The more time I spend trying to figure out who I am, the more convinced I become that I'm not who I thought I was. Which is odd, because I don't feel like I've changed much over the past decade. Maybe it wasn't necessary before to know too much about myself. Maybe I just didn't want to to face it. Hiding the truth about ourselves, even from ourselves, is sometimes much easier.

But at least now I have a much better idea of who I'm not than I ever did before. I don't think I was undefined before, just unexplored. I didn't have any reason to dig too deeply into my motivations, the reasons I did all the things I did. Then my life changed, and became much more complicated, and I started to wonder why I acted as I did. So I started to dig around a bit, and found some things I didn't like. And a few things I did like.

I realized that I'm not the horrible person I've sometimes thought myself. I'm certainly not perfect, and there are some things I need to work on, but all in all, I'm a fairly decent person. That makes it easier to be nice to myself, and to be able to expect less than 100% on everything all the time.

I'm one of those people that never quite feel like they belong. I'm accepted, sometimes even welcomed, but there is still this thought fluttering around in my mind that I don't really belong with these people. Sometimes I'm happy I don't have anything in common with a certain group. Sometimes it upsets me that I don't belong. Mostly it doesn't matter one way or the other. If you spend long enough feeling something, you get used to it.

Every now and then I find myself wistfully thinking that I'd like to belong to this group, or that one. Not very often, but I do feel it occasionally. And I try to figure out why I don't belong, and if I can belong. And I come to the conclusion that I can't.

Often I feel like there is some huge abyss between me and the rest of the world. Other people don't think like I do, they don't feel the things I feel, they don't want what I want. That's what makes me feel like an outsider. That I'm the only one on this planet that doesn't really belong here. I know other people feel that way. It doesn't really help. Because they don't belong for different reasons than I don't belong, so I don't belong with them, either.

Where does this leave me? Feeling very lonely sometimes. I've learned to cherish the people with who I feel I belong, at least in part, because they are so rare. And maybe someday I'll find someplace that I do belong.

It's not that difficult for me. Maybe because I've always been bisexual in a straight world, and it never really occurred to me that it could be any other way. I'm used to being accepted for who and what I am without being pressured to change. Society in general may not like bisexuals, but I've discovered that on a one-to-one basis people are much more accepting.

It could be because they get to know me as a person before they find out my sexual orientation, so they see a person instead of a stereotype. I've even got a couple of friends that I thought would be so disgusted when they found out about my bisexuality that I'd lose them as friends, and they're still around. They don't understand it, and don't want to hear a lot of detail about my same-sex relationships, but they're still my friends. Sometimes people surprise you if you give them a chance.

I guess I've been lucky. I haven't suffered a lot of grief from being bisexual. Maybe it's the people I have as friends. Maybe I've learned to weed out the intolerant before they get close enough to find out. Maybe people in general are a little more tolerant than I've been led to believe.

I didn't start this site for any noble reason. I had no intention of being a "Voice of the X Community." I wanted a site that I could just be myself on, and have fun with. I also thought maybe I could fill some kind of void. When I was surfing the Web looking for various things on either polyamory or bisexuality, all I seemed to find were sites full of links and resources, but none written with a personal slant.

At that time, I was trying to find information on non-monogamous relationships, and I found lots of sites that stressed how to be polyamorous, which struck me as 90% common sense. A wealth of sites recounted the basics, but none ever said how people coped with it on a personal basis. I didn't want to know how to be poly, I wanted to know how it actually worked, what problems people ran into, and how it affected their lives. In other words, I wanted to peer inside their heads.

Since then, I've noticed that there are getting to be more web pages about polyamory or bisexuality with a personal slant, which is a good thing. It's all to the good to be able to hit a site that tells you it is possible to be bi or poly, complete with lists of resources, but it's even better to hit a site that tells you that there are people out there that are just like you, and they're making it work in their lives, and that you can too.

And some of the feedback I've gotten from visitors makes me feel that I've done a worthwhile thing in building this site. Most of the messages I receive say that the writer was glad to know that there were other people out there like them. Knowing that you're not the only one that's not like everyone else you know does help. If I've helped a few people know that they're not strange, and there isn't anything wrong with what they want, or who they're attracted to, it's worth the server space it takes up.

This site doesn't have a lot of detail on being poly on a day-to-day basis. I'm working on that, but right now all my extra-primary relationships have been either on a rather casual basis, of a transitory nature, or they're still in the process of getting sorted out. It doesn't help that I have a very limited amount of time to spend on any relationship. But as things improve, I'm sure I'll come up with more information for the site. And I'll keep putting it out there, in the hope that it will be of some use to someone.

I think Internet communities are a good thing. I live in an area with no G/L/B or Poly community that I've been able to discover, so a Net community is all I have. It serves several purposes. It reminds me that I'm not the only bi poly person in the world on those days when it seems like no one else ever goes through what I do. It offers me a chance to discuss bi and poly issues with like-minded people, instead of some of my real-life friends, who just look at me blankly when I bring certain subjects up. It keeps me posted on bi and poly issues in other areas, about which I'd otherwise be clueless.

Net communities are a great way for people to be active in a community of others with common interests that they don't otherwise have access to. Some, like me, don't have a local community, others have schedules that don't allow them to participate in a local community, others are closeted for various reasons, and coming out to participate in a local community would cost them families or careers.

I think participation in Net communnites can be taken too far. We've all heard about the people that get Net access, and end up losing their spouse or job because they've become so addicted to the Net that they stop going to work or spending time with their spouse and family. That's obviously carrying it too far. Other than it getting to that point, I guess each person has to make their own determination of whether or not their Net life is interfering with their real life.