Finding Myself

At a young age I knew something about me was off. When I would watch a movie with my family I would solely be focused on the female character and not the male (who was intended to be everyone’s attraction). A very vivid example I can remember is seeing the movie Harry Potter and being attracted to Hermione and not Harry or any of the other leading males. At the time, of course, I knew nothing about why I felt that way and just sort of moved on from the feeling.

As I went on to middle school, I developed a few more crushes here and there, however, I noticed there was no kind of acceptance for a girl to be liking girls in my small hometown community, so I decided to keep the emotions I felt locked away.

High school came along with (you guessed it!) more crushes. At this point I had a pretty clear idea of who I leaned more towards and I had also developed a new tactic of hiding my true self away from my friends by telling them I had a “crush” on a certain boy. During my junior year of high school I had met this girl online and we quickly became best friends. I won’t go into detail now I might make that a story for another time, but I ended up growing feelings for her, confessing them, and now we are in a relationship.

The whole reason I’m writing this story and sharing these personal details with you is because I’ve never really felt comfortable sharing it with anyone else. There are only two people who know I’m in a relationship. There’s a sense of satisfaction knowing I’m finally telling someone else, although I don’t know who you are. The truth is I've been scared of coming out to the rest of my family and friends ever since I realized who I really am. Me writing this story sort of makes me feel like one day I can finally come out to the rest of my family and friends.

Coming out is hard I'll be honest with you. I don't know if you've ever been in my position or not, but if you have then you know the struggle. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to do this and I start to think to myself why I have to make such a grand announcement for loving another girl. I'm still the same me, regardless of who I love. I'm still the same girl who has to take the label off a water bottle before drinking it, I'm still the same girl who's deathly afraid to go to the circus, all I am is just my true self.

I am definitely much happier now than I was at the start of high school. Although I do have my ups and downs in my relationship, I am definitely much better off now. One key I failed to mention about my relationship is that it is long-distance. She lives over 1,000 miles away from me but I swear I've never had a better connection with anyone who lives in my city. As I had mentioned previously, this whole story was sort of a way for me to release how I felt. If you are out there reading this story and you are in a similar situation as me I wish you the best of luck. Even if you aren’t in a situation like mine and you are just reading this for kicks, I wish you the best anyway and thank you for reading my story.