When you’re attracted to more than one gender it can be incredibly isolating. Often you’re the only person you know who is like you. You are the sole bisexual at home. You are the only bi in school/the office. You hang out with your straight/gay friends after work. Perhaps you have a gay/straight partner you can spend time with too.
Maybe you have some bi friends and attend several bi events every year, but once your time together has passed it’s back to being the only one (that you know of?) until next time.
Daily life is exhausting. Being the only one wears you down and affects your mental and physical health. A lot of the time my heart sinks when I step out of the front door in the morning because I know I have another day full of heternormativity, bi-erasure, and micro-aggressions ahead of me. And yet I know I’m lucky and privileged. I am safe. I have a job. I always have enough. Even if it is dispersed around the country, I am part of bi community. Most days do not involve discrimination, harassment, or overt biphobia.
When I feel alone I come on my site and look at the stats map.
The image shows a map of the world. Scores of countries are highlighted yellow or orange.
If a country is coloured in it means 1 or more person has viewed this site from that location. The darker the colour, the more hits from that area.
I know this probably looks like I’m trying to inflate my own ego or something. I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to show you this map of the world because it contains just one year’s worth of data from one small website. Yet WordPress logged hits from 84 separate countries! Assuming all of this traffic was not made up of accidental clicks by monosexuals then imagine how many more of us are out there.
We are not alone. We exist in every single place on Earth. I draw a lot of comfort from that.
