My Crush Made Me Realize I Was Gay
By K.M.
I don’t know how inappropriate this crush was, but this one definitely changed my life. I fell in love with my best friend. Before you roll your eyes and jump to the thought “not this again”, just wait. There are two twists. Twist number one: my best friend was a girl, like myself. Twist number two: my best friend was also my roommate. Yup. I was the straight girl turned gay by my roommate. Oh, I guess there is one more twist. My roommate was straight. Supposedly. I’ll get to that later.
I won’t lie. When we first met, I didn’t feel a spark. I didn’t feel my whole world turn upside down. But then we started living together. Upon getting to know her, I found she was a very introverted person, like myself. She didn’t like to go out a lot, finding socializing a hassle that simply got in the way of studying. This ended up working in my favor. If I didn’t live with her, I’d probably only have seen her a couple times a month. But because we were forced into the same living space, I was able to see a side of her very few people got to see. We just clicked.
We shared drinks and dreams late at night and during the weekends. She slowly opened herself up to me as I pried and asked questions. She spoke about boy troubles and romantic woes. We pretty much shared every detail about each other’s life, if you can imagine. But at the same time, we were able to joke around. It wasn’t just all deep talks about life. I felt so at ease with her.
It was one particular night that suddenly changed my whole life. We had been drinking for awhile and were both heavily buzzed. We were sitting fairly close next to each other. Before I knew it, one of her hands was on my knee. I thought nothing of it, and continued our conversation. In retrospect, I realized that during this part of the conversation she had grown strangely silent. A few moments later, her other arm was around my neck. I turned my head to look at her, completely confused. In that moment, she leaned over and kissed me before I knew what was happening. The rest of the night passed by in a blur. All I will say is that the next morning, neither of us had the opportunity or chance to escape before the other woke up, like every other one night stand. For God’s sake, we lived with each other.
We acted like nothing happened and went to our respective classes. That entire day, I found myself reliving that night over and over. I was so confused. Because I had enjoyed it, did it mean I was gay? Was I suddenly a lesbian? Did those relationships with boys mean nothing? I was so nervous to return back to our apartment. When I finished my day and returned, she wasn’t back yet. I waited nervously, wondering what on earth I could say or if I should say anything at all. Finally, around midnight, she returned back to the apartment. She came over to my room and stood there for a minute. She looked at the ground then finally gave me a speech about how last night was a mistake. We were just drunk, she explains. I played along of course, laughing it off. “Of course we were just messing around, I mean, you can’t help I’m so hot.” Stuff like that, you know?
Time passed. And yet, I couldn’t move on. Once I had a taste of this side of life (figuratively, of course), I couldn’t go back. I felt like that night completely awoken my inner self. I realized I was completely in love with my roommate. And yet, as time passed, she continued to complain about this boy that she had been chasing after and who was clearly ignoring her. Every time she talked about him, I felt my heart breaking. Did that night mean nothing to her? Had she done it before?
I felt myself falling deeper in the hole. I constantly questioned myself if I should bring up that night to her; if we should talk about it. Suddenly the one person I would’ve talked to about my newfound sexuality, about my romantic woes, became the one person I definitely couldn’t. All the roommate stuff that I was comfortable with before—changing clothes around each other, sharing outfits—all of these suddenly seemed inappropriate and uncomfortable to me.
Graduation rolled around, and soon it was time to move out of our apartment and back home (after all, what new college grad can find a real job straight out of college these days?). The day before we moved out, I kept wondering—should I tell her? Should I confess that I never forgot that night from 1 ½ years ago? That I couldn’t stop thinking about her? The hours turned into minutes. Soon we were in front of our cars, saying good bye. I couldn’t get the words out. I let her go. I let her walk out of my life.
We never talked about that night again. Ever.
Here I am now, two years later, and I still can’t forget about her or that night. I still can’t forget about that night. I can only thank her for what she did that night. She opened my eyes but crushed my heart. Inappropriate crush? Maybe. But was it really my fault?