Dear First Girl Crush

6th Grade

This was the year where it all changed.

You were in my first block class. Because I hung out with Cassandra more than Julie, Julie found you last year. You two were close. You happened to be Cassandra's best friend year before last. This year, Julie introduced me to you. We instantly clicked. We had common interests and we all got along very well. We were all into art that year and we had an app that resembled Instagram but was for artists and photographers. On this app, we posted pictures of our drawings, which usually consisted of characters we made up. We would make the characters interact with each other by role playing. It was fun. You and I each had one gay character. We ended up having them date. When the three of us (you, me, and Julie) would have sleepovers, sometimes we acted like we were our characters. Of course we never kissed or anything, mostly just innocent cuddling (which Julie loved to do). One night in particular, we were all at my house doing this. That night you, being one of our gay characters, grabbed my hand. It was an innocent part of the role playing. But I, for some reason, felt really odd about it. Julie and I held hands. She was straight, I was straight. I just felt weird about it that time with you. I immediately started questioning my sexuality. I always knew I liked guys, so why did I suddenly feel this way towards a girl? And honestly, I thought lesbians were gross. It was the way I was raised. I decided I was straight, and that it just felt weird to be holding a girls hand. I ignored it for the rest of the year. I was also sad about Cassandra not hanging out with me as much and Kameron breaking up with me, after being my first kiss. I dated two other guys but it was nothing serious.