My first “post-puberty” same-sex thoughts were me sitting in class and imagining kissing the girls (It was technically pre-puberty for me but I hit puberty very late compared to most). I thought they were intrusive thoughts at first because I didn’t know being lesbian was a thing. I had a hard time understanding my feelings toward girls, but I realized that I had this special attentiveness toward and fixation on girls when in contrast I would barely register or think about boys.

I never had a boy crazy phase and I figured that eventually I would find one I was interested in but had no interest in doing anything to make that happen. Meanwhile I was always thinking about how attractive girls were and all of their tiny minute details. I could describe at length everything that was attractive about a girl and I felt this way about so many girls and female celebs, but when a friend would show me pictures of guys they thought were attractive and asked me what I thought, I was totally blank. I had no words. In some cases I could tell that they were not actually unattractive but I could not bring myself to personally feel even a little bit attracted or say anything beyond “Oh, uh, he’s cute” and I felt like I was always lying to not be mean and make them feel like they had bad taste. I did not understand what they saw in boys and it took me a while to realize that all of the things I felt toward girls is what they felt toward boys.

I was also always drawn to pretty girls like a moth to flame, and would seek to befriend them, though this wasn’t a conscious pattern. Which is how I ended up with my closest friends being objectively gorgeous straight women. I think that unintentionally ended up giving me cover because I am presumed to be like them, and only other gay people seem to pick up on me being gay.

It took me a while to accept that I was gay but I finally did after accepting that sexual orientation is a pattern of attraction and if I’m only attracted to females but not males, that was my sexual orientation regardless of how I felt about it.