I’m gay. No not gay meaning happy, which is often used as a joke, I am completely and utterly in love with women. Now you as a reader may be thinking,” Wait, gay? But not a happy gay and in love with women? Isn’t that lesbian?”  Technically, yes you are right, I am the girl who messes with no one at school, plays basketball, goes to church, and has grown up with no reason to like women is lesbian. “Oh! Of course you’re gay, you play basketball!”. Now as much as I love this stereotype, it’s not right at all. For one in elementary school is when I started to look at the girls on the playground, while many of my friends found the boys cute, thinking they were so pretty and even wanting to kiss them in an innocent just figuring things out kind  of way. Then in middle school I began to realize this was wrong, liking the same sex was wrong, being “gay” was wrong because in 2012 for those of you who remember was the time of immense bullying for those kids who were openly gay , some of those cases ending in death. So I did what any twelve year old would do, I ignored the feelings, because liking the same sex was wrong and being gay was wrong. Then I went into high school, last year, my freshman year the lgbt community had done something unbelieveable, gay marriage had been legalized and suddenly the one thing that has been so wrong only three years earlier seemed okay now. It seemed as if I didn’t have to hide myself anymore and the piece of me that I always hid could maybe come out a little bit. Boy was I wrong. I mean I never meant for my mom to find out the way she did, which was through texts with my girlfriend at the time, and I never thought her reaction would be so bad. The best thing I could compare it to was the movie The Last Airbender, for those of you who followed the animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender all the way to the end, you’ll understand just how much of a trainwreck in comparison it was when my mom learned her one and only daughter was infact a lesbian. But, instead of being honest with her and just telling her that I wasn’t “normal” and that I wasn’t what she expected as a daughter, I told her simply and stupidly that I was just with that girl to get her mad and also to get a reaction out of her. Not only a giant mistake because following this event I broke up with someone I genuinely cared about but also due to the fact that I knew I was gay then and nothing has changed since. After the scare of my mom, and the backlash from her delayed reaction, I told myself I wouldn’t date or be with another girl till after high school when I’m on my own and it no longer mattered, but life has a funny way of changing your initial plans. Having it’s own agenda that happens to override your own, for me it was the introduction of one of the most beautiful, breath-taking girls someone could meet. Now she may not believe that, and she may deny everything I say she is, but to me she’s given me hope, love, and someone to go to no matter how stupid the reason. She made me realize that I’m just doing me, and maybe I’m just “experimenting”, but what I do know is that I’m gay with her, and this time I mean it as happy.