Cammy

For a while now, I’ve been pretty confident about my sexuality. I probably first acknowledged that I liked girls when I was in seventh grade. That was also the year I got a boyfriend because all of my other friends had one. I talked to him once over five months. I’ve identified as queer, or gay, or “not straight” for years, and long ago decided that boys are disgusting. I still think boys are gross, but for some strange reason I recently developed a crush on a boy!

It’s really weird. At first, I tried so hard to reject my feelings. I was thinking a lot about biphobia and how badly bisexual girls are treated in the LGBTQ+ community. I tried to convince myself that maybe, if there’s just this one exception, one boy that I really do like, I could hold on to my label as a gay girl. The “gold star lesbian”—a lesbian who has never been with a guy and never plans to be—is a big thing in the lesbian community. Pressure and biphobia from the community made me want to have a “gold star lifestyle.”

I’ve just started to understand that I shouldn’t have to force myself not to like someone. It’s really confusing me for me though, liking a boy, since I never ever pictured this. I’m still kinda scared to talk about it to my friends because so many biphobic habits develop in the community. I don’t really know where I am with my sexuality at this point, and part of me is upset that one boy could throw that off.

Queer is still what I’m most comfortable with. I don’t know if I could identify as bi because I’m scared of the backlash. This timing is so weird though, with me liking a boy and then Amandla Stenberg coming out as bi—it’s comforting. It’s not suddenly making me identify as bi, but it’s really nice to see her do that. Part of me feels like, if Amandla can do it, I can too.

More than anything, I just really want to figure this stuff out. ♦