about who I am has been lonely- isolating even. My family has basically disowned me. I feel like I have no one, and I need help. Help making rent. Help keeping myself together. Someone I can lean on without: feeling like needing them means there’s something wrong with me.
Sometimes I feel like I’m not a capable adult. I don’t understand why everything feels so hard or why being alone scares me so much. I’m already struggling, and then there’s the fear of how people will treat me if they find out I’m gay.
I hardly ever say it out loud. When people make comments, I stay quiet. When they make my girlfriend and me feel unwelcome, I swallow it. There’s so much I never say because I’m afraid speaking up will make things worse.
At my child’s track meet, a man started making fun of me as soon as my girlfriend walked away. He told the people beside him that I was disgusting. I just wanted to watch my child run. I moved down toward the track to get away from him, because I wanted to stay for her.
That moment stays with me. I’m afraid to go out in public. I’m afraid of being noticed, of being judged, of another ordinary day turning into something I have to recover from.
Sometimes that fear comes out as “I hate being gay.” I hate how people look at me. I hate how my family treats me. I hate feeling like acceptance is something I have to earn by hiding.
I want to feel normal. I want to pay my rent, laugh, love someone, and watch my child run without being afraid. I want to go to the mall with my family or out to dinner like a normal person. Not order everything delivered so no one will look at us or worse try to hurt us. I’m afraid for my daughter- the other girls say they aren’t allowed to play with her because of me. I assume she’s not afraid that I’m gay and most likely tells people and I feel compelled to coach her on how to stay quiet.
I don’t know how to make everything better. I just know I’m tired, I’m lonely, and I need help. I wish I could say that and be met with kindness.

So a lot of things are going on in my life right now ( I got the job but I'm waiting for my joining it's been 6 months sitting at home, I feel so depressed because I have no friends in my home town, and there is a lot happening in my family as well) . All these things are draining me so much that I feel my head will burst one day, i can't even express what i feel to anyone, it's not like I don't have people but i don't feel like sharing. It feels like feelings are frozen inside me and i can't let them out even if I want.I am scared for my future I don't wanna ruin someone' s life pretending something which I am not, but looking at things happening in my family I can't leave them behind, my parents won't be able to handle all things alone so they will force me to marry eventually, i can feel that pressure from quite a few time. Btw I am not out and i don't think they will ever accept me ( I'm from haryana tho and Jaat). what should I do? What should I feel? What should I ignore? I feel guilty of thinking about myself because there is no one to look after my parents and sad because I don't wanna live a life that's not mine. I don't even know what i need right now a suggestion, advice or just let things happen around me.

Your authentic self is worthy of love from others and yourself. You don't need anyone's permission to exist in an authentic way. 💛💛💛

Im really struggling. Im 19 year old male in 3rd year university. I feel absolutely nothing. For the past decade ever since I started getting bullied for being gay, I changed who I am. I hid from my emotions, cut off any potential connections I could make by isolating, changed the way I walked, deepened my voice. Now that years have past, I am stuck as a person I dont want to be, still isolated, depressed, hopeless, and hollow. I feel absolutely nothing. Sometimes, I will feel a burst of envy for the life that I felt I was promised as a kid. It happened last week. I almost called the suicide hotline. I didn't because I didn't want to have the situation escalate and have real world consequences. I decided I would buy a rope and just keep it in my room for if I ever build up the energy and courage to actually do it. I never ended up even buying the rope in the first place.

There is no life inside of me. There is no love inside of me. There is just fog and a mask I hide behind. I tried coming out, but it doesnt fit. I still feel no connection to anything. I dont even know if im gay, straight, asexual, queer, or whatever because I am not connected to begin with. Every single day, thoughts and dysphoria about my sexuality arise. I dont know if sexuality dysphoria exists, but if it does, I have it. Every day, I masturbait to porn and instagram, building parasocial relationships up in my head to fill the sheer loneliness I feel. I dont know why figuring my sexuality out is such an issue for me. I feel like its torn away connection from me and if I can solve my sexuality, then I can solve my loneliness. I just feel like I cannot move forward in uncertainty because my body wont open itself up. Im just hollow. The fog is stuck. I dont know if I can properly diagnose the issue here or articulate my struggles well enough. I just have no one and I dont know what to do. It seems very hopeless.

