I haven’t written on here in over a year. That’s because things have been better than they were and so I haven’t felt the need to write out the hurt and the upset I was experiencing at this time last year, and because life has been busy and I haven’t wanted to wrap my head around what it is right now.

Having been dating a girl for close to 7 months now, I have a lot of feelings about how I’ve experienced life through this. 

To start, I want to situate where I am right now. My parents know (and love) my girlfriend and my friends have been extremely supportive of our relationship. My extended family hasn’t been “told”, but my social media is open and so through a bit of creeping…they’d know. I’ve never “come out” and this doesn’t satisfy nor disappoint me. I’m just chilling.

First, I want to talk about labels. I offhandedly tell people that I’m “half-straight” so they laugh and it doesn’t need to be much of a conversation after that. The ease with which I joke about my sexuality now might make people think I’m quite laid-back about it though. This isn’t actually true. 

I’ve been going to Pride with my best friend every year since we were 16. At first, it was a drunk, split-second decision to go and party with some older people, and show our support of “love is love”. Then last summer (2019), she asked me on the car ride home if I could ever see myself being with a girl. I remember so many thoughts going through my head, and emotions I’d never felt rising up. Over anything though, I felt her love in that car, and the support of whatever my answer would be.  

I’ve been really lucky that my friends and immediate family have accepted my lack of a label. That’s the first thing I want to talk about – prescribing to labels can be deeply empowering for some, but can actually feel quite damaging to others. You don’t need to explain to anyone what your sexuality is. And you even MORESO do not need to prove whether your sexuality exists. I’m not even giving that discussion the time of day.

Asking someone “so are you gay now?” may seem like a funny joke (and it definitely is, dependent upon who says it to me), but please consider the ammunition this can carry. Being understood by others as a straight girl, and then being in a same-sex relationship means questioning your feelings all the time. And when your partner’s feelings hinge on the authenticity of your own, questions such as these make a complicated, intimate questioning of personhood even harder. 

The second thing I’d like to talk about is more personal. This is the relationship between sexuality and sexual experiences for young girls.

As I’ve written about before, I’ve had sexual experiences with boys and men that have tarnished my perception of what a young male is as a concept. I associate(d) sex with guys as coercive, violent, and like I was dirty for having done it. Every single time.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because now being with a girl, feelings are amplified. She can understand the way I exist in the world deeper than any man can, because she exists in the same way. She intimately understands the distrust I have in the concept of men our age, and I don’t have to share with her how deeply I’m hurt by what I’ve experienced at the hands of men I know. She doesn’t tell me to have a sense of humour about rape jokes, or being called a “feminazi”, because she experiences men the same way I do, as a girl who, over anything, wants to be respected. 

I feel really grateful for having found a connection in someone who understands the part of my life that’s impacted by existing as someone who’s experienced sexual violence. At the same time though, I find it really difficult to trust my feelings when I conceptualize the fact I’m with someone of the same sex…Internalized heteronormativity really does a number on us… and this is coming from a gender studies major with extremely open and understanding parents.

What I’m trying to say is that I know I’m not heterosexual, and I know my feelings for my girlfriend are deep and true, but sometimes thinking gets the best of me. What I want to be over anything is authentic, and growing up thinking you have little to worry about in terms of facing adversity due to sexuality leaves you reeling when you realize maybe that wasn’t actually what you’d experience in your life.

Having lost trust in young men over and over again, I find it hard to separate my sexuality from my sexual experiences. If I had had different sexual experiences in the past few years, would I trust men enough to pursue a relationship with one? I don’t know. Is the gravitation towards a female partner intensified because you automatically trust that they’ll never cross your boundaries, more than you can ever see yourself trusting a man? Maybe.

The truth is, I really don’t have any answers to these questions. I’m just getting my thoughts out. I just want other girls in my position to stop doubting their own feelings. Honestly, I don’t know the connection between my sexuality and my sexual experiences, and I don’t know if mine and her paths would have crossed in the way they did had I not had some really difficult – and abusive – relationships and experiences with men. But, what I’m trying to get across is that it doesn’t matter. My experiences with men have made me who I am. They’ve influenced what I’d like for myself, what I’d like in a partner, and how I live my everyday life, but they have not made me into someone whose relationships always need to be impacted by trauma. Whether the trust I feel in girls is innate, or the result of my own experiences, is a moot point.

At the end of the day, I have never felt as loved as I do right now. And I’ve never felt so deeply understood, and like I’ve become half of something so much bigger than her and I. I’m really happy. And whether after this, and after a few years, I feel I’m bisexual, gay, pansexual, or whatever I feel deep inside of me, then that’s what I am. Right now, my label is just happy. And I’m keeping it that way, whether people understand it or not.