Happy Pride Month Bandori Party. I saw a lot of people making these posts, so I decided to join in.

My journey in finding my sexuality has been a long and wild one. But I'm glad I figured a part of myself out.

Romance had never been a thing that crossed my mind until 5th grade had arrived. I'd hear kids talking about who they like to their friends, who's dating who even though we're far too young for that kind of stuff. My three closest friends who we fortunately in the same class as me had also gotten interested in other people. As for me, I didn't bat an eyelash about it. I felt more like an observer in that field at the time. A friend I had made in the class was a small Asian boy who didn't brush his teeth admitted to having a crush on me one day and I felt all sorts of uncomfortable. I was young, and this was the first time anyone had admitted to like me so I wasn't sure what to do. I decided to avoid this kid until he moved away which did a number on him. I was a lowkey asshole, but I still kind of am. I felt some sort of guilt but I didn't feel any pity for him when he has turned into a huge pervert.

Everyone was talking about how they were crushing on each other and because I didn't feel that for a short period of my life I thought I was aro/ace, but it's weird to label yourself something at that age, and really I was just younger than everyone else. I had my first crush during the summer after 5th grade and with that, I had identified as a lesbian for throughout all of middle school. The only problem with this was although my mom was accepting of LGBT people, she wasn't accepting of her own children being LGBT. With that I was constantly living in fear, thinking about what she'd do to me if she ever found out. I would occasionally cry myself to sleep thinking of the worst possible scenarios any LGBT child would think about if a homophobic parent figured out their secret. My dad was the only family member I could trust, as he is the most open-minded of everyone in the family.

All of my friends were girls so those were who I was surrounded by. I didn't have any close enough guy friends to grow any real feelings for them. Here and there would I develop crushes on guys but they were never serious and faded away shortly after for me to change identities. Even when I grew feelings for someone who was nonbinary at the time, my identity didn't change until about mid-freshman year.

Late summer I had grown closer to a friend I met on Discord a year or two ago. Exactly how we bonded is a long and dark story but in short, I had helped him through a really rough time in his life. Even after that incident, our bond only seemed to grow and I'm very grateful that it has. We considered ourselves to be best friends at the time, but when November of last year came by, I realized I was in love with him. The night of when I realized this, I also had realized I was pansexual. He eventually became the boyfriend I'm with today. We've been together for seven months and I'm really happy we've been able to make it this far.

I think my identity has really opened up my eyes about people and the beauty that can be found in everyone if you bother to look. I don't have a gender preference, which makes sense because I always cared about personality and disregarded physical appearance. (Which can be tied to gender)

There was this shit on Instagram called "LGBT flop accounts" which was just a bunch of incels making fun of people for embracing who they are, disgustingly enough they were run by people who themselves were LGBT. Basically, the majority of them had views such as "Pansexuality isn't real, it's just another bisexual, pansexuality is transphobic, etc." This made me feel bad for identifying the way I did and for a short period of time I felt I should be labeling myself as bisexual instead, but really they're just edgy 13-year-olds trying to get their grimy hands on attention.

Embrace who you are, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. I hope this pride month and beyond is a good one for you all.