Growing up I was always taught to be open-minded when it came to "socially untraditional" opinions...

My aunt Zuzy used to take me to Pride parades when I was younger so I was introduced to the multitude of what love could be from a young age.

When I got to middle school, it was still popular to use the word "gay" as some kind of insult but I had never really thought too much into it at the time. During this time I had a best friend, Morgan, we had both been victims of bullying the previous last year of elementary school so we instantly had something to bond over and during those three years of middle school we became closer and closer with the fact that we were considered the "weirdos" of our class. 

We did everything together in school and out; fenced with fallen tree branches, pretended we were demons sent to the Earth to cause mischief and gave each other demon names (hers was Daimonas and mine was Raven), teamed up to dominate in dodgeball and flag football, sang popular-during-that-time songs (Death of a Bachelor!) with other friends while hiding underneath the classroom desks when we had finished our classwork, went rollerskating for her birthday, and so much more that made me think we were always going to be BDFF's (Best Demon Friends Forever) forever... 

Over all that time I began to realize more and more that I liked her but I had thought it was in a way that a sister cares for a sister, but when my actual little sister was born, I realized that the way I cared for her wasn't the same as how I saw Morgan... I became so confused with how I was feeling and it only worsened when I realized that I "like-liked" her at the same time that I had a crush on another classmate who was the friend of one of her friends, Hunter. Two crushes; one boy and one girl... As you can imagine I had a hard time coming to terms with that and, sorry to say, it only got worse when I got to high school and I ended up going to a different school than both of them. I stayed in contact with Morgan a bit longer than Hunter before she too fell out of contact with me and I was left alone in a new school environment and different school system where I barely knew anyone and it felt like people only used and came to me when they needed something but never stuck around to actually get to know me.

For the first few years of high school, I thought that Morgan figured out I liked her and she didn't feel the same way about me so that's why she fell out of contact and I still don't know if that's the case or not but I began to move on from her around the last two years of high school and started to feel more at peace with the fact I was Bi... until Senior year when it became a "trend" to say you were gay or lesbian. I don't know if it was just my school or if it was like a national thing but soon everyone was "coming out" and saying they were gay or lesbian when I knew all my classmates well enough to know they actually weren't. I had felt a sense of anger at the fact that they were turning, a sometimes critical, part of the LGBTQ+ community's identity into a "fad," something that could be "all the rage" today before being tossed aside the next day to be ridiculed if it's brought up again and at the same time it made me feel ashamed to be oriented as Bi when I considered myself a "rebel of all social conventions" so I never told any of my classmates how I orientated.

Luckily, while I was up at my college campus in the dorm rooms for a couple of months from mid-February until mid-May, I got the space and time to really ruminate on who I was and, with some help from the school's Ecotherapy club, I began to let go of past conflicts of whether or not I wanted to be who I was and if it was my fault that my best friend and I fell out and figured if it didn't last through something as simple as going to different schools and not feeling the same as I but still being friends, then it wasn't meant to be... 

Now I show my Bi Pride by wearing a button that I had found in the parking lot of the campus one day ("meant to be" says my aunt X'D) and for this LGBTQ+ Pride Month I will be wearing a Bi heart on my wrist that should last a while thanks to my henna tattoo marker ^^

I've always been a weird and confusing person, even to myself, but I hope that my coming out story shows that you shouldn't have to go through a whole bunch of confusing circumstances and events to eventually be comfortable with who you are and how you see the world and the people within it. We should all be free to like and love whoever we want and not worry about and let it confused us with what other people say about it.

Happy Pride Month everyone and show your love how you want to! ^^