bisexual

When you have a best friend, you expect to be able to tell them anything and for them to love you unconditionally, without judgment. At least, that’s what I felt about my best friend in sixth grade. She was like an older sister to me; of course she would stick with me.

Even a Google search will conflate “queer women” with “lesbian.” So the first and most obvious thing I wish people understood about being a queer woman, is that we exist.

And when you're multiply marginalized and know how much work there is to be done in the struggle for liberation, how few people are doing it, and that our lives literally depend on it, it can feel like you’re letting your people down.

If I have sex with a woman, it does not make me gay. As someone who identifies as female, it doesn’t even make me a lesbian.

Despite our relative insulation from homophobia, my wife and I are not unaware of the situation. There are plenty of people in this country who don’t believe that we have the right to exist, to be married, or to raise a child together.

There was never a lightbulb moment in which I realized, “Hey! I’m bisexual!” I actually spent several years with a growing sense that something about me wasn’t quite the norm.

I didn’t realize I could like girls and boys. I didn’t have to choose, and one didn’t cancel out the other. Around the same time I attended my first GSA meeting, I did wonder, maybe I’m not straight? Maybe I’m gay?

Right now, today, as of writing this, I identify as queer. But I didn’t always.