Lies: The Biggest Mask

Before I take off this mask, I'd like to point out a few things. I grew up Baptist. Honestly that is probably all that is needed to emphasize what a huge deal removing this mask is. But there is more. I am married to a wonderful man that I am still madly, spectacularly in love with. We have an adorable son. I wouldn't give either of them up for the world.
And now you are wondering, what do those things have to do with a mask I am wearing? I was a Baptist forever (it seems), I've been married for over two years, and I've been a mother for nearly that long. What recent mask could have anything to do with that? Well, I will tell you. Slowly. And with backstory.
I didn't exactly have a normal adolescence. At the age when most girls were discovering that boys were kind of cute, I had already been having direct contact with male genitalia for years. Indeed, it was during that time of early adolescence that I vowed I would never date or get married. So when my peers were talking about boys or makeup or dating I had zero interest. Occasionally I would find my eyes caught by a naked woman or too-tight clothing, but I always marked it down as being over-sensitive to sexual things as a result of being abused (though I did not, then or for many years, call it abuse). Being Baptist, of course, tends to heighten that sensitivity - bare shoulders can be as risque as cleavage for a normal person or ankles for a Muslim.
Much later, in college, when I finally found a counselor I trusted, that assumption was reinforced. I struggled with porn (etc) because I had become "sexualized" at too young an age. Eventually my then-fiance and I got kicked out of Maranatha because we couldn't keep our hands off of each other. Between then and when we got married over a year later, we had sex nearly every time we were together. In fact, our son was born just over six months after our marriage. It was pretty obvious that we both greatly enjoyed sex.
Except that we didn't. Or to be more accurate, I didn't. I enjoyed the intimacy of it. I enjoyed making my beloved happy, hearing the catch of his breath when I did something especially pleasurable. I enjoyed being pleasured, sometimes. But as time passed I became less and less involved in the act of lovemaking, more and more passive, more and more just waiting for it to be over. At first I put it down to memories of abuse, and to be sure those memories did pop up and ruin many an intimate moment. But I put those memories behind me and still I did not enjoy sex with my husband. Then I thought that perhaps this was just the way things turned out; after all, it was pretty commonly taught growing up that girls just weren't that interested in sex. And of course a lot of guys tend to joke about how hard it is to get their wives to have sex with them. But I knew that wasn't really that accurate for me at least because I was still incredibly horny all the time. I still visited porn/erotica sites almost daily. It wasn't sex itself that I wasn't interested in, it was sex with my husband for some reason.
I began toying with the idea of bisexuality. I knew of course by then that being gay or straight wasn't a choice, although I thought maybe it was sometimes. I thought of having sex with a woman and the idea was not repulsive to me. On the contrary, I found the idea quite arousing. Not being one to hide things from my husband, I talked to him about it. (I also had a blog post up about it briefly. I took it down pending further thought.) A few days later he sent me an email that has changed our lives completely.
It wasn't a very  long email, just a few words and a link. The link was to an article by a truly sweet lady ( I emailed her a few days later) about her journey of sexual discovery. Her story was eerily similar to my own. She had married her husband several years ago, enjoying for a time a thriving sex life. They even had one child as we do, a boy. Eventually, after working through massive amounts of depressions (sound familiar) and other issues, she became less and less thrilled about sex with her husband. Long story short, she came to the realization that she was not bisexual, as she'd identified herself for years, but lesbian. I couldn't ignore the similarities in our stories, not after all the other thinking I'd been doing. They were too striking, from our opinions on penises (fun to play with on our husbands but overall pretty meh, could do without) to our thoughts on sperm (yucky yucky yucky bleh).
Perhaps I should have realized it sooner. But then, our minds have an impressive ability to lie to us, as we've discussed already. But here is the big moment. I'm about to take off this mask I've been wearing only a few months and yet my whole life...
I am gay.

This is the final part, Part Four, of the series "Lies."