I have been going to CBT for the last 3 years. Been on SSRI's for the past year. Ive tried going to LGBTQ clubs on campus and around the city on a daily basis. Ive tried being honest with family and friends. Some are accepting... of the minimal stuff I can actually articulate to them. Frankly, none of these things helped. I feel like im where I started. Ive tried.

I dont really know what is compelling me to make this post. I dont expect answers or a response. I am just writing to get some insight about myself. Your input would be valuable. Thanks for reading.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so lost that I’m running to Reddit for advice. I pray this doesn’t get lost in this channel because I seriously need some guidance.

For context I, (F, 17) and my best friend, (F, 17) were in a long term relationship for 3 years. THREE YEARS. We knew from the get go when we started dating that her dad was incredibly homophobic, maga, racist, and Republican but we didn’t care. We were 14 and we loved each other and we thought that was enough. And it was for a little while until EVERYTHING crumbled.

Around mid July this year her dad discovered that she is lesbian and dating me and he flipped his shit. He accused me of so many terrible things such as g(rape), SA, and coercing her into dating me. He also accused my parents of grooming her because they provided her a safe place to go and support. He then claimed her sexuality was a trauma response from the grief she experienced after losing her mom in 2023. (However that excuse of his makes no sense because we started dating 2 months before her mom passed away.) We tried to make it work for around 2 months but our relationship was really struggling. We were arguing a lot because she wasn’t able to process what happened and move forward. I admit, it was hard for me to understand her situation because I come from an incredibly accepting, democratic family, but still. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for her to accept that her dad was (and is) a bigot.

Anyway, fast forward to now, we’ve agreed that we need to just be friends so that she can work on her relationship with her dad but here’s the problem: he doesn’t want to fix the relationship. She’s tried so many things. She’s tried to have conversations with him constantly that he repeatedly shuts down. For weeks she had been pushing for family therapy and when they finally got into their first session, he immediately wanted to quit and find another therapist because the one they met was affirmative of her identity. He immediately wanted to find a conversion therapist or someone through their incredibly conservative church. Just today, she sent him a website with resources for Christian parents of LGBTQ+ children to work through things. It was basically an online support group and he told her, be, verbatim, “I don’t like websites like these because they try to push you towards acceptance and I am not going to accept you.” ..like what the fuck!???

Here’s where I come in: I’ve been her girlfriend for the majority of my teenage life. I don’t know how to not be deeply involved in her life because we still love each other so much, we just can’t be together right now. So I’ve been holding her hand through all of this, guiding her through her conversations with her dad as best I can over the phone, searching for and offering her resources, (I found the online support group she sent him) and overall being her rock. I love being her rock I never wanna not be there for her but I think I’ve become too involved. She’s a chronic people pleaser, it’s so hard to get that girl to stand up for herself, her dad is incredibly manipulative and it works on her every single time, she has no agency, she will literally ask everyone around her what she should do, when something bad happens she spirals and I have to talk her out of it. She’s keeps saying how much she hates her life and wants to kill herself and I’m frankly really scared that if I start to detach myself from this situation and attempt to let her figure this out on her own, she’s gonna crash and burn and I’m gonna lose her forever. But at the same time, I’m really exhausted. Between school, college apps, and managing her situation, I have barely any time for myself. I miss when things were easy for us. I miss her so much. I wish none of this happened and I have no idea how to save both of us from drowning.

if anyone has advice for my situation please send it. Even if it’s small. I’m desperate

I hate the way I feel towards the lgbtq+. My family is very religious but also homophobic. They believe any form of same sex relationships or lgbtq+ is a sin and that if you become one, ultimately you will burn in hell. Unlike my whole family, I have an odd fascination towards the lgbt and fully support them. I just don’t understand why in the Bible it says that same sex relationships are wrong and that you will go to hell for it when it is something as simple as being with someone you love regardless of gender. It makes me afraid I will burn in hell for even supporting it, writing about it, questioning why it is deemed as wrong, and questioning if I might have attraction to the same sex myself.

