This is an extremely serious post. If anyone out there wants to/can, I desperately need some strong help/advice/whatever you can give me right now. Also, this is a very difficult entry to properly word/express so I apologise greatly if it sounds all over the fucking place. I'm not writing a thesis paper for my Uni, so I can give a shit less right now.



+++PLEASE READ+++

I've been ''separated'' from my cousin for the longest time and we've just been recently reunited a couple years back. I can't say we're as super close as we used to be or understand each other perfectly. In our late teens/early adulthood now, we're slowly getting to re-know each other. We only ever talk occasionally these days, especially through deviantART (I won't give a username to protect her identity), but last night of all nights was different.

I feel fucking stupid and horrible for not taking her last entries all too seriously, especially since I know she has depression and an anxiety disorder, but there is really only so much you can discern from the Internet and I can't say I truly know what her daily life is like since I don't live with her. Also, it is not unusual for teen Internet users to write about their emotions and make it sound more serious than it actually is although there are plenty of people who don't fuck around either, but the Internet is a difficult façade to truly see through.

Like my cousin. I was 15 at one time too, sick with mononucleosis, first diagnosed with Asperger's, I also began to connect with my genderqueer identity, and I had these very strange thoughts/behaviours to go with it – I won't indulge in one serious suicide attempt – but looking back, I may have been a little over dramatic towards certain situations that weren't as lethal as I made them out to be; and I lived.

Although, my cousin is slightly different. It's hard enough being 15 and fighting through dunderheaded high school (and bullying is as much of a nail in the anus as life itself because bullying is fucking emotional assault, coercion, and abuse), but it's much more difficult being 15 with depression and anxiety. And learning that you may be bisexual.

(My entire high school career was completed online because I experienced some issues the first four months of first attending that prevented me from going to public school up until now, so I can't offer any true experiences of what normal high school life is like or help out my cousin with this for that matter. But based on those first four months, it was practically middle school with very immature, dunderheaded young adults. But I was sick with mono at the time and diseases/viruses can affect your psyche as much as your physical health, which I know because I walked out of the school one time and was nearly hit at a busy highway without realising it, so this may just be a very warped perspective. And I feel powerless to help my cousin because of my lack of a true high school experience.)

I won't directly quote, but last night, my cousin wrote this journal entry and straight-out stated that she thinks she may be bisexual. She's struggling to figure out how to ''come out'' to her parents and other family members because she said they are either largely homophobic to some extent (the horror to hear this about my own damn relatives!) or they may not just give a single shit.

Seriously, it's painful when it's strangers who can't accept the LGBTQ community – and tolerating is not the same thing as accepting so I don't take any transphobic/homophobic/sexist/cissexist/etc. bull from people either way – but it's terribly, extremely painful when it's your own fucking family that you fear may disown you.

She really does know so little about me as I know so little about her. And I want to bond with her again and try and help her. So, I ''came out'' and told her that I identify as genderqueer and asexual whether she understood or not, and while it may not be wholly the same thing as bisexuality, I experienced a very similar dilemma with telling my parents, particularly my mum, about how I feel/identify myself. I don't think my mum took me too seriously because the conversation ended up not really going anywhere. After that, I decided not to bring it up again until after I'm done with Uni and possibly living on my own because by then, I hope to be working in the film industry in some way, shape, or form, and I may be saving up for sex reassignment surgery (if it's possible to find non-transphobic surgeons), and I may have a girlfriend, and there's not one fucking thing that anyone by that point can do and say that will fucking stop me from living the lifestyle I want and/or think I deserve.

But my cousin is still in high school. She's not in Uni deciding a portion of her life like I am. Her parents/other family still see her as this very young and delicate person who is not yet an adult and must be sheltered from possibly everything. Well, she isn't an adult, I won't lie, but they talk about her like she's a baby, going as far as prohibiting her from cursing, like what the fuck, she's fucking 15 years old?!

I fear my cousin may experience the same thing as I did with my mum if she were to tell her homophobic family. At least my mum didn't decide to disown me (yet) but my cousin's parents are vastly different than mine and I know they're probably more likely to, or they may think she's sick in the head and decide to take her to one of those shitty, dickhead doctors; it could be today, it could be tomorrow, and nothing will change their homophobic asses. Well, being gay/bisexual/pansexual/polysexual/asexual/etc. is NOT a fucking disease. Fuck you, society!

