The honest answer is that I didn’t face many challenges because of my identity for a long time—mostly because I worked very hard not to have one. I remember sitting on the couch with my mother watching some daytime talk show where lesbians were presented as a kind of performance art: overalls, plungers, aggressive confidence. At some point she said, relieved, “Thank God my daughters are normal.” And we were. Sort of. My older sister was angry. My younger sister is autistic (best person I know). And I was smart and fat. I didn’t have the tools at sixteen to understand why her comment made something in my body tighten. I just knew I liked boys, so that should’ve settled it. End of story. Except it didn’t. There was something else—some quiet, unnamed pressure I couldn’t explain and definitely wasn’t going to bring up at home. So I did what felt practical. I married the first boy who paid me any attention. It felt efficient. Acceptable. Like checking a box to something that would make me feel safe. A few years into my marriage, I had a vague awareness that I was slightly off-script. I thought about women sometimes. I watched an unreasonable amount of late-90s and early-2000s gay and lesbian dramas. But that didn’t mean anything, right? I loved my husband. There was no reason to make a scene, no reason to come out, especially when I had every intention of staying put. Until one day I asked why he’d been acting strange and he told me he’d slept with a coworker from the Spectrum call center where he worked. (I have T-Mobile now. Thank you very much) Suddenly I was divorced and dropped back into the dating pool with no map and no floaties. The men were unbearable. The women were terrifying—and many of them were waving big signs on their dating profiles that read: No bisexuals. It was an efficient way to feel unwelcome everywhere at once. Eventually, I asked a woman out. She was funny, high-energy, and so self-possessed I barely knew how to speak around her, so I listened. I was completely taken in. She walked me to my car, and I asked her if this was actually a date. (Yes. I asked her out, then asked if it was a date) She kissed me, and something in my brain finally clicked into place. Oh. I thought. That’s how it’s supposed to feel. She smiled, stepped back, and immediately tried to get into the wrong car. The relationship itself was a mess (the first always is), but we stayed friends. She introduced me to my local Pride community, which changed the shape of my life. I became involved with Volusia Pride, helped start Lake Helen Pride, and now spend a surprising amount of my time telling people it’s okay not to know who they are yet. Writing is the throughline. I’m pursuing my MFA because writing is how I process confusion, contradiction, and the quiet damage caused by silence. I work as a journalist for the West Volusia Beacon, mentor a queer youth zine, and try—on the page and in the world—to make space for people who don’t fit cleanly into anyone’s expectations. I didn’t grow up knowing who I was, but now, it’s how I hold the door open for whoever comes next.