Impulse Control (ON HOLD)

Chapter 17

Cleo's p.o.v.

I lay awake in the dark long after I hear Sierra's breathing deepen and slow. Despite the calming sound of the rain tapping down on the giant palm leaves, I can't relax. Despite Sierra's arm draped around my shoulders and her feet and legs stretched across my chest, I'm not happy. The gentle waves lap the shore, wetting my feet ever so slightly. Yet, despite all of this, I can't fall asleep.

Disappointment is piercing it's way into my heart, and I know it's because Sierra didn't say anything about her sexuality when I revealed mine. I know from personal experience that it's much easier to come out to someone if you know that they're the same way. If Sierra isn't straight, she would've told me so when I told her that I'm a lesbian.

And since she didn't, that must mean that Sierra is straight.

So much for listening to that song's lyrics. I'm already in love with a straight girl, and that's not good. You can change a person's style or taste in clothes, but you can't change someone's sexuality. Believe me, I've tried. If they're straight, they're straight. If they're not, they're not.

I remember way back when I first realized I was a lesbian, and how I came out. 

I actually had it harder than some. I wasn't one of the lucky ones that everyone accepted. Oh, no. I was far from it.

I grew up in a small town with high values. Church every Sunday and Wednesday, potluck suppers on Saturdays. My family was raised to speak and act properly. Anything that was considered a sin in the Bible was an unforgivable mistake in the real world. In other words, I was taught to be straight.

It all started when I was six. I'd just gotten my first two Barbies from my mother. They were in pretty white dresses and one's necklace was playing organ music, so I naturally assumed that they were going to a wedding. So I made up a play wedding and my two Barbies married each other. Something about both of them being brides struck me right, and I thought that that was the way it was meant to be.

But then my mother watched me play one day and said, "What are you doing? There can't be two girls marrying each other." I said, "But why not?" "That's just not the way it's supposed to be, honey," my mom crooned. "Baby, if you wanted a Ken, you should've just let me know. I would've gotten you one. You didn't have to make do with two brides." Something about the way she said the word 'brides' made a shiver of apprehension travel down my spine.

That Christmas, one of my presents was a Ken doll. But I remember quite clearly that I never actually married Ken to one of the Barbies. My Ken was always one of the brides' brothers or something. My weddings continued to be lesbian weddings.

As I got older and learned the meaning of the word 'lesbian', I was ashamed of the way I'd played with my Barbie dolls, and never told anyone. I thought that anything relating to being a lesbian was an unforgivable sin, and I was forbade by my mother when she heard me say it to ever speak the word.

I didn't date anyone in elementary school, much to my father's relief and my mother's dismay. In middle school, I did date. I wanted to fit in, and it seemed like every girl in my grade had a boyfriend. People were already starting to tease me as being "a lezbo" and "one of those ones". I hated being judged and ridiculed, and I really hated not fitting in, so when a boy from my homeroom asked me out, I said yes, even though I didn't like him.

As things got more and more serious between us, I still wasn't happy. Every time I was with him, I felt detached and separated, like I was watching myself on a home movie. I felt like a part of me was missing. Eventually, it got to the point where he wanted to have sex. Against every pore of peer pressure that was laid upon me, I said no. I couldn't deny the fact: Every inch of my body and mind was against the idea of losing my virginity to a boy. The very idea repulsed me. The boy was angry, and we broke up shortly after, much to my relief.

The truth was that I never wanted to date another boy ever again. I had had enough. The rumors about me being gay started to circulate again a couple of months later when I started wearing snapbacks and low-cut tank tops. Everyone was completely convinced of my sexuality, and shunned me big-time. I sat alone and didn't have any friends.

Until Bree came along. She was the new girl at school, but she wasn't shy or timid like most new kids. Bree was a hurricane. A hurricane of strength. I took one look at her and knew that no one in school would dare mess with her, no matter what she was and was not. And, despite my inability to figure out my sexual orientation, I knew that if I became friends with Bree, no one was likely to give me crap about who they thought I liked.

So, I approached her. She blew me off at first, but when I wouldn't give up trying to be her friend, she hung out with me and we hit it off.

From then on we were like Siamese twins, joined at the hip. We did everything together, and I didn't get a single sentence whispered in my ear degrading me or my sexuality. Bree and I were becoming very close friends by then.

During the summer one year, I began to crush hard on Camilla Cabello. I saved pictures of her to my tablet's gallery, I hung huge posters of her in my room, and I was constantly Googling her name. By then I knew full well about all of the sexualities, and began to question my own. I thought I might've been bi-curious.

After all, it was my first girl crush, and I had dated a guy before, so I naturally assumed that I couldn't be a lesbian. After about a week of chewing on that idea, I went online, took a few tests, and decided that I was not bi-curious, but bisexual.

I stayed secretly labeled as a bisexual for three weeks, and came close to coming out to Bree as bi twice. After three weeks, I stumbled upon a picture of Jennifer Aniston, and began to crush on her as well. I did the same sequence with her as I did Camilla. But it wasn't even a week gone by before I began to have dreams about girls.

I dreamed of holding hands and kissing a bisexual girl in my school, and of taking things a bit farther than that with Camilla and Jennifer. I always awoke with huge temporary crushes on whatever girls I'd dreamed about. And I started thinking, This isn't normal.

I went back to one of the bisexual tests I'd taken on the Internet and retook it. But this time, my answer was not bisexual, it was lesbian.

The prospect of being a lesbian scared me, I tell you true. I lived in a very homophobic community, and my parents were very "anti-gay". So I knew that if I truly was a lesbian, I was pretty much doomed to being disowned by my parents and shunned by everyone who knew me. Therefore, it was hard to accept.

I spent four weeks thinking on my sexuality, and at the end of those four weeks, I ruefully admitted to myself that I was indeed a lesbian.

I didn't tell anyone for a year. I was fourteen when I found out, and I turned fifteen before I told anyone.

The only one I planned to tell was Bree. I didn't plan on coming out to the school unless I got a girlfriend and she wanted to. And while I certainly hated doing so, I knew it was best to stay in the closet around my parents until I was eighteen, for I knew that they would surely disown me.

The day I planned to come out to Bree, she pulled me aside and whispered that she was bisexual. To say I was stunned would have been an understatement. But the first thing that popped out of my mouth in response was: 'I'm gay!"

And after that, things went their normal course. Bree got a girlfriend named Amy and they came out to the school shortly after they started dating. I got a girlfriend, too, named Paige. I stayed with Paige until right after my seventeenth birthday, when she moved away. 

And, that's where I am now. Single, over Paige, not-so-over Bree, crushing hard on Angelina Jolie and Sierra.

Oh, yeah I forgot to mention one little detail.

And that's that I'm sadly and hopelessly in love with a straight girl.