"What's Your Story?"

When I think of multiculturalism I think of the coexist stickers,

everyone coming together to live a life together without judgement. Sadly though we aren't coexisting as a nation, we are all going against each other because we think our view of people is better than others, we judge before we even know them, or even when we do know them. We doesn’t have to be the way thought. We need to learn that our differences can bring us together. What is different in my life can open up something new in your life or make you realize something you had never thought of about your own life. Learn from people's differences. I have just recently learned so many new things about myself because of things I've found out about some of my closest friends that I didn’t even know was a part of them. Understanding of ones sexuality is a big deal in modern society. There are so many different places to fall on the spectrum of the LGBTQ community, which the acronym LGBTQ also isn’t all inclusive in identifying all sexualities. 

In my close friend group of five girls, which we all thought were straight when we became friend have come to find out only 2 of which identify as straight, the rest of us fall somewhere else on the spectrum, lesbian, pansexual and asexual. When each of us found out this information we were hesitant that it would affect the dynamics of our friend group, but it has actually made all of our relationships so much closer and more understanding of each other, instead of breaking us apart like it does in many situations where someone comes out as not straight. We have all been able to enlighten each others lives and learn things we would have never known if it wasn’t for one another. None of my friends had ever heard of the term pansexual, they had only ever heard of bisexual for someone liking more than one sex/gender and I was able to explain the differences to them, and how I know I'm not just bisexual. While learning about my friends lives and sexuaities I have learned so much more about what it means to be asexual and have that void of sexual attraction to someone, which sounds very weird until you actually stop to think about what it really means. To be asexual you love the person for who they are, and you're not lusting after their body. It is a romantic relationship and not just physical, and not sexual at all, in most cases. After having this talk with her it made me put that into perspective as a pansexual because, being pans means you don’t base your attraction on sex or gender of the other person, so being sexually active in a relationship may not always be possible, but it can still be a component if you want it to be, it is not mandatory, and I had never thought of that before. I really had this thought after one of our friends was talking about how she would see herself in a future relationship and how there would have to be sex in it because “how could someone be in a long term relationship and not have sex”, she had said while our asexual friend was in the room, and heard this and got offended because she doesn’t need that in a relationship, but our friend wasn’t saying it to upset her or offend her, she honestly wasn’t even considering that may be an issue in a relationship, it's her personal feelings. We were all able to talk this out and become more understanding of each other and our views. I have loved these experiences where I can just go and talk to them openly about how I feel about things or people, or how my sexuality may effect my life and they are so understanding and also have input on it because they may be going through something similar or have gone through that in the past. You can’t always find that in people, most of the time people shut down or get uncomfortable when you have a conversation that isn’t straight, or isn't about straight topics. We are also able to ask questions to each other, because none of us really feel the same way towards the same sex/gender so we get a better understanding of what its like to feel how they feel. Zone of my favorites was when 2 of us were asked why we like women and one of my friends responses was “They are beautiful creatures, they are rays of sunshine and soft and cuddly.” It is one of the sweetest things I've ever heard her say, but it opened us up to who she really is. We also now tease her about saying that, but it’s a wonderful and heart warming thing.