When I Fell In Love

and he was confused.

My bisexuality is part of the expression of the flexibility, the changeability of my spirit that feels essential and precious to the center of my life. My bisexuality is a part of my desire to remain an outsider, to be able to "pass" into polarized worlds, to abandon expectation, to honor the mystery of being. My bisexuality is a celebration of the ever-opening flesh, the expansive, fluid mirror of social discourse.

- Michelle T. Clinton

His bisexuality was yet to be explored.

The Silence who had become my friend before, would soon become my foe when I met the boy who made my ice crack.

First days are never calm - there's always a dull rush of nerves buzzing under the surface of your skin, making your entire body vibrate with awareness. Maybe that's what made me so aware of him that day.

Across the room from my own friends and I on the first day of high school, he was the loudest boy in any of my classes yet, with hair too long and too curly to be kept neatly and a laugh so loud and outrageous, it made giggles slip from everyone around him.

It had been two years since the last love, and my heart was still tender. Yet, when it saw you, it did not care. It was hooked.

Every day with you felt like the first day. My nerve endings were alive. The first time you grabbed my hand, I thought my heartbeat would start firing bullets through my strongest pulse points. The giggles never ceased because you were a clown, but you were also insecure, and being the guy with the jokes people laughed with meant that you would never be the guy with the body people laughed at.

And I discovered the insecurities didn't end there.

Maybe we bonded too much over the fact that we were broken people with broken images, too scared to see ourselves for the people we are, always looking back at the people we were, attempting to be the people others wanted us to be.

Me, always showing people the smart, witty girl, with the good home life, and the brightest smile.

Me, always hiding the emotional and physical scars - makeup over bags, tight jeans over scarred hips, quick wit over shaky hands.

And you were the same. But at least we knew each other. At least we had each other.

Part of me knew healthy wasn't a term that people might label our relationship. Not with you, whispering to me about the bleach that had turned your throat raw and sore or flinching when a team member raised his hand to slap your back or kissing me before breaking down in tears because you were thinking about kissing your best boy friend.

Sexuality, what had started as the smallest issue, eventually became the main event. Silence clawed me as you spoke to your girlfriend about the boy you wanted to be your boyfriend as the compulsion and need to be supportive quieted the unsure feelings I was having about us from slipping out.

I had been there through the tears and pain of family and self, surely I could support him through this? Because in the end, he said he might love him, but he told me he absolutely loved me. And how do you walk away from a loved one in need?

In the end, it was me who asked you that. Because you did love me, and you might have loved him, but evidently you loved her as well. Confusion tore your heart apart and tore us apart and had you walking away from he and I both.

Confusion had you ignoring what you felt for him and ignoring all of your secrets and the only person other than yourself who knew them all.

Confusion was your enemy, and Silence was mine, but they were both enemies to the two of us in a way. I watched you walk away with lumps of protest and comfort and pain in my throat, but I was so out of practice at voicing my thoughts, they died on my tongue before I could let them out.

The last day was like the first day. Balls of nerves were vibrating, with panic now. My best friend playing his game of lying to the world, leaving me giggling hysterically at the comfort of my friends, contemplating if I would let Silence and Confusion drive me down the same path he had decided to take.

He had broken me just enough to keep me alive, but left with so many pieces, my only choice was to start over.