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It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I knew that I was bisexual, but I know it was likely at an early age. I had small crushes in the way that innocent children do, just knowing I wanted to ride the bus with certain people or be around them, and I called that a crush. The first glimpse of this that I can remember was thinking a girl in my class had beautiful eyes. I can still see the blue detail when you look into them, clear as glass.
I wouldn’t come out until years later, to my friends when I started college, and to my mom halfway through. The hardest part was coming out to myself, accepting that it was a part of me and that I wasn’t pretending or confused. A part of this was my OCD making it difficult, though I wouldn’t realize that until I was diagnosed years later.
My sexuality started to solidify itself beyond all the doubts I tried to convince myself of when I was seventeen.
I had met a girl on stan Twitter, a place where many fan girls who find themselves down the music industry pipeline end up, and for that I am forever thankful. Even though it didn’t work out, it gave me tangible evidence for myself that I wasn’t secretly a fraud.
Around this time, I found a deep comfort in music. Songs like “She” by Dodie Clark and anything by Girl in Red were listened to in secret throughout high school. I remember crying to Girl in Red’s “Girls,” feeling like a part of me was buried underneath something I didn’t know how to let go of.
Weirdly enough, it was Harry Styles who brought me the most comfort during this time. An artist who has never felt the need to publicly label his sexuality, while still providing a kind of safe space for the community. Something about him being unapologetically himself—the Vogue covers, the dresses, the nail polish even while in a boy band—stayed with me. No matter how he personally identifies, he made me feel like I could exist without having to explain myself. Like I could just be.
By then, I had already been heavily stereotyped by friends and told that “the closet was glass,” because of my endless array of Dr. Martens and nose piercings that apparently gave it away. But those stereotypes felt pointed at me like a sharp edge when I wasn’t ready for them. If making Clairo my wallpaper wasn’t obvious enough.
I remember shaking as I finally told my mom I was bisexual. It was in the car after a heated argument with the dean of my school, which would later lead to a federal investigation, and something in me just bubbled over completely unrelated.
My mom didn’t react with shock or disgust, like I had always pictured and scared myself with. Instead, she responded calmly, with a quiet knowing, explaining that you just know your kids, and that she never wanted to make me uncomfortable or assume, but she felt like she had always seen it in me.
That was the moment I felt a weight lift off my shoulders that I had been carrying for over a decade.
I still am not always the most open with my experience, but it was music that helped me find myself and gave me the courage and comfort to be who I am. As a music journalist, that stays with me when I speak to artists or think about their work. It’s a piece of me I can never repay them for.
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