Dear Homophobic Best Friend, Please Don’t Hate Me.

I recently came to terms with the fact that I’m the B in LGBT. Or, in other words, I’m bisexual. I play for both teams. I swing both ways. I like both men and women. I don’t know if it’s particularly important, but for the record I’m a girl.

What’s the problem, you ask? Well, on the surface of it; none really. I don’t think I’m going to hell or anything like that (for one thing, I’m not sure I believe in hell and for another, I’m sure a lot of my other… ‘activities’ will send me to hell well before my s***** orientation will). I’ve come out to a few people I’m close to – even to my siblings (my parents remain a whole different story). The reason I need to get this “off my chest” so to speak is because I haven’t been able to tell my best friend this because she’s homophobic.

You know how hard it is to keep a secret from the one person who knows everything about you because you’re scared she’ll reject you for something you fundamentally are and can’t change? I’ve had a sort-of girlfriend for the last ten months whose existence is entirely unknown to my best friend (well, to be fair, she knows she exists, she just thinks we’re platonic friends). I know my best friend will not be okay with it because she’s told me several times that while she’s theoretically okay with people being.. not straight; looking at it or thinking about it makes her uncomfortable. A few years ago she thought I might be bisexual (it wasn’t something that had even struck me back then) and she told our other best friend that she thought it was disgusting and she was, I quote, “scared” I was bisexual and thought that I was hitting on her – which I honestly wasn’t. Its possible to not be the cliched gay person who falls for their straight best friend (I swear, I mean no offense).

So this entire – extremely long – rant is basically just me terrified that I’m going to lose my best friend. I can’t keep quiet about it forever but I’m so scared she’s going to become uncomfortable around me and is going to become convinced I’m in love with her and therefore will avoid me. I don’t know what to do because I know people face much more opposition with their coming out stories (for f***’s sake, I told my ex boyfriend and all he said was that he’s happy for me and that he wasn’t completely surprised; I know I have it quite well as compared to other people). I also know telling my parents will be a lot worse and it’ll be a long time before I do, but I’m used to hiding things from them. My best friend is like my family to me and I’m so scared I’m going to get disowned. What do I do!!