It took me years to realize when my first crush on a girl was. She was in my sixth-grade homeroom, I saw her every day. I found myself staring at her a lot, admiring her mannerisms and facial features. I wanted to be around her as much as I could. We were friends, but I didn't feel that way about my other friends, especially the girls. At the time, I determined it was because I found her so pretty, I was jealous. However, in eighth grade, I came to understand I didn't just like boys, I liked girls too. As the years went on, I came to understand another thing: the way I experience attraction towards men and towards women is very different.
Putting it into words is nearly impossible, but the one feeling I've found to be consistent since my discovery of what it means to be bisexual is that when I like a girl, the feeling nearly always manifests first as a strange fixation with wanting to be her.
I'm not sure where this feeling stems from. Could it be the systematic way women are socialized, to see each other as competition, to compare their beauty to everyone else's? Finding a certain woman exceptionally beautiful leads many women to try and emulate them, like Kylie Jenner for example. People try different makeup and fashion styles, mannerisms of speaking and moving, and even injections and surgeries to look like their favorite models and celebrities. The dominant culture surrounding makeup and fashion today is heavily influenced by women like the Kardashians. How far removed is this obsession with fascination, love, a crush?
Either way, this feeling has been one that permeates my experience as a bi woman for as long as I've known I was one. The strange jealousy phase doesn't last, but it is a big part of the realization of my feelings for someone.
The experience of being someone attracted to the people of your own gender is something not yet widely talked about in media as compared to heterosexuality. The romantic feelings for me, and many other bi, gay, or pansexual people do differ from the feelings of heterosexual people, especially when same-sex attraction occurs. The exact causes of this, stigma, socialization, shame, or just the lack of popular understanding, should be explored in more depth. I'm hoping in the next few years, more people with same-sex attraction come out with their stories, making the journey for people like myself a little easier, and a little less lonely.
