I've come a long way since 2nd year with coming to terms with the fact that I'm not straight.

I still kind of had myself for not being able to be the perfect child that my parents envisioned, but I also know that there's not much I can do about it, and also, it's my life, I get to do what I want with it.

But now that I've grown to like my identity as a lesbian, I've come across new problems. 

I like the butch to femme spectrum within the lesbian community. I identify as femme, and dress  like a 'traditional' or stereotypical teenage girl. Because of that, it feels like I don't fit in with the rest of the community. It's always the butches or studs that I see, but there's never any femmes. It's always short hair and piercings, and baseball caps with flannels and hoodies. 

Don't get me wrong, masculine girls are hot as fuck. If a stud ever found my ugly ass attractive, I would probably pass out due to the sheer gay panic. I love this whole masculine woman movement, and the style is so cool. But it feels like that's become the only kind of lesbian now. Masculine. I've been told that I'm bisexual because I present feminine. Also, straight girls look at me like I've betrayed them because 'They never would have guessed'. Also also, girls in general have called me a slut for wearing skirts. Like, okay Julia, sorry my idea of not looking like a train wreck involves wearing something other than a baggy tracksuit. I'm allowed to try and look decent instead of wearing whatever is in my gym bag. 

But back on track, where are the femme lesbians? I just hate that other wlw's make me feel 'less gay' just because I don't like the feel of being butch. I should be allowed to be feminine and also like women. Part of liking 'girly things' is liking girls.

Then there's the whole 'gold star gay' thing. I used to identify as bisexual, and then pansexual. I used to be attracted to certain boys, and also certain girls. The key word here is used to. I always see stories on how they 'always knew', and that's great that you knew right off the bat that something was up. But I didn't. I liked boys before. I think I preferred girls, because I certainly remember looking up 'girls in bikinis' when I was younger (7 or 9). But that doesn't change the fact that I was bi. 

Now, I don't have any attraction whatsoever to guys. I don't know what happened, but my brain was just like "ew" and that was that. I identify as a woman who only loves women. No dudes in the picture. But because I used to like boys, I'm told that my identity is invalid. Like, no, it's not. I'm not bi. I only like one gender. Bi isn't one gender.

Honestly, the gold star gay is a good thing (for me, at least). It means I can say that 'yeah, I'm gay,  I was just something else before that. I'm not a gold star gay'. But for other people, that could be harmful. Like, I can see someone going like, "Wait, no. I'm just as gay as you. The fact that I slept with or dated a dude beforehand doesn't take away from my identity. You're not better than me just because I tried other things."

That's all for now