A year back I made the mistake of telling my siblings about a novel I was writing about a gay couple. I didn’t think they would tell our parents but during service they told my dad that I was writing a gay novel and I got so scared and denied it. He said I better not be writing disgusting stuff like that and I agreed that I would not. Since then I have kept my feelings towards the lgbtq+ a secret, but I don't know what to do because they all know about me writing a novel and how it's my dream to be a great author one day. I wanna share my accomplishments with them, but if I ever do that will make them come close to finding out what my novel is really about. And it's not as easy as just cutting them off because I genuinely do love them and want to make them happy but questioning my own sexuality and even interacting with or writing about the lgbtq will immediately make them disgusted and unhappy with me. I'm also scared I will go to hell for this because I love God so much but this one feeling is hindering me and I'm just sad and it really makes me depressed. I know this might sound homophobic and I'm sorry but I wish I wouldn't feel this way. I wished I was normal and I hate it. I have nobody to talk to about this and just wanted to get this off my chest.

I'm posting this because statistically, the chances of coming across an Iraqi trans woman are like 0.1%. We’re pretty much an invisible demographic, both in real life and online. Half the time it feels like no matter where I share my story, the algorithm buries it, people scroll past, or I just get ignored like I don't exist. But I'm writing this anyway because I need to get this off my chest.

People think that once you live in Michigan, transitioning is straightforward. They have no idea what it actually means to exist in that tiny fraction of a percentage—coming from a strict, conservative Arab background, dealing with severe gender dysphoria, surviving family abuse, and trying to rebuild your life out of nothing.

Growing up Iraqi in a community like Dearborn when your mind and soul are female is suffocating. The traditional expectations control every single part of your life. Having severe dysphoria isn't just "not liking how you look." It’s this heavy, constant grief of watching male puberty force changes onto your body while you're completely helpless to stop it. You spend years hiding behind a mask because saying anything out loud in Dearborn doesn't bring understanding—it brings hostility, rejection, and severe domestic abuse.

When my family realized they couldn't force me to fall in line, things escalated at home. And when abuse didn't break me, they weaponized the system against me through false psychiatric commitments. In Michigan, hostile family members can file emergency petitions to have transport or cops haul you off to a hospital ward. Instead of seeing an abused trans woman in crisis, the medical staff just took my family's side. Being forcibly locked in a psych unit and stripped of my autonomy just for standing up for my identity was extremely traumatic. They treated my normal reaction to abuse as "instability."

On top of that, so many people who swore they had my back completely let me down. When I was in deep crisis, people gave me all the usual line—"I'm here for you," "I'll help you get out," "You can count on me." But the second things got real and I actually needed emergency help or housing, every single one of them made excuses and vanished. It taught me the hard way that at the end of the day, I'm the only one who is going to fight for my life.

Despite the abuse, the hospital trauma, the broken promises, and the severe dysphoria, I survived. I got out of that environment. I'm living at a shelter now, taking control of my life, and focusing strictly on what matters to me—my HRT, my voice, getting laser hair removal covered through hospital networks like U-M Health, and eventually bottom surgery.

I know this post might get ignored by the algorithm or lost in the feed like usual. But if another trans woman happens to scroll past this: you aren't crazy, and you aren't alone.