With her depression/anxiety especially, she may react to this type of response very differently than I did. Also, since I'm slightly older, I'm no longer 15 and I've ''overcome'' my weird thoughts and behaviours so I can handle this a lot better than she maybe can right now. I also have an ability to express myself through creative outlets where I can fuck society in the ass behind closed doors as I please. And I feel so fucking confident doing it.

My cousin photographs. My cousin writes simplistic poems/prose. But she's not as confident as I am in her creativity. And her journal writing/responses are usually kept to a minimum so I never truly know what she is feeling and/or thinking because I don't think she thinks I will understand. (I regret some of the responses I made to her in the past too because I wrote them in a way where I didn't know what to say to her, because truthfully I didn't. I regret too thinking she was just being a little emo, as I mentioned.) I felt the same fucking way at 15. I may not ever truly understand her wholly and vice versa because she will be the only person in this universe who will ever know herself better than anyone, but I want to connect. I want to help. I don't want her to plummet into this dark state of mind like I had for awhile at the same age, even though I might have overacted to certain things. As a result of her minimum communication, she keeps a lot of these emotions bottled inside. This is scary shit.

What I fear most as well is what if she attempts suicide if she feels she's not getting the kind of support and help she needs? LGBTQ youth are horribly at risk for suicide, all thanks to fucked up society. Congratulations, fucking society.

I attempted suicide for a very similar reason at 10, 11, 12 (well I don't remember exactly why but this too was around the age where I began to experience this ''gender dysphoria'' that I refuse to call a gender identity disorder or even a dysphoria at all because an identity can't be a fucking disorder, and this identity crisis was largely thanks again to fucked up society, yet not wholly; I won't go into it. These suicidal thoughts returned when I was sick with mono, because medical diseases/viruses are full of fucking bliss. I'm thankful I got well enough eventually to where I did not succumb to that darkness.

I may have survived the attempt, but what if my cousin attempts something similar and doesn't?

She asked for advice on how to ''come out''* to her parents/family. I feel ashamed and powerless that I could offer her so little because The Conversation (that was similar) with my mum failed miserably. But I wasn't disowned (yet). My cousin's situation is a lot scarier given the way her family is.

Unlike me, I don't think she has any LGBTQ friends. Otherwise, she wouldn't have asked in her journal that she needed advice. I know a small network of LGBTQ people that I told her that maybe they could help. Although, any additional outside advice/help would be very much appreciated/welcome because given these people live in separate parts of the world, I don't know if I can get a response from them quickly enough.

All I need right now is some really strong, honest advice for my cousin on how she can effectively ''come out'' to her homophobic parents without being disowned miserably.

She needs fucking help. Now.

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*The reason why I keep placing ''coming out/come out'' within quotations is because these are my views on our fucked up society right now and its corrupt, fucking social construction of things (I'm not saying I am right so feel free to disagree): It's immensely fucked up that people who feel this way even have to ''come out'' at all. We never ask cisgender and straight people, ''How did/do you know you were/are cisgender and/or straight?'' Society doesn't ask them because the majority of cisgender and straight people are fucking privileged. Because our society is based on a system of advantages and privileges. Fucked up, right? (But I think I shall openly and gladly do this from now on, going around and asking cisgender and/or straight people: ''How do you know?'')

Society/the media/etc. only ever asks this towards people they consider ''alternatives'' to society's ''normal'' lifestyle. You're practically cisgender and straight, assigned so at birth, by default unless stated and/or proven otherwise. In other words, cisgender and straight is the socially accepted ''norm'' of our way of life which is, in fact, a black and white social construction of a very unrealistic reality. Society has not recognised yet that we as human beings are much more complex than what we are socially constructed to be. Even our fucking sex chromosomes of XX/XY are not constructed in neat little boxes unlike what society shoves down our throats because truthfully, we are made up of more than simple XX/XY's. Well, you know what society, fuck you. We are not ''alternatives.'' We are fucking ''normal.'' We are just as fucking ''normal'' as anyone. Go fuck yourselves. Being gay/bisexual/pansexual/polysexual/asexual/transgender/bigender/trigender/genderqueer/etc. is perfectly just as normal as anything in this universe. In the end, FUCK SOCIETY.