For the longest time, I thought I had found a loophole. As a bisexual woman, I could slip into the comfort of a heteronormative life: fall in love with a man, marry him, have his children. No one would ever have to know that I was once drawn to women. No late-night confessions, no awkward family dinners, no uneasy glances from relatives who would rather not understand. I could be safe. I could be normal. 

But love doesn’t follow the script we so carefully write for it. And so, my biggest fear came true. I fell in love with a woman. And I think she is the one. 

When I first met her, I wasn’t prepared for what would come next. I wasn’t prepared for the way my heart would betray me, for the way her laughter would echo in my chest long after she had left the room. I wasn’t prepared for the way my hands would shake when she touched me, or for the way my mind would replay every small moment. 

At first, I tried to ignore it. I told myself it was admiration, a deep friendship, a phase. I had spent years convincing myself that my attraction to women was something I could set aside, like an old book on a shelf, collecting dust but never truly forgotten. It was easier to believe that than to face what it would mean to want her. 

Wanting her meant undoing years of carefully built safety. It meant acknowledging that my queerness wasn’t just a theoretical possibility, something I could tuck away if it became inconvenient. It meant reckoning with the reality that I might never have the privilege of invisibility. 

It also meant revisiting a memory I had buried deep. 

I was seventeen the first time I asked my mother what she would do if she had a gay daughter. It was hypothetical, of course. A test. I already had a feeling about myself, something I couldn’t quite name yet but knew was creeping into my thoughts. I needed to know if I ever said it out loud, what would happen? 

Her answer was immediate. She would send me to therapy. Not the kind that helps you accept yourself, but the kind that sees you as broken. “It’s an illness,” she said, her voice steady, matter-of-fact. “A perversion that needs to be treated.” She compared it to drug addiction. Just because someone is happy being addicted doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. “It’s still bad,” she said. “It’s still an illness.” 

I sat there, absorbing it. The sharp finality of her words. The way she didn’t hesitate, as if she had already thought about this before. As if the idea of a daughter like me had crossed her mind, and she had decided exactly what to do about it. So I did what I had to do. I went back into the closet before I had even stepped out. I laughed, played it off, said I was just confused. That of course I liked boys, I had just been wondering. She seemed satisfied with that answer. And for a while, I convinced myself that maybe she was right. Maybe I was confused. Maybe I could make it go away. 

That’s where the loophole came in. 

I could still be what she wanted me to be. If I only fell in love with men, if I chose the right kind of life, I would never have to lose her. I would never have to face that conversation again. 

But now, here I am. In love with a woman. And for the first time, I don’t want to hide it. That doesn’t mean the fear is gone. I still catch myself hesitating when we walk too closely together in public. I still hear my mother’s voice in the back of my mind. I wonder if she will ever see this as anything other than an illness, a mistake, a thing to be corrected. And yet, when I look at her—the woman I love—I know. I know that love is worth it. That hiding is not the same as being safe. That if I spend my whole life choosing what is easy over what is true, I will never really be free. 

So yes, my biggest fear came true. And it turns out, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. 

To anyone out there who’s still hiding, know that you are not alone. I know what it’s like to carry the weight of silence, to shape your life around other people’s expectations just to feel like you belong. I know the fear of losing love, of losing safety, of being seen. But you deserve to be loved out loud. You deserve to take up space as your full self, not just in secret, not just in theory, but in reality. Especially now, as conservative politics gain momentum in so many parts of the world, trying to strip away our rights, erase our stories, and shame us back into silence, we need each other more than ever. Solidarity, community, resistance: these aren’t just ideas, they’re lifelines. I wouldn’t have made it this far without mine. 

Before I had the words for who I was, I found safety in anonymous corners of the internet, queer friends who reminded me I wasn’t alone. And when I came to university, an LGBTQ+ student group became my first real home. There is no shame in who you are. There is nothing broken to fix. “You were born this way, baby.”