I’ve never been a fan of labels. If people ever asked me about my sexuality or how I identify, I’d always say, “Labels aren’t for people; they’re for cereal boxes.”
As someone whose identity is very fluid and constantly evolving, putting a label on myself always felt uncomfortable because it felt like I was making a commitment I couldn’t break, even if I changed and discovered something about myself. However, as time goes on and I discover more and more about myself and my queerness, I realize that labeling myself is unnecessary — but it hasn’t always been that way.
I started questioning my sexuality in high school, and it seems like at that time, everyone was obsessed with labels. In a way, I understand why — labels make it easier for people to understand others, and what does a high schooler want more than being seen and understood by their peers?
In high school, I identified as a lesbian. I’ve always known that I was strongly attracted to women and feminine people who fell outside of the gender binary. For me, developing romantic feelings for women and becoming emotionally intimate with them was always so much easier than falling for men. I didn’t have an interest in becoming romantically and sexually involved with men, so the label stuck for the rest of high school and college. I regularly dated women and didn’t feel the need to go by anything else — well, at the time.
Things started to change for me during the summer of 2024. I had reconnected with and started talking to a boy named Freddy*. We went to elementary school together and were in similar social circles in high school, but it wasn’t until college that we really became friends. Freddy and I clicked fast and bonded over our shared love for Nirvana and records. At first, things between us were truly platonic — I saw him as a good friend who made me feel seen, heard, and laugh a lot. But things changed between us when he told me that he had feelings for me.
I knew that I liked him back, but I was too scared of what admitting that would mean — for me, for my relationship, and for my identity.
I was conflicted. On one hand, I didn’t know what to say because I was dating a girl named Caroline* at the time and was so set on being a lesbian. But on the other? I knew he wasn’t the only one who felt the way he did. I knew that I liked him back, but I was too scared of what admitting that would mean — for me, for my relationship, and for my identity. I thought that, maybe, I was just confusing platonic and romantic feelings like I often did. So, I told him that I didn’t feel the same way, but we could still be friends.
But that didn’t end up sticking. A few weeks later, I went through one of the hardest times of my life. Caroline was nowhere to be seen when I needed her the most, but Freddy? He was always a text or call away when I needed him most, and it was him, and not my girlfriend at the time, who was there for me the night my grandma died.
The experience ended up making us a lot closer, and after things fell apart between Caroline and me, I ultimately told Freddy that I felt the same way as he did. Doing so was scary because not only did this change things between him and me, but me and myself as well. Liking Freddy didn’t just mean that I had accidentally fallen for one of my friends. It also meant that a label that I had grown so comfortable with — a label that I had clung onto for so long — was suddenly not for me anymore, and that was a scary thing to realize.
At the time, I wondered if Freddy was some sort of exception to my lesbianism due to what I was going through at the time, but ultimately I thought to myself, What better time to explore my sexuality than now? I’m fresh out of a relationship, in college, and in a perfect place to figure myself out.
I ended up having sex with two boys that semester: one boy I met through a student association I was in, and a friend from high school. These experiences were the first sexual ones I had with men, and through them, I realized I was sexually and romantically attracted to men.
Even though it felt uncomfortable, I felt like I needed to have a label because having one meant that I had figured things out.
I started to rethink things: Maybe I was bisexual? Maybe I was pansexual? Even though it felt uncomfortable, I felt like I needed to have a label because having one meant that I had figured things out — and during that time in my life, that’s what I wanted: to fully know who I was and what I wanted.
So, the bisexual label stuck for a while, even when I started dating a girl I met a couple of years later. Once I started dating her, I started to think about my identity and question my sexuality yet again. I knew in the past I had been both sexually and romantically attracted to both men and women, but part of me wanted to start calling myself a lesbian again due to how I had only ever dated women. On top of that, if I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, wouldn’t it be okay to call myself one?
But, I had a dilemma. While technically yes, the bisexual label applied to me, part of me felt like I had somewhat grown out of the label. On top of that, I had conflicting feelings on the label due to the idea that I had to have a preference for either men or women. For me, I had always swung back and forth between who I preferred more, but ultimately I always preferred women more.
I realized that, ultimately, putting a label on myself really only served the purpose of helping others understand me and who I was.
I also didn’t feel completely comfortable calling myself a lesbian, mainly because I felt like doing so discounted my past experiences with men. And even though they were mainly sexual experiences, I felt like calling myself a lesbian erased the past experiences that made me who I was.
After a lot of mental debate, I came to a realization: I didn’t have to put a label on myself if I didn’t want to. I realized that, ultimately, putting a label on myself really only served the purpose of helping others understand me and who I was — and that if it didn’t help me understand who I was, I didn’t need one. I didn’t need to put myself into a small box and shove labels onto myself to know who I was, because not putting a label on myself was part of having myself figured out.
At the end of the day, I only need to make sense to one person — myself. Nothing anyone says and thinks about me defines who I am. I know who I am — a person whose identity is always changing and evolving as I go through life and different experiences, and it’s OK if not a single label fits me.
*Names have been changed.