I’m forty years old. I’m bi. Many people who know me don’t know, but if it riles them, they aren’t worth my hour. They’d have no reason to know, regardless. I’m in a fortunate hetero wedlock of roughly fifteen years. I have three cute boys, a room, and a minivan. Outwardly, my merely quirks look like my dog, a giant-ass bear of a German Shepherd, and my elaborate memorial sticker for The Sorcerer persona Quentin Coldwater( likewise bi !). But all is not what it seems in suburbia. I like chaps. But I too like girls.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until my mid-thirties.

As a teenage, I didn’t understand what “bisexual” signify. Of course I knew the word. But in the late’ 90 s, when I was in high school, I was bullied mercilessly. And when my tormentors called me “lezzy,” it gave me an halo of something worse than loserdom, something hazardous and ugly and gross. It was too … much. Too frightening. It was simply not a prospect to imagine a sexual interest in daughters. I’d internalized so much homophobia that I couldn’t possibly be bi. Even when I went to college, even when I caressed other girls as a joke, I jostle away any real feeling I might have had.

I sublimated everything. I wanted someone to be my older sister. I wanted to be her best friend.

I didn’t want to be her lover. That never pinged on my radar.

I look back and choke.

I Had Crushes on Women

I choke because of course I was bisexual, and I can look at so many interactions, so many affairs, and insure what I really wanted and couldn’t understand or epithet. I construe the older girlfriend who took so much time to help me learn how to ride horses. I was infatuated with her. Everyone I knew was absolutely sick of hearing her appoint.” Will you shut up about her ?” our friend at the time once said. I told myself: I require her to be my large-scale sister. I want to be just like her. I require her to pay more attention to me.

We all knew she’d had sex. She carried a strange loading of awe and the forestall, of our parents’ sneer and our wide-eyed desire to know more.

She probably wasn’t bi. It didn’t matter, because I didn’t think I was, either.

That, in retrospect, was called a crush. I can say this now. I had a vanquish on her. And it’s sweet, like the crush I had on my boss when I was sixteen, a lush maid with wild curly hair who studied racehorses. She was one of the first adults to show me my family life was fucked up, and to talk to me like someone who mattered. She gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever go. She was kind and fun and wild and God , now that I’m forty, I hope I’m something like her. I had a suppress on her.

But Being Bi Meant I Also Had Crushes On Friends

In retrospect, I had a giant humiliate on one of my high school best friends. We’ve never talked about it and lost touch a long time ago. She’s not even on Facebook. I had a desperate crush on a college roommate. I had a huge suppress on a dazzling redhead who might have taken me up on it. But a listing isn’t the time. I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I judged I wanted to be better friends with those girls. I speculated I wanted to hang out with them more. I didn’t think I wanted to kiss them.

Which I actually did.

And when I look back on it, I’m sad. Maybe I’m not sad for those special affinities — who knows if that high school friend would have kissed me? I don’t, and I can’t ask her. I don’t miss an hypothetical affair. But I miss chances. I’m sad I never knew if that super-cool English girl was totally straight. I’m brokenhearted that I never found out if that redhead would have said yes. All those jolly girls I could have kissed. All gone.

Most of all, I never found out what it was like to have a relationship with a woman. I’m bi, but I will never know what it’s like to wake up next to someone of the same sex. I imagine sharing makeup and clothes( I tend to like girly-girls about the same size as me ); I wonder what we’d bicker about. Would I make a good same-sex girlfriend?

I’ll never know.

I’m Allowed to Be Sad

This isn’t to say that I have had an opportunity to fixing up with one tonne of girlfriends, and I didn’t, and I’m bummed. It’s not about part. Realizing I’m bi late in life has led to a sadness that I’ll never perfectly know myself. I never will know if I make a good same-sex girlfriend. I’ll never know if I could be as happy with the status of women as I am with a mortal. I detest that not-knowing as much as I hate the lost chances.

But some daytimes, though I know I’m bi, though I know bisexuals are the B in LGBTQIA +, I feel killed. I’m in a hetero wedding. I have children. I overtake, and I obligated my alternatives. What right do I have to sadness?

But those selects was mainly attributable to internalized homophobia. Maybe, if I had known I was bi, I’d have induced different options. Maybe I would have compiled the same ones. But I remind myself: I count. We always say it’s never too late to come out. I can come out when I’m forty. I can be in a het wedlock and say: I’m bi. If bisexuals like both men and women, why should my wedlock obliterate me?

I can be sad for what came before, but I can move forward from it.

I can start here.

The post I Didn’t Know I Was Bi Until After Marriage, And I’m Allowed To Mourn The Chances I Missed showed first on Scary Mommy.

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