blue and pink make purple.

I was fourteen when I hesitated. It was minutes before heading out to eat with my parents. I had just showed them the poster my friend had made to ask me to the freshman spring dance. It was girl’s choice and a girl had asked me to the dance — no wonder they had questions. Joanna is bisexual? Yes.

Does she like you? No.

Is this a date? No. ​ The answers I knew they wanted flew off my tongue as soon as their questions touched the air. ​ Do you like girls? ​ And I hesitated. One brief second of uncertainty and a void yawned open. I was stuck, staring at my father, at a loss for words. At a loss for thoughts. I hadn’t meant to pause. I hadn’t meant to open up a pit of anxiety and confusion and uncomfortable conversations. I sat there in that hesitation, mouth agape, mind blank. Across the dining table my father’s eyes bored into mine. My mother stood frozen in a kitchen, as if she were afraid to move until I spoke. ​ I didn’t have an answer for them. I was their boy-crazy ​

little girl. At two years old I played wedding over and over with my first crush. He had spiky blond hair and we held our chubby hands together in phony matrimony. In elementary school I would rush home breathless to gush to my mom about the nerdy boy with bright eyes who’d held my hand on the bus that afternoon. My brother’s old Brett Farve action figure kissed all my Barbie dolls. My mother never noticed the subplot of my stories, where the main Barbie’s friends would touch their plastic lips to one another. Or how they’d wrap their arms around each other, my mind melting the stiff plastic into a loving embrace. ​ I didn’t know why I got butterflies on the way to religious education classes the year prior. It couldn’t have been because of my friend with reckless curls and a cinnamon smile. She was loud and witty. And we shared the grins of co-conspirators, reading each other’s sarcastic thoughts as the priest droned on. All I knew was that I wanted to lean my head on her shoulder—on that pillow of cocoa curls—and that this friendship felt different than others. That old Catholic church basement held the beginning of something euphoric. I just didn’t know it yet. ​ At fourteen I didn’t know that in the coming years I’d become entranced by the girl with the Disney princess smile, or the woman with fire in her eyes. I didn’t know of the war that would battle in my stomach over the boys I’d want to hold me versus the allure of the soft bodies that girls had. The opposing armies forcing me into fits of nausea when my thoughts lingered too long on the subject. One army using curves and subtle glances and pink lips as the offense; the other side chose sweeping romances of the books I adored and the argument for a simpler life as a defense. I didn’t know that the war would settle when both armies merged into one on a winter day when my drama teacher explained the color purple. ​ I didn’t know yet that in the three years following my hesitation I would have to tell my parents that I felt “perfectly straight.” My father confirming this answer almost monthly. Instead of facing that agonizing conversation I told them what they wanted to hear. Until the day I stared at an orange popcorn bowl instead of my mother’s eyes and told them I wasn’t “perfectly straight.” I didn’t know the way my stomach would plummet through the floor when she said she didn’t buy it. ​ I didn’t know that weeks after admitting who I was, one of my friends would join me in this confusingly exquisite existence—that we’d figure it out together, forging a bond even deeper than the initial one based on ice cream and the arrogant boy we both liked in ninth grade. I didn’t know that senior year I’d be cast as a lesbian in the play and hot tears would stream down as all my castmates embraced me. I didn’t know I could feel so at home with who I was. ​ I didn’t know that in the dark basement of a frat house I’d see a beautiful girl, the only girl at the party in a flannel shirt, and end up with her lips on mine in the middle of the dance floor. I didn’t yet know how smooth her lips would feel, how I’d run my hand through her hair as she gripped my face, about how everyone in the room would watch, entranced by us. I didn’t know how my heart would throb throughout my body and that I wouldn’t be drunk on the shitty jungle juice but rather drunk on the freedom and power I felt while claiming myself and her lips in fluid motion. ​ I didn’t know any of this at fourteen as I stood in the dining room across from my father with my jaw hanging open and no words coming out. So, I closed my mouth and looked down at the handmade poster laying on the table and ran my fingers over the shading of a yellow colored pencil. I took the deepest breath of my life, met my father’s eyes and answered his question.