I first realized I wasn’t straight when I was 14-years-old.

My older sister took me to a Women’s hockey game at her University and up until warm-ups, I was still pretty on the fence about the game. Sure, I had been to a couple minor-league games here and there, but I was still operating heavily on the pretense that hockey games were just fighting and shooting a piece of rubber into a net. Not very interesting.

And then I saw the team’s captain taking warm-up shots, and everything changed, and not just with my opinion on the game of hockey. But that’s a different story.

The rest of the game, I was mesmerized by everything she did. Every time she had the puck, I was just in awe and at the end of the game, I could not shut up about her to save my life.

“Sounds like you have a crush,” my sister had taunted, but little did she know that I was kind of freaking out that I might have a crush on a girl.

I pocketed that thought until later during my freshman year of high school, when I found myself having the same mushy, heart-fluttering feeling about a girl in one of my classes. At that point, it had been months since I first thought about my sexuality.

I was fortunate enough to attend a performing arts high school, where there was a wide variety of sexualities and gender identities, so I knew that even if I came out, I wouldn’t have to face much ridicule for it. I held off for a while, still unsure of what ‘label’ I really identified with. Even with the accepting environment of my high school, there were still the few people who believed that once you came out, you were stuck identifying with that label forever. Some people – even now, in 2017 – still believe that people who identify as bisexual are just "afraid to admit that they’re gay."

That hindered my coming out for quite a while. What if I wasn’t actually bisexual? What if I realized later that I was a lesbian? What if I was bisexual, but I still liked one gender more than the other?

So, near the middle of my sophomore year of high school, after I had been dating my first ever girlfriend for about three months, I came out – only to a close circle of friends – as bisexual. I didn’t get to come out to my family quite in the way I had wanted to (I was making mac and cheese and got a little bit of the third degree from my mom about said first girlfriend), but it kind of worked.

I only really talked about boys in front of my family because that’s what I was used to. It was easy, normal even, for a teenage girl to comment on a guy’s appearance, right?

Wrong. I was instantly bombarded with comments like “I thought you were gay now” and “what happened to liking girls?”

Isn’t that what being bisexual was? Wasn’t I able to like both genders?

Cue sexuality freak-out number one.

The thing is, I never really came out with a set label. Whenever I told someone about my sexuality, I would say things like “I guess I like girls, too” or “I don’t know what I am, but I’m definitely not straight.” Those things were easy to say, easy to identify with, and labels were scary. I was still afraid that once you came out, there were no takesies-backsies.

Sexuality freak-out number two came around the time that I started dating my first long-term girlfriend. She knew that I was queer in some respect, but I never had any type of label around her, which worked really well.

About six months in, I’m head over heels in love with her, and I confided in my best friend that I thought I might identify as lesbian. She supported me, of course, and it was pretty cut and dry.

I’m lesbian. Everything’s fine. I’ve got a great girlfriend, I’m okay with the label, I wouldn’t mind being “stuck with it.” It was still pretty nerve-wracking, and it still didn’t really feel right, but it felt right enough.

That’s when I realized I was settling. I was settling on something so personally important to me, something that still shapes who I am today. I kept waiting to find a perfect label for what I was feeling, for who I felt I was, and it took me a while to realize I might never find that label and that was okay. I don’t have to put a sticker on my sexuality that I can’t peel off.

I’ve come out four separate times with three different labels, but I’ve only felt confident in one of those, and that was the most recent.

Whenever I’m asked what I identify as, I start off by shrugging and going, “Meh. Who knows.” After the initial reaction – it’s usually laughter or a well-meaning smile – I explain that I just use a blanket term of “queer” because sexuality is fluid and labels are restricting.

So, this is the last time I’m coming out.

Hey, pals, I’m queer as hell. Labels don’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work for you. Pick a label, pick four labels, or don’t pick any at all. Remember that societies sexuality stickers aren’t mandatory and you can identify as whatever you’re comfortable with. You’re doing great, and I’m proud of you.

Happy Pride Month!