I’ve never kissed a girl…

I have never kissed a girl.
But I want to.

Am I allowed to identify as bisexual if I’ve never kissed a girl? Never touched a vulva or a boob or even a nipple?

I apply silicone to all of these body parts all of the time but they are not sexual experiences. That’s simply my job.

I have never had sex with a woman.

Does that make me straight?
Or merely bicurious?

What if it isn’t only women that I find attractive?
What if I don’t care about gender or how someone chooses to identify?
What if the parts of people that I find attractive are more than just the sex they were assigned at birth?
What then?

Pansexual?
Demisexual?

So many labels.
So many identities.

Do I have to fit into any?
Why does everything have to come in the shape of a box?

I’ve spent my whole life trying to squeeze my complicated, messy self into a neat little square.

But I just don’t want to do that anymore.

I got called a ‘dyke’ the whole way through secondary school. A lesbian.

I denied who I was because I was afraid of being labelled as something I wasn’t. Maybe because I just didn’t know who I WAS…

I sacrificed having any level of female friendship because I was so afraid of this judgement about my sexuality.

What on earth was I so afraid of?

I’m still not really sure.

It took me until I was a fully fledged adult to start letting women into my life again. To tell my female friends that I love them. To let myself get close to women, even just as friends, because of how much I’d alienated myself from this life that I’d convinced myself I shouldn’t want.

I made a joke out of it.

Said that I was going to start dating women because I was fed up of men.

Testing the waters of how people would react to it.

I remember even ‘coming out’ to one of my friends as an April Fools prank.

I still didn’t admit to myself that I might fancy girls actually.

It was in reading the Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman that I decided it was time to be honest about who I was.

I wrote a post that I shared on my social media. I labelled myself as bisexual.

My Mam called me and told me I wasn’t.

However, I was mostly blown away by the support that I received from the people in my life who shared overwhelming acceptance for me exactly as I am, regardless of my sexuality.

But I still hadn’t even kissed a girl.

I felt like a fraud.
A fake bisexual.

I didn’t feel as though I had a right to identify as part of the LGBT+ community - as though I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t gay ‘enough’.

I downloaded dating apps and changed my preferences to include women as well as men. I even went on a date or two.

Then I met my current partner who, to everyone looking in from the outside, makes it seem as though I’m in a heterosexual relationship.

But I’m STILL bisexual.
Or pansexual.
Or whatever else you want to call me.

I might not have kissed a girl.
But I want to.

That’s enough.