Thanks for reading this and understanding my situation hopefully things get better from here on out for all of us since we're all human. 🙏

(I am not transphobic I am not homophobic I am not Anti-LGBTQ+. I am just a teenager who wants to share her experiences)

Hello I’m a high schooler and recently I’ve started to realize that I struggle a lot with calling people their correct pronouns. I only discovered about the LGBTQ+ community about 2 years ago (idk how I didn’t learn about the community before-) and even though I’m still confused about a lot of the things like gender and pronouns I try my best to understand, learn and adjust to what people are comfortable with. A lot of my friends are lesbian and/or non binary etc. and sometimes I don’t get it when people call themselves “lesbian” when they are non-binary. It’s things like this that I’m confused about😭I’m not trans phobic I’m not homophobic or anything else I’m genuinely confused and stressed that I’m not doing enough to support the people around me. Most of my friends recently came out as non-binary and I don’t know how it’s so easy for other people to immediately change the pronouns they use for them. Because for me, I’ve been calling them she/her for as long as I can remember and the sudden change of pronouns just slows my brain a lot, I have to change she/her to they/them in every single sentence and sometimes I catch myself still calling them by she/her. I guess to me, they’re still a girl. And I feel terrible for thinking that. It makes me think that I am not even trying to acknowledge their new identity. But also we are in an all girls school so I wonder to myself how it makes sense that you come to this school meant for girls but you’re non binary. Also, I have to change to she/her in-front of their parents and teachers, that makes it even more confusing. I just feel so stressed and anxious every single day and I’ve been talking less and less because I’m scared I’ll mess up again. And I’ve seen so many people having different kinds of pronouns that I’ve never even heard of in my life on social media, like : die, pup, star or zem. I genuinely feel like I cannot blend it into my vocabulary for one person and change the way I’ve been talking my whole life. Like “Die made it die self” I don’t think I can constantly say that in every conversation about that person. And sometimes I can’t even call them a “person” because that organism doesn’t identify as a person. I’m sorry if I offended anyone but trust me I’m trying. I practice in my bedroom mirror every night before bed but I still stumble on my words. Sometimes I think I should just stop talking completely. I hope you guys can share some of your own experiences if you have any or give me some advice or anything. Just please don’t tell me to talk to a therapist I can’t afford one.❤️

Hi I'll try and keep this short, I'm a young man in a semi open relationship(she likes the thought of me being with other men or women)(she also wants to be included with women but not guys) I am openly bi and polyamorous, I live in a small town with a decent amount of gay people, lately more and more I've been thinking I would like to be sexually with a man.i don't present as gay or anything, I use the f word(just in jest with, very ,very close friends) I was called it growing up "jokingly" I told my gf if u was to hookup with a man that's all she would know just base"I slept with a dude" and I'm not curious ik damn well I'm bi and have had very sexual experiences with both the female and male gender. Anyways I'm finally gonna be meeting with someone discreetly and all I feel is like I'm disgusting(ik there's nothing wrong with it) I just feel ashamed and I can't help it, my family is decent with the LGBTQ stuff but they made alot of jokes growing up and I'm really worried it ruined part of my self esteem. I just feel that I wanted to have fun with another safe consenting man but all I feel is guilt, my gf knows I flirt with other people and trust me completely and we both want this but I can't help but feel disgusted with myself and I hate that I feel that way, there is nothing wrong with love,sex,lust,LGBTQ but I just can't stand to think if it got out, even though I'm openly bi and have had public boyfriends

What should I do?

Before I get this started let's be clear. I identify as a bisexual male with heteronormative, hetero-romantic preferences so I am not coming at this from an angle of huge difference. I've dated men/women before who were professed lesbians/bisexual/gay and I've dated trans women. The key differences is there personalities/identities as people didn't seem entrenched in any queer communities or initiatives, they were just great and attractive people at least in my eyes.

This brings me to my situation. I recently ended a relationship with a woman who identified as bisexual. Ok cool. She also was heavily involved in the LGBTQIA+ community, active politically and socially. I thought at first I had no problem with this and I didn't. It wasn't until around our 3rd encounter as dating partners when she asked me if I'd like to attend a pride event, if not she would invite a friend, I am an extremely busy student and I work, I told her to go with the friend. I did stop by the event after asking her if she'd like a quick coffee before I went to work she said sure. I was introduced to some woman she was with, which at the time made me feel uncomfortable. I had found out later that she had been intimate and had a history with this woman. I already felt betrayed, well maybe not betrayed but I certainly got angry. How could someone be so inconsiderate? To have made your new dating prospect interact with a former partner/friend/interest. What bothers me is that the disclosure should have been made before this happened not after so I could properly communicate my boundaries.

