By

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When I was young, preteens and onwards, the world as I knew it was divided into sexualities: straight, gay and not interested. I didn't find out about bisexual until much, much later, as when the internet was a readily available resource. Didn't realise that applied to me until I was reading a few articles last year on other people's discoveries and felt like I was reading about myself.

I was thirty and, before then, thought that how I felt about women meant nothing because everyone (barring gay men and some asexual people) are attracted to women, right? In any case, the only person I've ever been with is my partner and that surely negates everything.

Yeah, I sat down and took a long look at my past. I've never been in any sort of community that has actually treated me with much fairness and, if I'm honest, even the LGBT community makes me a little wary. Like I'd feel like a fraud because, unlike some of the stories I've read, I've never been made to feel like I was different.

My parents, well, I'm still not sure what my father would think as I don't tend to confide in him (he tends to act more like an older brother than a dad) nor does it change the status quo, and my mother fled the scene of my childhood when I was three. Whilst telling my aunt was greeted with a shrug and an "and?". My grandfather, who all but raised me, used to say "I don't care who you bring home, be they male, female, white, brown, black... All I care is that they treat you right." That was the mindset I grew up with.

Although at the time, I didn't realise, looking back, I can see I just knew that, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I wasn't in some easily-defined camp of boys or girls.

At school, I was the weird, short geeky girl who rode horses, preferred wearing boy's clothes, read too much and, occasionally, beat up a bully. My schoolmates thought I was a lesbian purely because I didn't go gaga over boys like they did. I'm not even guessing here, one of them actually straight up asked me this. Not in any nasty way, she actually found it oddly refreshing that I wasn't always about 'the guys'. I told her "no" not because I wanted to fit in, but because it wasn't true. Yes, I could admit to myself that girls were pretty and I found guys attractive (just not the guys at our school), but I wasn't interested in either.

Still, I think that, maybe, they picked up on some of the unconscious signals I was putting out as, when I told my partner I was bisexual, his response was "I sort of figured, you used to look at [mutual friend] like you planned on devouring her."

That mutual friend... Well, she used to spend a lot of time at my house during my mid-teen years, sometimes staying entire school holidays. We'd do all the girly things: spend the days riding horses out on the hills and roads, spend the nights giggling over silly things. She'd tell me of her exploits with various guys, whilst I, being only theoretically knowledgeable about sex at the time, would just listen and shake my head.

But I recall nights where I lay there in the dark and listen to her sleeping, my chest feeling rather tight. I'd other friends who'd do the sleepover thing, all of whom I've lost touch with, but she's the one that I can remember the clearest and it's the oddest things: the way she would style her hair, the shape of her mouth, the little overbite of her teeth, how she laughed...

People used to say we acted like sisters. I may be an only child, but I'm pretty sure sisters don't think about kissing each other. Frick, I'm not even sure what would've happened if I'd tried. We sort of disconnected when my family moved, reconnecting much later when she'd moved in with a jerk of a boyfriend. That's when I met my partner of, now, twelve years.

I'm not sure where I was going with all this, but this is where I am now. Thirty-one years old, a mother with a loving partner and bisexual. I guess it's never too late to come out.