“Sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle of two worlds, four worlds, and sometimes I feel like I’m not a part of any of them.”

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Transcript for I See Myself as a Bridge

Sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle of two worlds—four worlds—and sometimes I feel like I’m not a part of any of them, which is difficult. Before I came out, I was at a party, I think, and I was talking to this girl, she was like, “I understand gay people. Like, that’s fine. Like, if you’re a man, and if you want to date a man, like, that’s fine. And I understand straight people because like, you know…But like, there’s probably just something wrong with bi people, you know? Like, something has to be like, messed up in their heads.” And I was like, in the closet at this point, like, I knew that I was bi, and I was just like, sort of standing around. I was like, “Ok, yeah…no.” Just like, people just—they just make up these ideas in their head about what being bi is, and how other people feel about how those people must feel about it, and it’s really screwed up because I think it’s sort of a weird place to be in, and a hard place to be in most of the time. Because people just don’t quite get it. And I think largely, people are starting to sort of accept gay people more, and there’s still a stigma against bi people, or surrounding bi people, because people just don’t quite get it. And I don’t know why.

I feel like I have the opportunity to understand a lot of different perspectives. And I think that makes me a less ignorant individual, it makes me a more intelligent individual, it makes me a more open individual, on all fronts. So, I think being biracial, I am really able to embrace two cultures. And I think that’s awesome.People who can’t embrace more than one culture, or don’t want to, or don’t have the opportunity—I think they miss out. There’s so much there, there’s so much that is important in both of the cultures, that I am really grateful that I can just like, wholeheartedly embrace both of them. Most of the time, I see myself as a bridge between and amongst people.

When I was first coming out, I was talking to two of my friends, and they said, “You shouldn’t come out because you feel like you have to teach people something. You should come out because you want to, and you feel comfortable doing that, and it’s who you want to be and show people that you are that person.” And I think that’s really important—I think that I still feel a lot of pressure to show people or tell people about the different worlds that I sort of occupy. So that they can learn. I want them to learn.