Ever since then in the 4 months we've dated she has on three major occasions attempted to interject some female friend/ former interest into our plans, most notably our date nights/occassions and I felt forced to protest this idea given the circumstances of how uncomfortable it was making me. I could not be polyamorous with this person and she communicated she is not polyamorous so that's fine but didn't feel that way to me.

Call me what you want but I will not be dating anyone in the future that is actively or politically involved in the community and if they are I had better be more careful in expressing my boundaries and what I want because it was becoming clear that intrigue/fantasy/ same sex companionship/past relationships were important to this woman and that wasn't discussed in a way that made the relationship safe for me.

Hi everyone ❤️

I’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment to read this story and support this campaign if you can.

Two women are trying to find a safe way to be together and build a life without fear.

If you can’t donate, please share the campaign with your friends. Even one share can make a difference.

https://gofund.me/12741c64d

Love is love. ❤️ Please help if you can.

Hi everyone ❤️

I’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment to read this story and support this campaign if you can.

Two women are trying to find a safe way to be together and build a life without fear.

If you can’t donate, please share the campaign with your friends. Even one share can make a difference.

https://gofund.me/12741c64d

Love is love. ❤️ Please help if you can.

We werent close i write a whole thing but it got deleted so, they were nonbinary and i always respected that, but in my head i always just think of them as a girl, cuzz im closeted and is like i never really live my identity out loud even thout "i dont hide it" i cannot not masc or pretend cuzz my parent are terrible with lost of stuff and already sont respect who am i just because im not an actress as they ae i like science. Geology. So i feel guilty that they off themselfs because am closeted and in my head i cannot close off the issue of identity of them being nonbinary, like i get it in my public self, but is my heart that just cannot like live up to that so im not fully respecting, and ik am making it about me and im awful and stuff might happen in their life, and idk, and all the love ones that i talk also feel dissapoint and just with despair of no having them and my guild is just an excuse to feel connected to them, but idk, is like i wasnt there you know, i been so depressed the last couple of years and lot happen, and i stop going to the pride march as we used to, and we were never that close actually they were awfull to be lots of litle times with litle stuff, but i loved them, so i feel is like i betrayel them, like i didnt saw them, cuzz is true, i was and im so lost in my own depression that i lost contact to what used to get us together, and i feel it might also being because of me cuzz them have me block, and my sister, wel my sister actually truly fuck up with tem, she was their friend firs, and the last 3 years she was dating the ex of them, and like idk, so much there just not ok, she truly did numbers in everybody, but this is not about her, is about how i might have been just void in they to push they, and is haunting me, like i hate they cuzz i know also they off themselfs cuzz they were bored, they didnt want to face adut life cuzz it meant being even less messy and less of a rebel, less free, less of themrself more of self preservation and boring shit and i know they hated it, is so idk, it was like everything come apart cuzz how did they have the nerve, it just so ridiculous me saying all this stuff, maybe i just what should i do?

My parants dont call me by my prefered name what do I do. So I M16 my prefered name is loona and my deadname dont fukin mater so I tell my parants my prefered name and they say I'll get bullied for it and constantly say are you sure you want looba and not luca or something more masculine they say loona is associated with cats and the moon but its also a girls name yeah? If you have any solutions please help my femboy ass out (and if this is the wrong community tell me where to post dis thank ya)

I’m writing this because I need to lay my absolute truth out in the open. I know how easy it is to feel invisible online—I’ve made posts before that felt like they just screamed into the void while everyone scrolled past. But today, I am putting this here for myself, for the record, and for anyone else who feels like life threw them into an absolute furnace from the day they were born.

