u/Affectionate_Log7733

So, I was at a dinner with a group of queer women I met through an activity we do together. They are all much younger than me, all in their 20s, one of them might be early 30s. I just turned 46. They were talking about movies and things they grew up with and it was a pleasant conversation, but I feel so out of place during these kinds of interactions. I grew up Catholic, left the church, but moved far away and was in an abusive monogamous relationship for 15 years.

They were having a great time and they were all sharing their "gay awakening" experience. Like a movie they watched where they saw a character and they just knew. It came to my turn and I was a little thrown off because I don't have a situation like that. I didn't want to ruin the evening by saying something like, "well, I didn't know I was bisexual until I finally divorced my abusive husband and had a lot of therapy and realized that some of my past experiences were repressed homophobia. I was able to reap the benefits of being a straight cis-woman in a comphet marriage until I escaped. Lol.

What do you say in a conversation like that? Like, there was no sweet coming to realization moment, I didn't "know since I was a teenager," or have a moment when I wanted to kiss my best friend. I was so terrified of going to hell that I wouldn't even consider the idea and then I was in a relationship that I was trying to survive by figuring out why I didn't want to have sex with him amongst other things.

Even now, am I a lesbian, am I bi? I'm not straight, that's for sure. Thinking about being with a man makes me want to barf, but is that because of my experience or because I actually am not attracted to them.

I don't think there's any advice I need really, it is just tough sometimes because sometimes I feel like I don't belong. It feels so weird to have skipped the part where I thought about this at all when I was younger. It literally was never even an option until I realized it was. And then I was like, oh.

I think the other part that bothers me, and this is something for me to think about for myself is that in every other way I am very confident. I can take care of anything in my home, be an excellent friend, I'm taking classes, kicking butt in my business, but ask me when my gay awakening was? That makes me want to cry. Maybe it's because it would have been nice to have one, but I don't even know if that is something to be jealous about, lol. Maybe I'm just sad that I didn't get to know myself, really. I have had a whole complete life already as what I thought was a straight woman.

I am a therapist and I meet regularly with other mental health professionals monthly to talk about religious trauma.

We are from all different backgrounds. I am a recovering Catholic so I often share the Catholic perspective so the other therapists can be better equipped to help someone who experienced harm by the church.

What would you want a therapist to understand about being raised Catholic?

Okay, let me see if I can explain myself well so I can get some help. Unfortunately searches for my answer all give me the answer for the PodTrak P4 and the P4Next has different buttons and toggles.

Here is what I want. I like to record directly to Zoom which will record my audio for me. It's not perfect, but I don't care at this point. Or, I want to do a live to YouTube. My problem is that I want to use my nice audio technica microphone. So, I have the Zoom PodTrak P4Next which provides phantom power to my microphone.

I do not have an SD card in because I was going to be recording to my computer, to zoom cloud, or simply to youtube. I suppose this could be part of the problem, but I don't think so. I wanted to add this in just in case.

My setup is:

Microphone is in XLR port. 48v is set to on. PodTrak is plugged in for power, although changing it to battery does not make a difference. Setting is to Stereo. Mix Minus is on. Headphones are in the headphone jack. The PodTrak is connected to my desktop with a cord.

With this setup I can hear my voice in the microphone in the headphones. The microphone is working. I can change the volume and it changes what I hear throuth the PodTrak.

So what happens is, I go to Zoom or YouTube and test the audio. I do not get any option for microphone or speaker. The PodTrak doesn't come up as an option. My settings in Windows say that apps can use microphone.

On the PodTrak P4- not the one I have, there was a setting on input 4 to switch to USB. This one doesn't have that option. I feel like there is an easy answer that I am missing. It's probably explained in a youtube video, but the search engines are having a hard time differentiating my device from the older model.

If anybody has the answer, or a question that would help me solve it, I would love the help, this is the dumbest thing to keep me from hitting record. I will probably just use my webcam mic for a little while, but it's not the quality I'm looking for.

Edited to add that of course it was an easy answer that I discovered as soon as I wrote a long reddit post asking for help. I kept changing cords and finally found one that was high enough quality to connect from the PodTrak to my desktop. I think the other cords were from other devices and they were too cheap for audio to travel through. I had that thought in the back of my mind and kept looking until I found one that I knew was higher quality.

What the title says. This is a good breakdown, well researched and talks about Brooke 19 minutes in