🌈 Soft, Queer, and Still Figuring It Out

 A Pride Month Reflection from the Middle

Pride Month can feel like a lot—even when you're part of the community.
It's loud, and bright, and beautiful, and filled with so much JOY, despite the many, many attempts to silence it.

But being bi/demisexual can stir up some weird feelings, especially when you're in a relationship that’s, for all intents and purposes, “straight passing.” It can make you feel like you're not queer enough. Like you have to explain, or prove, or perform—just to be allowed in the room.

💖 Being Bi in a Binary World

I always knew I wasn’t straight.

I didn’t have the words for it when I was five and had a crush on a girl in my kindergarten class. I didn’t have the language when I thought I was going to marry the boy down the street (funny enough, he’s gay—and we’re still very good friends). But the knowing was always there. Quiet, soft, insistent.

It just wasn’t something we talked about in my house growing up. My mom thinks she’s progressive—and in a lot of ways, she really is—but she also used to say things like, “I just hope none of my kids are gay, because I wouldn’t want them to have that hard of a life.” Like queerness was a burden, not a possibility.

High school made it messier. Being bi meant you were either “confused,” “doing it for attention,” or “not ready to fully come out yet.” There was no space to just be bisexual. There was always a narrative trying to overwrite it.

And weirdly, some of that pressure has followed me into adulthood—even into queer spaces. There are still moments where it feels like being bi isn’t queer enough, especially when you’re in a relationship that reads as straight to the outside world. As someone who presents feminine and has a masculine-presenting partner, it’s frustrating to feel invisible—or worse, unwelcome—in spaces that should feel like home.

It’s wild to know you belong to a community and still feel like you have to earn your place in it.

🧷 Softness as Queer Resistance

I will always choose to present in a way that feels comfortable. And if comfort happens to also include a little queer signaling? Great. Love that. But I’m done picking outfits just for the chance that someone might clock me as “not straight.” I’m done trying to prove it.

Being queer isn’t something I need to perform.
It’s in the way I love, the way I move through the world, the people I support, the stories I hold space for.

Being open to other people’s experiences, elevating voices in the community, showing up for your chosen family, loving who you’re going to love—that’s power. That’s Pride.

Pride isn’t just parades or parties (though those are fun and deserve to be celebrated).
Pride is rebellion.
Yes, the first Pride was a riot. Yes, bricks were thrown. And I have so much respect for the people who are still showing up loudly, publicly, fearlessly—for the ones marching, organizing, shouting, and standing on the frontlines.

But Pride can also be soft.
It can be quiet and personal.
It can be a journal entry. A shared meal. A solo walk in an outfit that makes you feel whole. It can be a whisper to yourself: I am real. I am here. I am enough.

Soft rebellion is still rebellion.
And sometimes, it’s exactly what we need.

🌊 The Beauty of Still Figuring It Out

Identity is fluid. Fight me.

Being questioning, trying something on, seeing how it feels—that’s valid.
You don’t have to know everything about yourself to be real. You don’t have to settle into a single label to belong. The bravery it takes to live in that space of unknowing, of exploration, of maybe—that deserves to be celebrated just as loudly as the people who know exactly who they are.

There’s something radical about letting yourself evolve.

About saying, “I’m still learning who I am, and that doesn’t make me less queer.”
About not rushing to pin yourself down just to make other people comfortable.
About knowing who you are—or who you might be—and choosing not to show that to anyone just yet. That’s allowed, too.

We talk a lot about authenticity, but rarely about how messy and nonlinear that actually is.
There is no timeline for self-discovery. There is no expiration date on queerness.

You’re allowed to be in progress.
You’re allowed to change.
You’re allowed to take your time.
And you’re allowed to not be ready to show that to anyone at all.

🌈 Somewhere In Between (And Still Valid)

Pride doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
You don’t have to wear a flag or post a selfie or attend every event (unless you want to).
You’re allowed to exist in the quiet. In softness. In the middle.

Whatever language you’re using to explore yourself isn't about proving anything. It’s about being honest. And sometimes that honesty is tender and private and shifting. That doesn’t make it less true.

People who are questioning

People who are still figuring out their labels—or not labeling at all

People who have only dated one gender but feel attraction beyond that

People in "straight-passing" relationships who are still deeply queer

Bisexual, pansexual, and polysexual people who aren’t “half gay” or “half straight”

People who are asexual, demisexual, or gray-ace

Aromantic folks navigating love in a world obsessed with romance

People who are nonbinary, genderfluid, agender, or gender-questioning

People who don't come out publicly for safety, comfort, or just because they don’t want to

Closeted people who are still 100% valid and real

Queer folks who are neurodivergent and experience gender/sexuality in unique ways

People who used to ID one way and changed—and might change again

People who are more quiet than loud about their queerness

Queer people who don't feel at home in traditional LGBTQ+ spaces

Older people coming out later in life

Young people still trying to name their feelings

People who have messy or complicated feelings about Pride

People who are exhausted by performative allyship but still trying to find safety

I see you, I hear you, I respect the hell out of you. 

If Pride feels complicated this year, you’re not alone.
You’re not invisible. You’re not behind. You’re not less than.
You’re just a person with a heart full of nuance. And that’s beautiful.

This week’s mantra:
“I don’t owe anyone a definition to be real.”