Maria Bello says that we need new ways of talking about who we are and who we love. She’s not wrong.

Sexual identity is complicated. Love is simple.

When I was coming of age, my story was so much more nuanced than the narratives I read, watched on TV, connected with online, and that confused me.

For many years, it wasn’t that hard to date men. It was fine. I even fell in love with one or two, along the way. That didn’t happen to the gay girls in pop culture (well, besides Willow). It didn’t seem to happen to the people who read or wrote for my online communities, either. Everything seemed so very clear to them: they liked women. They loved women. They wanted to sleep with women. They wanted to marry women, someday, if it was ever legalized. Meanwhile, I didn’t know what I wanted. I just wanted…more than what I had with men. So what was I?

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