I was born on September 11, 1984. Little did I know what was waiting for me up ahead in the road of life. I’ve only walked on it for almost 20 years, and its been quite the bumpy road.

I lived a happy childhood. Nothing ever mattered much to me. I was a tomboy at heart, though sometimes my parents dressed me up all girly. I didn’t care about the clothes, as long as I could play in the dirt and spend time with all my boy friends. I had few girls as close friends, I always related better to boys. I hated to play with dolls, I never had that “motherly instinct” many girls have. I played with legos and cars, playmobil and sometimes barbies. But my Barbie games were never quite like the other girls’ games. My barbies were lesbians, some even bisexuals. Of course, it didn’t matter to me back then, I thought it was all normal (yeah, like Barbie playing with her friends in that way is normal...)
I was a little pervert even back then. Not much has changed… Except now I consciously accept what I am, and do not feel bad about it.

Things started becoming unsteady when I turned 12. I began puberty, and just around that time my parents separated and later divorced. I changed schools, I went into Jr High. All these changes took their toll on me. I became emotionally unstable, getting into very steep highs and lows, going into quiet depressions and loud euphoric moments. My school grades dropped quite a lot in 8th year, my friendships began to become unsteady.

The world collapsed when I was in 9th grade. Or, the world I knew collapsed then. A new one started growing out of the ashes of the old.
A new English teacher got into school. I hated her at first, but one sudden day, I realized I hated her because I had a crush on her. No, not just a crush, I loved her. What a tormenting thought! How could it be? I was a girl, I could not like girls! So I went to my mom in hopes of finding help. What I found was rejection from both my parents, who sent me into therapy and never talked about the subject, or about the girl I liked.
I turned to friends. I told Jill and July, my two best friends. I wanted to tell Vande, and I learned that Jill had already told her. I told a few other close friends, but people I hadn’t told had begun to look at me weirdly. They knew. Whenever I was close to Fatima, my teacher, they’d look at us as if expecting I kiss her right there and then. People knew. How? I had told very few.
It turned out that my “closest”, most “trustworthy” friend, Jill, had told people my secret. In the turbulence of my own feelings towards this teacher, my parents rejection, the deathly silence upon my newly discovered sexuality, I had also to find out that she’d never been really my friend, she just stuck with me because she envied me in every possible way. And when she had a secret that was big enough for it to destroy me, she let it free, to destroy me. It nearly did. I cried every day. I stopped eating, I slept all day. In school, I would sit and do nothing. I couldn’t understand why I had to be different. Why did I feel all this things I wasn’t supposed to? Though Jill betrayed me, July, Vande and other friends stayed by my side. That gave me the strength to go on.

The school year ended, and Fatima left the school. By now, it was a certainly in my mind that she wasn’t the only one I’d liked.. just the first person that made me admit it. I looked back and realized that all those times my Barbies coupled up with girls, all those times I’d wanted to kiss my girlfriends, all those times I watched a TV program because I thought the main actress was cute, all those had been always pointing towards what I was, yet I always chose to ignore them.

Now, four years later after I first admitted I liked girls, I’ve gone a long ways from where I was. I am certain of who I am and what I want, and I’ve even taken some measures to make my physical self fit better what I feel I am in my mind.