Starting to figure out your sexuality in your 20’s is one of the most empowering yet irritating things that I’ve ever experienced. For the longest time I swore up and down that I was straight; I swore that my gay-looking friendships were just normal female friendships and I swore that I was only interested in men. Looking back, I now realize that I was a closeted bisexual who didn’t understand that the types of friendships I had with people wasn’t normal for straight women.

Now that I’m older and I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve started to figure out what’s going on in that department, I look back to my middle and high school years and realize how much I was compensating. I would say that even though I am a bisexual, even back then, I leaned more heavily toward women and non-binary people which in hindsight would explain the fact that I tended to fall for more effeminate or even gay men throughout my early years. I never really had an interest in the stereotypical “jock type” like a lot of the people in my schools and I tended to spend a lot more time than was necessary wanting to gossip about “boys”; finding out who my friends liked, talking about what other people found attractive in men, and that sort of thing. But despite all of that I participated with vigor (probably more than necessary) in all of the “One Direction!”, “Team Edward vs. Team Jacob” madness, creating this heterosexual, compensation shell for myself to hide in safely until I was ready.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with figuring out your sexuality in your twenties or even later in life, but I honestly feel like I’m really behind the curve. Part of me being such a late bloomer was due to the fact that I was uncomfortably closeted and had a partner for a long time who every time I got the courage to talk to him about how I felt, told me that I wasn’t bisexual, rather I was just bicurious at best and I was just seeking attention. Having someone you love and trust tell you something like that can be damaging to your personal growth and development in ways that can stick with you.

However, after all this time, I’m finally at a place where I am confident enough in myself to feel how I feel without letting the opinions of others sway me. I want to participate in the lgbt community and be a part of it all, but I don’t really know how to approach that without coming off as naive or irritating. I’ve had friends who’ve been sporting rainbow pins on their bags since middle school and other people who had queer dating experiences as early as high school and now that I’m finally at that point of understanding what my sexuality looks like, I’m worried about looking like an impostor.

I want to get outwardly excited about things that are bisexual pride flag colored and hang them all over my apartment, I want to joke about how gays don’t sit right with people as I curl up like a gremlin on the couch, and I want to cover my laptop with stickers that say things like, “I like my boys like I like my girls. That’s the joke. I’m bisexual.” But at the same time I don’t want to be too aggressive about it because since I came into the community a little later than a lot of people, I feel like I’m not a part of it yet. I feel like it’s not my place to hang the flag and be a part of the community because I’m so new and sometimes when I’m scrolling through social media in the lgbt tags and someone looks over my shoulder, I still get jumpy because I forget that I’m out and I feel like I’m doing something I’m not supposed to.

I remember being in middle school and watching this yuri (girlxgirl) anime called Strawberry Panic and I was super self conscious about who knew I was watching it. I swore up and down that I was watching it for the story and for no other reason, that I was just an open minded person and why wouldn’t I watch it just because it was yuri? Acting like I hadn’t intentionally sought out a yuri anime to watch and that I wasn’t just a bisexual teenager looking for representation in the media of what I was feeling so I wouldn’t be so confused. I did like men, so I wasn’t gay but how much of how I was feeling was normal for a “straight” person and how much wasn’t, and what was I supposed to call it?

I was watching a Q&A video the other day and heard someone explain their opinion of the difference between bisexual and pansexual. I’ve thought about this on more than one occasion for long periods of time considering what I would want to identify as and I thought that I probably was closer to pansexual, but I didn’t like how it sounded in relation to how I saw myself.

Though I felt more like I was bisexual, I also knew that I found non-binary and trans people attractive as well, and I didn’t know if that made me a fake bisexual. But as I was watching this Q&A, someone asked what the difference between bisexual and pansexual was and the streamer responded with “pansexual is when it feels the same dating anyone regardless of gender; it feels the same dating a man as it would a woman, but bisexual is when it feels different dating a man than dating a woman, or a non-binary person.”

I know that’s not everyone’s definition but it really resonated with me in the moment and made a lot of sense from where I was coming from. The crushes I had on men just felt different from the crushes that I had on women, not in a bad way, just different. From my understanding, pansexuality was liking someone regardless of sex or gender but I liked people not in spite of their genders but rather, with their genders in mind.

I know that labels aren’t important, or at least they shouldn’t be but I always felt like I needed one to be a part of the community and I didn’t want to get it wrong. I didn’t want to come in without any idea of what I wanted or where I fit in because I was afraid of being told that I didn’t belong. But I also didn’t want to come in with a label that turned out not to be who I was and then have people think that I wasn’t serious when I eventually figured it out for real.

It’s taken be quite a bit of time to get to the point that I’m at in being comfortable identifying the way that I do to myself and taken quite a bit more time to get to the point where I was comfortable identifying the way I do to other people. I’m very lucky in that the people in my life love me for who I am regardless of sexuality but I’m glad that I’m figuring it out for myself; it may not matter to other people, but it matters to me and I am very grateful for the people in my life who support that.

I think that figuring out who you are is difficult at any age but I think its important to remember that regardless of what point in your life you end up understanding different pieces of who you are that it’s all valid and important. You’re not any less than people who figured it out sooner and you’re not belong any less to the community than the people who’ve been there longer.