I want to talk about my first girlfriend and coming out to myself. I didn’t know I was gay until after this experience. In middle school there was this girl I knew named Ashley and I realize now that I had a crush on her, but then I didn’t know I had a crush on her. She could see it but I could not see it and we had a weird relationship. We started to play basketball together, and we started to not be friends and become ‘frenemies’.

Basically how it came to be, when I was a freshman in high school, I went to three different high schools. I ended up at East and I was the new kid at East and she was there. I thought that there was no way we were going to be in the same class together and after lunch I walked into class and Mrs. Wagner introduced me and there Ashley was sitting. I was the new kid in class, and I sat down next to Carrie and we became friends. We bond over our mutual dislike of Ashley, because we were 14.

Months pass we become besties. Sophomore year starts and one day we were making fun of Ashley a lot. I knew why I was making fun of her. She was not my friend anymore. But I didn’t know Carrie’s motives. One day Carrie asked me why I didn’t like Ashley and I told her that we used to be friends and played basketball and one day she decided she didn’t like me. Carrie didn’t really believe that was true and she said, ‘I thought it was because you two hooked up.’ I said, ‘absolutely not! Why would you think that?!’ Then she said, ‘I thought you were gay?’

One thing that really sticks in my mind, when I was a child, my dad drives a semi-truck. One time he was delivering, he was a mover, there were two women, I had no idea what was going on, he was dismissive and cranky with them, I remember this in hindsight. One thing I do remember clearly, was that they gave us cookies and they gave my dad a huge tip, a couple hundred dollars, and so we were in the truck about to take off, and my dad said ‘fuck you dykes!’ This was the first time I heard him say the word ‘dyke’ and this struck me. I didn’t really understand it, but I knew he thought being gay was a bad thing.

That was something that stuck out in my brain and I am thinking to myself, I am not gay. People can’t be gay. Then it got me thinking why would she think I was gay? At the time I was a tom boy so I started to try to be more girly. I had my mom buy me skirts and dresses, which I never wore, but I tried. I never changed. I was still the same person.

I finally got the balls to ask Carrie why she thought I was gay. She said she didn’t know and then she told me that she was gay. She came out to me and I pieced this together and realized that she wasn’t out to anyone else and she thought we were both gay. This is when I realized people can be gay. They are not ‘dykes’ they are people that I liked to hang out with. This opened my mind up to the possibility that I was.

I told Carrie that it was okay and we could still be friends but that I wasn’t gay. We still hung out but I wanted to put a distance between the two of us. That proved to be hard to do what with her being my best friend. She came to me and asked me why I was being weird and I told her that I don’t like the way that I feel about you. This upset her and she told me that I didn’t know I was straight until I tried it. I think she knew we had feelings for each other even if I didn’t.

She kissed me and I didn’t run away and we basically started a relationship. That simple, who knew it could be? We kept it a complete secret however. I was terrified to tell my parents and she wasn’t ready either. We spent the rest of sophomore year completely happy in an undercover bubble. Nobody knew.

She had to move away to San Antonio. She tells me that she was going to go to a new school, start a new life and tell her parents that she was gay. I started to freak out because what did this mean for me? Her parents knew my parents and I was afraid she was going to out me. I told her I didn’t want to be with her anymore and she was going to leave anyway.

Our mutual friend, we will call her friend X, came up to me and said, that Carrie had came out to her parents. X was upset with me because we hadn’t told her and Carrie had when she left and questioned me why I hadn’t trusted her to tell her. I didn’t have an answer for her because I did trust her and she was a friend. I don’t know why I was ashamed of being gay. I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling.

I kind of know now that I was afraid of what my parents would do or walking into a locker room and having everyone say ‘that’s the gay one’. I know now this is ridiculous but in that moment it was very real. I am not ashamed of who I am anymore.

Teresa