Musings on a personal milestone

                    This is really personal, but at the same time, something I want to share with the world. Tomorrow will be the second of June. Five years ago tomorrow, I walked into a skeptics meet-up in Harrisburg, PA. I honestly remember very little about the meeting, except that this one cute girl an I kept making eye contact throughout the whole thing. I was dressed about as vanilla as they come, and this girl was gothed-out to the hilt. No matter what went on, I kept trying to sneak glances at her, and much to my surprise, it seemed like she was doing the same. 

                    When the main event was over, there was coffee and snacks, and I remember hanging back doing nothing until I saw this girl go over to the coffee urn, and like a silly school girl at a dance, I clumsily made my way up to pour a cup right after her, desperately hoping she would notice me.

                    For most people, this probably seems childish and incredibly unremarkable. We all had countless moments just like this in high school or college or somewhere in our youth, right? The difference for me was that she was a woman. Here I was, a thirty-one year old woman, going mushy in the knees for another girl. What makes this remarkable, you might ask? What makes it remarkable for me is that she was a woman like no other.

                    To this point in my life, if you had asked me to describe my sexual orientation, I would have, by default, answered heterosexual. My only relationships had been with men. I went through life doing what was expected of me. Had I noticed other women before? Yes. Had I felt an attraction to females before? Yes. But everything in my life had conditioned me to believe that these were just curiosities. I was a woman, life expected me to settle down with a man. I had just gotten out of a very fulfilling but ultimately unsuccessful relationship with a man.

                    Luckily for me, this girl decided to strike up a conversation with me. We talked nervously, like teens at a high school dance awkwardly thrust together by a gang of their friends. But yet for all the nerves, the conversation just kept going. We nervously exchanged stories and pleasantries, batting our lashes and biting our lips like we were sixteen again. 

                    The room started to thin out, people began to leave, and yet we were stuck there like awkward teens. I honestly don't know what I would have done if pushed. I hope I would have taken a chance. Luckily for me, I didn't have to. The other woman asked if I wanted to get some air, to which I agreed, and we went outside and made our way to an overlook of the Susquehanna. 

                    It was then, with our cups of luke-warm cheap coffee, that we really started to talk. It was then that my weak-in-the-knees feeling transitioned into tingles in my core and butterflies in my stomach. It was then that I allowed myself to realize that I desperately desired this woman in a way I had never felt towards another human being before. Somewhere in the conversation, I realized that I desperately wanted my interactions with this woman to outlive this singular conversation that we were having above the flowing waters of a river.

                    Five years later, I can look back on that moment as one of the pivotal moments in my life. I now realize that was the moment I accepted that my sexuality didn't have to be a binary choice. It was that moment that I realized that love was not restricted to societal norms or gender-based restrictions. And five years later, I realize that was the moment that I met the love of my life.

                    I am eternally lucky to be in a position to have found my true partner in life. I can know that our love knows no boundaries of cultural expectations, but that we are simply two human beings meant to share our lives together in love and acceptance. We're still finding out new things about ourselves and each other thanks to the freedom that true trust grants.