This can't be true. I simply cannot be a lesbian. I don't feel like one, I can't simply accept I'm one. I can't picture myself with a woman, this isn't internalized homophobia, this has nothing to do with whatever sort of prejudice my ocd has previously lead me to believe I had. I do not. And prejudice wouldn't have this effect on me, denial wouldn't. It's just impossible to feel this bad towards such thing for what? Ten months? It isn't possible that this would torture me continuously every day for ten months. It wouldn't make me cry, make me want to die, it wouldn't make me doubt everything that made me who I am. This is a pathology, hocd is an illness. I'm certain that I'm addicted to porn, and this simply wrecked my life. My body responds to lesbian porn, and then my mind goes crazy from doubt. "What if it means something?" I start shaking, thinking about how this life is sh*t and how ruined I am. Porn makes me feel gross, like I'm being touched without my permission. Thinking about a relationship with a woman makes me feel uneasy. I feel so so lonely, so isolated, so unlovable.

Ok... I was doing good until a few weeks ago. I really was making a lot of progress until a few weeks ago. Backdoor spikes turned up and ocd came back with full force. Or at least I think it's ocd... I hope it is. My theme is hocd, by the way. I try to not give the thoughts much attention, but they're making me mad. It feels so real, and when I see coming out stories it just adds up, as if I should come out too. It terrifies me, every day I think about wanting to die, to not wake up, to cease existing. It's been so draining, and so lonely. I don't want to be in the closet, I don't want to have romantic relationships with women. And ocd makes me question why that: because of my morals? What if your sexuality goes deeper than your morals and you're just denying you like women? Maybe you should try it out, you'd like it. This scares me so. much. And the thing is: I watch same sex porn. It turns me on. I've seen on the internet many women actually watch same sex porn, but ocd makes me question if my case isn't different from other women. All the time I'm worried that I'll just lose control and kiss any woman that's by my side. I haven't had any experience with men either, as I'm reserved and a hopeless romantic (high expectations). I've liked men before, though, and I still have many crushes today. Ocd tries to convince me this is just a cover up. This is just destroying my life. This is daily torture, I can't imagine myself living with this forever. What am I supposed to tell my eventual boyfriend, my husband? How am I supposed to have children in this state of mind? What if some day I just snap out of this and actually realize I'm gay? What if this question is actually me already admitting that I am in fact gay? Honestly, it's too much. This was quite hard to write, and I tried to include here as much as possible of my insecurities. If you read till here I'm grateful. Just wanted to say that I DON'T have anything against gay people, even though they're making me very anxious since this all started, which adds up to my endless collection of intrusive thoughts (it makes me think I'm in denial because of some prejudice).

*EXPLICIT!!!!* Is it normal to completely loose your identity with HOCD? There's no "deep down I know I'm straight." I feel completely gay. I really think I am a lesbian in denial. I want my identity back. I've asked this before, but with ERP am I supposed to tell myself that I am gay? I don't know how else to except it. It's the only way that doesn't feel like I'm lying to myself now. It's extremely upsetting because I really don't want this to be my reality. My dad said that if I am a lesbian than I still get to choose who I'm with, but if I am then there's no reason not to be with a woman even if I don't want to be. I have to. If I'm a lesbian and I stay with my boyfriend then I'm just in denial and lying to myself and him right? I have to put myself in a box, I'm not capable of breaking societal standards for some reason as in if I'm a lesbian then I can only date women. My parents keep telling me that they don't think I'm gay, but I can do whatever. I think I'm starting to convince myself that this actually what I want. Hopefully just so I can get over the pain. I don't know anymore. I don't know how I let this turn into an actual identity crisis. It doesn't help that I have ROCD too. I think I'm going to go on the SSRI I was prescribed even though it had bad reviews. I've had OCD since I was like six years old, with multiple different things, but I keep thinking with this one what if it's different? *TMI* *TMI* *TMI* *TMI* I've watched lesbian porn in the past and have finished to it multiple times and for a while that was my go to, then I stopped watching porn altogether. I didn't have any emotional connection to it, but it worked. What if I didn't have an emotional connection because I didn't let myself? I had a fantasy about myself in a lesbian porn once, but again, back then I didn't think of it as something I really wanted in reality, infact it was testing, but I stayed aroused. I know I had fantasies about guys my whole life, but now I feel like I'm making them up. At the beginning of this I remember testing myself thinking about a girl and then switching to a boy to see if I would stay aroused, and I'd completely loose arousal with the boy. There was a lot of anxiety around this so I don't know if that's why or if it's because I'm actually gay. I really really really do not want to be a lesbian, but I read about another on quora that said she really didn't want to be gay and another girl answered by saying that she didn't want to be at first either and that in the beginning she wasn't even able to say the word "lesbian" and that she was extremely depressed in the beginning, but now she's happy. I don't want that. I don't even want to be happy and gay.

**If you're not familiar with hocd please don't answer.** It feels like there's no straight me left. I've accepted that I'm a lesbian I don't know if that's what I was supposed to do. I'm deeply uncomfortable and unhappy. I feel that if I was meant to be gay this would feel like it was right for me. It only feels right because if I call myself anything else it feels like I'm lying to myself. The world feels like it's falling apart. I understand that there are people who are happy being gay and that is wonderful for them. I don't want this. I tried saying that I will just call myself straight because I'm only interested in persuing men, but my brain will not let me because I was turned on by a porn of a woman touching herself and its harder for me to get turned on by anything else now. I'm attracted to boys, but what if it's just aesthetically? I don't get a groinal response when I look at an attractive man so I guess that's true. I get groinal responses for women and I guess that's what true attraction is supposed to feel like. I'm masculine. I've been told I'm masculine too. Part of me feels like I want this now. I hate it, but my brain keeps saying what if I'm supposed to be this way. The idea of living in denial of my true self is just as scary to me. I don't know who I am anymore. I feel like this has eaten my whole identity. I want to feel like a girl, I want to be girly, but I'm not allowed to be. I want all of this to end.