When one of your most vivid memories from middle school is a group of boys relentlessly taunting you by calling you a lesbian for an entire class period to the point of tears, realizing that you aren't totally straight can be pretty hard.

Add in an older sibling who constantly tells you "you ruin my reputation," "people complain to me about how weird you are," and "you'll never go anywhere in the music department unless you become more normal", a community who constantly makes you feel bad for being the sexual person you are, and very subtle, underlying homophobia in your high school and you have me throughout most of middle and high school.

Of course, add in some confusion about your sexuality.

I was bullied pretty consistently starting in seventh grade. I was an easy target because I was different and wasn't afraid of that. I wanted to express who I was. Unfortunately, my interests in sex and classic rock didn't exactly align with my classmates who loved pop music, sports, and many whom were very religious. So I was bullied from almost the start of seventh grade. My gym class was where it happened the most often. I had befriended a boy in my gym class who was not liked by anybody. I didn't know this beforehand, I just saw his Led Zeppelin shirt on the first day of school and wanted to be friends.

So naturally, I got bullied almost every day. The culmination of all the bullying came in late November, when one boy decided that he was going to call me a lesbian at the beginning of class. Another boy decided to join him, and while the first boy stopped after stretching, the second boy continued to do it for the entire class. He did so with an evil smile, laughing every time that I got more upset. Eventually, I was in tears. I had gym the last class of the day, so when my mom picked me up I was still sobbing. I anonymously reported the bullies that afternoon. One apologized, one did not. After gym class ended for the school year, I didn't think about it much.

After that incident, I kept getting bullied a lot though. People would spread rumors about me and taunt me in and out of school. I was bullied for the rest of middle and high school both to my face and behind my back. People had no problem coming up to me and telling me what they didn't like about me; they'd start rumors about me that would get resurfaced a couple years later, they'd complain about me to my siblings, and nobody wanted to stay my friend. With the exception of a few, nobody wanted to stay my friend for more that six months.

I never had a consistent friend group, never got asked out by any boys, and didn't even get asked to my senior prom. My swim team friends were the only ones who stuck by me, but they were all in varying grades and had other friend groups outside of ours. People would invite almost everyone in a club or activity that I was in to hang out and leave only me and a few other "outsiders" out. Needless to say, by the time high school ended I had almost no self confidence. To be honest, I still really don't.

While I had all of this going on, I was struggling with my sexuality. Towards the end of eighth grade, I befriended some open minded people for the first time. I was part of a group of girls (not from my school) that were mostly bisexual or lesbian. I was around a group of people who made me realize it was okay to like girls.

As time went on, I still identified as straight but I began to realize that maybe I wasn't. My list of female celebrities I found attractive was a lot longer than any of my girlfriends' and at one point I started seeing girls differently. I realized that I was kind of attracted to girls and curious about it. I never did or said anything about it because I didn't want to give people another reason to bully me. Senior year, my high school started a Gay-Straight Alliance.

In one of the meetings, we took the Kinsey test which measures sexual orientation based on a series of question. The scale goes from 0 (completely heterosexual) to 6 (completely homosexual), and at that point in time I was a 2. I of course thought that was normal. I mean, nobody is completely straight right? However, as I showed it to friends and a lot of them got a 0, I realized that maybe I was a little different. I still pushed it to the side to deal with other issues.

When I got to college, I continued to meet more LGBTQ+ people and people from my high school started coming out. I was able to talk openly about my feelings and attractions. I no longer identified as straight, but I didn't quite have a label either.

Finally, after talking a lot to people about it and thinking, I came to the realization last December that I was bisexual. I started coming out to more and more people and started going on dates with and talking to girls and boys. Eventually, I was out to my whole family and the world.

I am happy with who I am and I fully accept myself for who I am. It took a long time to get here though and there are still times that I struggle with it, but each day it gets a little bit easier.