feeling lost like I have no place in the lgbt community or the world in general

[Biami]

I'm a 23 year old woman who has only recently recognized my preference for women and have not yet come out except to a few close people. I essentially am unidentified. I've spent so much of my life dating men that I feel uncomfortable and not entitled to use the word lesbian to describe myself so if I had to I would say I'm bi but only date and interested in dating women. I'm attracted to men but really have no desire to sleep with them, I just feel like I can only be both romantically and physically attracted to women at this point in time, but I don't know if that could change someday because I was at one time attracted to men.

 

Anyway, here is my problem. I have no gay/lesbian friends. Hell I barely have any straight friends these days. I grew up in a really small town raised by immigrant parents who are not tolerant at all. We were really poor and my father was an alcoholic and my mother worked all the time so I was sort of on my own throughout my growing up. My friends parents chipped in and helped raise me but now as an adult I feel like I missed out on proper etiquette lessons and have a very hard time assimilating myself into "normal" society. I went to a slightly rough school with lots of other really poor blue collar types and then went on to work at dive bars and biker bars. I left because I developed an alcohol problem and started to have too much anxiety and now I work in retail. I used to have a wide array of friends because I can be charming when I put my mind to it and I used to party a lot. Now that I'm older nearly all of my friends have either moved on to better places and different things, now too far away for me to see them. Others, I've lost to alcohol and hard drugs like meth- they're not dead yet but they may as well be. And still others were just bridges I burned myself either by choice or by being a bad friend.

 

I've slept with a butch lesbian friend of mine that I guess lost interest in me and we don't talk anymore. Other than that I've never been with anyone because I have so much anxiety speaking to women that I like and I just don't have any confidence or game whatseover. Ironically, when I dated men I had no issues because I was completely indifferent to whether or not they would be interested in me. But with women I'm just terrified and incompetent.

 

My entire family lives in a different country so I have no family support not just for my lesbian problems, but just for life in general. I know that at my age I should know how to be an adult but a really have no damn clue what I'm doing- every day I feel like I'm just surviving, struggling to get by, wondering how I'm going to take care of myself. And I feel like I don't belong in the lgbt community because I don't know anything. I don't know anything about lesbian etiquette or how I'm supposed to carry myself in the world. Hell, even if I was straight I still wouldn't know these things. I just feel utterly lost, despondent, and confused and I don't know where to find support. Also I don't have healthcare and I'm broke so it's not like I can get professional counseling and even if I could I always thought that was more geared toward straight people anyway.

 

And I'm so out of touch with who I am as a person. Some days I wake up and feel like putting on a pretty dress and some nice shoes and a ton of glitter and bright makeup and other days I feel like wearing a baggy pair of clothes and a baseball cap. I just have no sense of consistency in my personality or my style I kind of just do what I feel like doing every day and then I look back and realize how strange that may appear to other people.

 

I feel clumsy and confused and I've been single and alone for more than a year now because I don't want to date a man and I feel like no woman would want me because of my past experience with men and my lack of understanding of myself and anything lgbt related on top of being poor and considered "low class" by most people. I honestly don't believe I will ever find love and I have so much despair in my heart I just don't know what to do.

[Willywagtail]

There is no 'look' to being a lesbian. You're a woman and you can choose what to dress it and how to present yourself Party dress? Cool. Baggy overalls? Cool.

 

Don't be so hard on yourself. You're dealing with a big emotional change as you're trying to work out what's happening with your sexuality and your psyche. These are big changes and of course you're going to feel lonely, isolated, anxious.

 

I don't think there are as many 'rules' in the lgbt community as you think. They are human beings like you and many of them will have been though the same emotional and personal turmoil you're experiencing. Many of them will have questioned their identity and their place in the world as well.

 

Don't make assumptions about what people will think of you, or what you should be. You are what you are. lgbt people have often experienced what it is to be an outsider in society and your experiences will be familiar to many of them.

 

I think you should find out where the lesbian community hangs out and go there. Look on the internet there are heaps of groups that will welcome you. People like to help and are much warmer and kinder than you think. It's OK to be vulnerable, it's OK to be you.