If someone had told me years ago what my life path would look like, I wouldn't have believed a human being could survive it. Looking back at the sheer volume of trauma I’ve endured, it feels almost unreal that I am still here, breathing, and typing these words:

• Abuse at Home: I grew up in an environment where the very people who were supposed to protect, raise, and love me were the ones inflicting physical, emotional, and psychological abuse.
• Relentless Bullying & Assault: From pre-school all the way through high school, school wasn't a place of learning—it was a warzone. I was relentlessly targeted, bullied, and physically assaulted throughout my life.
• Near-Fatal Trauma: I survived life-threatening violence in Iraq, coming inches away from being beaten to death.
• Betrayal by Systems Built to Help: When I reached out for safety, the institutions failed me repeatedly. School staff looked the other way or blamed me. Local police mistreated me instead of protecting me. I was falsely hospitalized and thrown into psychiatric wards four separate times for things I never even did, just because systems didn't know how to handle a traumatized kid in crisis.
• The Trap of Manipulative Environments: I fought tooth and nail to escape my abusive environment, only to be manipulated, dragged back in, and forced to break free all over again.
• Severe Mental Health Battles: I carried the crushing weight of chronic depression, severe suicidal ideation, and multiple suicide attempts while feeling completely alone in the dark.
• Friendship Abandonment & Betrayal: Perhaps one of the sharpest stings was when people did step into my life to help. Friends would come along, offer a lifeline, and make me feel safe—only to get overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of my situation, pull away, and completely abandon me right when I needed them most. Being dropped by the people you trusted to be your safety net leaves a scar that's hard to describe.
• Living in Survival Mode Under High T: On top of all this external hell, I was fighting severe internal gender dysphoria. My body was forced to run on high testosterone, forcing me into a deep voice, unwanted physical changes, and a permanent state of "boy mode" fight-or-flight just to survive my daily surroundings.

For years, I asked myself the same burning question: Why me? Why did everything have to be so brutal, so unfair, and so non-stop? Why couldn't I just have ONE good thing happen?

I used to think I was cursed. But going through all of this made me realize something fundamental: I wasn't cursed. I was a child trapped in the splash zone of dangerous, toxic people and utterly broken systems. I had no control, no legal authority, and no safe foundation. When you are in constant, catastrophic crisis, even well-meaning friends burn out and walk away because they don't have the strength to stand in the fire with you.

And the truth is, the battle isn't magically over.

Even today, I am still navigating rough environments. I am still dealing with shelter systems, hostile surroundings, and the daily friction of being in spaces where I have to walk on eggshells and fight to be seen for who I am. Bad things still happen, setbacks still hit me, and there are days where it feels like the universe is testing just how much more weight I can carry. It is exhausting to feel like you're still dodging obstacles when you've already paid a lifetime's worth of dues.

But despite still being in the thick of it, fundamental things HAVE shifted.

Over the past few months, I took back the steering wheel. I escaped the abusive home that was draining my soul. I accessed emergency resources, fought for shelter, and started HRT.

Within the first month of starting HRT, a miracle happened: the 24/7 background noise in my brain finally shut off. For the first time in my entire existence, I felt a baseline of real mental clarity and peace. Dropping that testosterone-fueled survival mode allowed my nervous system to drop its guard.

I realized recently that the rude words, judgments, or cold actions of other people don't affect me anymore. It’s not because I’m unfeeling—it’s because after surviving literal torture, institutional betrayal, total abandonment, and ongoing daily struggle, cheap insults just bounce right off the armor I forged in the fire.

It is 100% unfair that I had to become "impossible-level strong" just to earn a baseline of safety, and it's unfair that I still have to deal with rough environments today. I deserved a peaceful childhood, loving guardians, reliable friends, and early protection. I didn't get any of that. But despite every single institution, person, and circumstance trying to destroy me, they failed.

I am still standing. My name is Tahlia. I am taking control of my life, navigating these rough surroundings day by day, stepping into my true womanhood, and working toward my own permanent space surrounded by real advocates who respect me.

If you are reading this and you feel abandoned, broken, or trapped in an environment that is killing your spirit while bad things keep happening: please keep fighting. You shouldn't have to be this strong, but the strength you are building right now is the very thing that will carry you to your ultimate freedom.

I survived hell, I am fighting through today's rough edges, and I am taking my life back step by step.