So, after those experiences and
confusion, what would make me actually consider how I was feeling and who I
might be, you ask? One person. Leah Mitchell*. Fast forward 4 years. It’s
Spring 2009, and I’m a junior in college. Nearly all my friends were abroad, so
it was a weird semester to begin with. Leah was in a class I was taking, and we
had some mutual friends but didn’t actually know each other. I did, however,
know she was gay. And that fact alone made me blush just by looking at her. But
for whatever reason, and I’ll never know whether it was just the right time or that
Leah was the right person for me to have a crush on at the time, I NOTICED Leah.
And, all of a sudden, it was like, holy shit. I can’t stop thinking about this
person. And, like a cheesy cliché, I started understanding all the love songs
and the feelings and the crazy distracting thoughts I had about her. And the
worst part? I had no one to tell! But I finally admitted to myself that shit
was getting real. I spent nearly every night that semester listening to the same song and just thinking about her with terrible knots in my stomach. I couldn’t ignore how I felt about Leah. And maybe that was
okay. And so began my more public coming out process, which is ongoing to this day, but
whose isn’t? I never was actually with Leah, but it didn’t matter. She was my gate.
For whatever reason, she was the one who made me feel like I could be gay.
I wish I could say that once I accepted my gayness, I was
not awkward and asked Leah out, but that would be a total and complete lie. I
was awkward as fuck. That April, my school hosted a campus-wide gay pride event.
Some club had the a whole rainbow spread of different colored jello, and all I
wanted was some of this jello. I realize that this sounds like a metaphor, but
I’m talking about actual literal JELLO. I was so focused on this goddamn bright
jello that I didn’t even notice who was running the table. As I approached the
table and finally looked up, I saw that Leah was one of the people in charge. I
literally stopped in my tracks and did a complete turn around and hustled away.
I didn’t look back once, and I could feel my face turning red. I needed to get
myself under control and fast.
I never ended up even kissing Leah, but by the time finals
were over, I had actually worked up the nerve to have a conversation with her
and that was enough to make me feel like I was literally floating. The conversation was utter small talk about one of our reading assignments for class, but the fact that she engaged with me at all and then SMILED on top of that was more than I would have ever expected. She
graduated that spring, and I went home to a summer of The L Word and faced with
the prospect of coming out to my family.**
The good stuff doesn’t come until I started my senior year
of college. I came back to school SO SO ready to finally make out with an
actual woman. Although my crush on Dana Fairbanks (Why, Ilene Chaiken? WHY?!) had
sustained me over the summer, it would no longer do. And then, a mere two weeks
into the semester, I found myself hanging out with a friend of my best
friend’s. And you guys, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and I could totally tell. I was
completely beside myself. Not only was
this girl super hot and smart, she was ACTUALLY gay. Trifecta! By the end of
the night, it was just the two of us watching some tv show that neither of us
actually cared about. ALL I could focus on was the fact that our arms were just
barely touching, and holy shit, the electricity! When she finally kissed me, it
was like validating everything I had been feeling for the last eight years. I
felt all the feelings and was totally, at least for those moments, complete.
**To be followed up in a separate post.
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