I’ve known since eighth grade that I wasn't straight, but since the beginning of my dating life I only dated one person; and it was a guy. We dated in our last year of middle school and all throughout high school. At that point I thought I would never date anyone else so I didn’t see why I should have to speak up about my sexuality. Reflecting back on it, I guess I kind of hid behind my relationship and I know now that that was wrong. I’ve always been an active supporter of gay rights, but I didn’t feel it was my place to come out when I wasn’t exactly sure of my sexuality myself.

To make a long story short, we ended up breaking up at the end of our senior year of high school. Shortly after, I started college and joined our campus’ LGBTQ+ club, Unity. When I started dating my girlfriend, I realized that I had no choice but to tell my family. Luckily, I live in the liberal city of New Orleans and have very accepting people in my life.

Since getting out of my small, conservative town, helping run Unity, and dating my first girlfriend, I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned about so many types of people that I didn’t even know existed and eventually had that “aha” moment when I realized what my true identification is.

One of the main things I’ve learned is that there is a whole culture surrounding the queer woman community and it’s awesome. They have their own slang, inside jokes, and my God, they have some awesome TV shows. If you haven’t seen The L Word, I would seriously recommend it.

I’ve also become much more aware of stigmas surrounding the gay community. People seem to think lesbian relationships are more complicated because of personality conflict, but I’m here to tell you it is not. In fact, I find it much easier than dating a guy. Sometimes I get weird questions like, “Who’s the dominant one?” or “Who’s the girl?” Well, this might come as a shock, but both of us are the “girl”. That’s kind of the point.

When my straight friends come to me with boy drama all I can think is, “If you would just date a girl it wouldn’t be this way.” I find myself trying to spread the word of how much better it is (for me anyway). I guess that’s what they mean when they talk about “the gay agenda”.

I also realized that most of the media portrays gay relationships really, really wrong. When people think of lesbians, they seem to think to think of hypersexual super butch women and that is definitely wrong. All queer women are different and we’re normal; we do normal things. We go grocery shopping, watch Netflix, do homework and cook together, just like any straight couple.

Of course when dating someone of the same gender, there comes a whole new set of problems and there are some definite differences between heterosexual and homosexual dating, but at the end of the day, the love is the same and I wouldn’t change a thing.