As a pre-teen I always struggled with my sexuality. I knew I was different. I did not know what I was feeling, but whatever I was feeling I knew it had to stop. I realized in the sixth grade that the attraction that I felt for boys was the same attraction I felt for girls. I never understood the attraction. I did not think it was "normal." Whatever "normal" was at that time.If anything, I was scared because I felt like the other kids knew I was different.

That year, in sixth grade, I hid that part of me, the part that liked girls, the part that I did not have a proper term for at that time. Until one day I just told my best friend over the phone. I could not take it anymore. I had to tell someone. Someone had to know what I was feeling. So I cracked and I said, "I like girls." For a moment, she was quiet and then she finally broke her silence and said, "That's okay. It's okay. You just like girls?" I quickly responded, "I like boys too." That was the first time I came out to anyone. She never told a soul.

When I entered high school, I came to find that there were more people like me. Except this time around, there was name to what I was and it was Bisexual. Since I did not know what that was at that time when girls would ask if I was Bisexual I would just say no. I was embarrassed. Ashamed even.

Fast forward to a few months into my freshmen year and I met a girl who was a Lesbian. She was a sophomore, and all of a sudden I was enlightened with terms galore. By now, a lot of you may think, "Wow she was really sheltered." No my friends, I was just really innocent minded. I never thought it was to okay to like the same sex or both.

However, moving forward, the sophomore that helped me understand my sexuality ended up being my first girlfriend. How ironic right? Now, here I am, a freshmen in high school in a relationship with a girl, and I still did not have the confidence to say I was a Bisexual woman. Therefore, the relationship did not last. But my interaction with women did not end there. I continued to talk to women, not just in my high school, but other high schools too.

I was slowly growing comfortable with my sexuality but it was a very slow process. Along the way, to this acceptance of my sexuality, I began dating boys. And the reaction that I would receive from these teenage boys was frankly, all the same, like "Wow you like girls!" or "So have you had a threesome already?" Teenage boys, boy were they expecting things to look like the pornos they watched. While teenage girls that I dated were in the same situation as I was, looking for someone to come up with answers, and wondering how comfortable we were with our sexuality.

Moving right along here, I did not accept my sexuality fully until I was a senior in high school. It just hit me, like a volleyball that was spiked over the net and it hit me right in the face, this was who I am.

I am a Bisexual woman. A woman who is comfortable with dating men and women. Call it what you will, confused, I just have not found the right guy yet, I am caught up in today's new trend, or my favorite its just a phase, or the one that just never sits well, the people that I am hanging out with have influenced me into this new lifestyle. It is not a lifestyle. It is who I am. What I have felt for nine years, is the same feeling that I feel now. That does not change, ever.

I am who I am because I struggled to search for answers that I never learned in school or at home. I am who I am because society never taught me, nine years ago, that it was okay to like women and men. I am who I am because when I was young my mother told me that it would be okay if I just liked women, clearly now that is not the case. However, society has taught Bisexuals to feel like they have to choose a side or else they are confused.

But I say no. It is okay to like both genders. Frankly, I would not be any other person but who I am. A proud Bisexual Afro-Peruvian Latina.