I first fell in love when I was 18 and I had imagined that when I fell in love that it would be a really wonderful carefree experience. However, all I could about when I first realized I had fallen in love was, "shit!" I had fallen in love with my best friend, a member of my own sex and all I could think was, "No, no...Gay does not happen to me...Others can be gay, that's fine with me...but I am NOT gay!"

I had always lived the life that I felt was drawn for me. I dated boys, went to prom with boys, hooked up with boys and lost my virginity to a boy. This was so ingrained in my head that when I found myself feeling something for a woman, I couldn't imagine it possible. In fact, it was impossible.

So like many homos who start coming to terms with it... "no I'm not gay, I just found the right person. I fell in love with the person." I think that was a kind of coping mechanism. It was a way for me to adjust and help myself realize that maybe I wasn't going to be the norm. I continued this relationship for about 3 years and thought this was my end all be all. This was the person I was meant to spend the rest of my life with. I had given myself to her in a way that no one else could understand. I had come out to my family and friends with her, and I had traveled that vulnerable road of either being accepted or not as a homorsexual person. There was no possible way that anyone else could love me or understand me in the way that she had. I not only had first fallen in love, but it was a life altering kind of situation. It was stepping out of the norm with someone for the first time, and truly fearing rejection from the people you know and love and others who were just complete strangers.

However, some good things actually have to come to an end. I was heart broken. I had grieved that love for so long, and it took years for me to come to terms with it. Better to have loved and lost. No. Absolutely not. It was years of an emotional roller coaster, but what was really an issue was the fact that I not only had to mentally get over the fact that I had been heart broken, but I had to challenge myself to come to terms with my sexuality. I had realized that I had used my relationship with her as a crutch. Which isn't to say that I had loved her any less, but I needed to be on my own and identify as a gay person without her. Because with her, I was a girl who had fallen in love with a girl. There was no other need to identify as gay, because I didn't need to look for anyone else.

For so long I had told myself, and my family that I had fallen in love with this particular woman, and that the gender was not the issue. I had made it clear that I wasn't gay, it was just that I had found a soul mate in a person that happened to be the same gender as my own. So the end of my relationship meant that I had to be true to myself. I knew that I wanted to be with a woman and I think that the people that I had told that I wasn't really 'gay' didn't really care. I was dating a woman, and that's what mattered. Essentially I was a gay woman in their eyes, but not in my own.

The breakup was the best thing that ever happened to me. I eventually healed and found that I was ok with being alone. The biggest hurdle was the fact that I could be single and have the strength to call myself 'gay'. I wasn't a straight girl that happened to fall in love with another girl, I was a lesbian.

With everything that is going on around us, and the injustice that is happening all around us, I think the strongest way we can fight against it is being true to ourselves. When we lie to ourselves about who we are, how are we supposed to expect the people around us to accept us?

I fell in love for the first time when I was 18, and it taught me more about myself than I could ever imagine. Anyone who falls in love will feel vulnerable; because that is in essence what love is all about. But even when I was told from the beginning of my life to be true to myself, I had never really understood what that meant. I assumed it meant that I should do what I feel is right, but I never thought doing what was right would be the hardest thing I would ever do. Falling in love for the first time gave me the strength to accept myself in a way that would never have been possible without her, or without the complete cycle of love transforming into complete heartbreak. I am eternally grateful for that.

Ashley