Some people think you’re born just knowing you’re gay. Though this is true for some people, I think many of us have started to realize that this is an outdated idea. With homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality, it’s not easy to come to terms with being queer. Growing up, I was constantly surrounded by heterosexual relationships: my parents, movies, books, etc. I saw very little queer representation. My aunt was gay and living with her girlfriend, but for many years I was under the impression that they were just roommates because I was never told otherwise. I wasn’t given much information on how to deal with confusion about your sexuality. So I fell right into line with who I believed I should be and who I believed I was.
I started “dating” when I was 12 and had my first kiss with a boy that same year. Throughout late middle school and early high school, I continued to date and hook up with boys. I never stayed in a relationship for more than three months, but I just thought I was picky. When a guy expressed real interest in me, I was immediately turned off and suspicious. I wanted nothing to do with a boy that actually liked me. On the other hand, every time I hooked up with a guy, I would feel disgusted, sad, and scared afterward. I felt the need to immediately shower to wash them off of me. Once again, I figured that I just needed a real connection with a guy to actually enjoy intimacy. There were multiple times when I came up with crazy excuses (emergency family meeting, sister in trouble, faking my period) to leave a hook-up with a perfectly nice boy. People would tell me the guy I was with was “so hot” or “the nicest guy ever.” If that was true, I wondered why I didn’t feel anything for them. I began to think something was wrong with me. Maybe I was simply destined to be single forever.
When I was 18, an old friend of mine sent me a screenshot of an email that I wrote to her when I was 13. It was one of those emails that you can “send to the future,” so she got it on her 18th birthday. In the email, I confessed to having feelings for her and wanting to date her. Though that never happened because she moved to California, it opened my eyes to the idea that maybe I wasn’t straight after all. I hadn’t remembered sending that email, but there was the proof right in front of me. I actually did have an interest in somebody at one point, but it was a girl. Around my senior year of high school, I began to seriously question my sexuality. I would joke about hooking up with a girl, then say I wasn’t actually serious. I would say things like “every girl thinks other women are gorgeous,” in an attempt to convince myself that my feelings weren’t actually real. Over time, I started to come to terms with the fact that maybe I was bisexual. However, I didn’t feel valid in that label, never having been in a relationship with a girl. I thought maybe I was making it all up. After all, I could still imagine myself with some imaginary, absolutely perfect man one day. Maybe I just hadn’t found the “right” guy.
Flash-forward to college. I was exposed to so many more queer, comfortable people. Everyone was vastly different and seemed so confident in their individuality. I spent more time alone, often thinking about my sexuality. I really wanted to wave labels and just be comfortable with the idea of loving everybody. Yet, I craved the feeling of “fitting in” with a group. I rejected the label of bisexual so much because I think a part of me knew that I was lying to myself by saying that maybe one day I could fall in love with the ideal man that might not even exist. The night I saw Indigo Girls in person was the night I thought to myself “I think I’m lesbian.” I saw all the WLW around me and felt so comfortable with them, like I fit in with a community. That label, that community, seemed normal to me, like I didn’t have to keep trying to force something that wasn’t there. I now switch between the labels of lesbian, gay, and queer, depending on the day or scenario, but feel so much more confident in my identity. Finally having a girlfriend has also given me even more validation that I was never making it all up. That even though it took me 19 years to come to terms with it, I’m still queer.