By Anna Kochetkova
I had no idea I was bisexual even as I was making out with beautiful same-sex humans—I just wasn’t aware that there was a word for it. On the other hand, I have always known that my life was going to be free of marriage and children. It has been a non-issue, no-brainer for me since I was a child. My choice has been a shock to many. So, at some point, I felt the urge to do the ‘‘coming out.” And I have been coming out ever since.
Both my bisexuality and my choice to remain unmarried and childfree come up frequently in my conversations—I ‘‘come out’’ almost daily. Before I knew what bisexuality meant, when I was about 15 years old, I told my mother that a husband and children weren’t in the cards for me. At first, my mother ignored my proclamations, reassuring me that I would certainly change my mind when I ‘‘grew up.” Nothing has changed 20 some years later (so far). My mother and I have had multiple children-related conversations, especially before I turned 36, at which point it was ‘‘too late’’ for me to become a mother, according to my family. Most conversations end up with my mother bursting into tears, mixing pity with fear, begging me to change my mind. “But you are going to end up alone, my dear,” she often whispers through her tears.
Today, I understand my mother’s concerns, because I know now that her own survival kit included getting married and having children. She loves me, so she’s been trying to instill the same belief system in me. For a short while, I believed that it was through the love of a man, where I would find my safety, success, and happiness—my Self. For my mother, safety comes from marriage and children. However, I have learned that safety is a feeling within and its cultivation doesn’t require a traditional marital relationship. It does, however, require a nurturing relationship with one’s self—an idea foreign to my folks, people who grew up in a different time in history.
A couple of years ago, my mother confessed to me that she believes marriage and children aren’t only the ‘‘correct,’’ traditional pathway in life, but they are a guarantee that you will be taken care of in your wiser years. My father passed away a couple of months ago, and she told me that watching me being single and childless was breaking her heart. After losing her husband, she saw my choices as especially painful.
To my mother (and many others), motherhood and womanhood are often two of the same. In many cultures, one implies the other. Therefore, many people in my family seem genuinely worried about me. In their eyes, I am an incomplete woman.When I accepted my bisexuality, many of my personal beliefs and ideas made even more sense, and I realized that I didn’t have to accept or comply with the culture I grew up with; I could carve out my own path. It’s my bisexuality that showed me that this was possible.
Coming out to myself and loving my bisexuality is different from coming out to others who comment on my sexuality a lot, whether it’s “Everyone is a little bisexual,” or “Are you sure? Have you even been with a woman?” or even rejecting my application to join a gay women’s Facebook group. Some find my sexuality irritating, others nonexistent. Somewhere in this bigotry and chaos, I find my own path and walk the journey others may not understand. I keep moving forward despite my family’s pettiness and cultural biphobia, showing myself and others that all choices I make are good because they are mine.
Anna Kochetkova is a Russian-born Australian author and poetess, and a passionate bi+ activist based in Sydney. Anna is the author of Bi & Prejudice and the creator of the @biandprejudice Instagram space, which helps celebrate multisexual attraction and human diversity and @sydbiclub Sydney community-led events and gathering for all multisexual and queer humans.