Was in the 7th grade. I was on the internet (thats how it starts for a lot of people i guess) and a popup for a chat room came up and i clicked it being the 12 year old i was. It had a list of different ones and one said girls only so i thought that'd be cool. I clicked into a room full of lesbians. IT shocked me. Some of them were talking nasty but some were having real conversations. I hadnt really thought about being gay before. I didn't think about being straight either. I got a private message from a girl calling herself Abby. I didn't really know what to say and she just asked me about me and hobbies and such. Then she asked "so are you gay/bi?" "I dont know" that's what I always said. "well do you like girls or guys" Still didn't know. I was brought up to marry a guy, don't even think thoughts like that about girls. But thinking back I had never liked guys in "that" way and only wanted to kiss some girls. So i nervously typed "girls." She said "me too :)" I didn't know why someone would be happy about that. I felt so horrible. It's a sin I told myself. I heard something in the hall and exed out of the chatroom. I never talked to her again. I wasn't absoulutely positive until I started falling in love with my best friend. You know the story, one day they just seem so great and beautiful and it just grows and grows. She was at my house and she said she wanted to practice kissing. Alot of her friends did it she said. I didnt care she was asking me to kiss her!!! I was so unbelievably happy but kept humble and said "ok" So we kissed and it was so undescribably perfect. She told me I was a bad kisser which totally shamed me. Then she laughed and said "just kidding". Then we watched Ellen Degeneres and never talked about it. I was absolutely sure by that morning that if thats what being gay felt like then i wasnt ashamed at all. Later we discussed the whole gay thing and I told her I thought I was a lesbian and she said she was cool with it. I haven't talked to her since. And one more thing to this really long piece of work, the one thing that made me settled in my newfound glory of finding my sexuality was coming on oasismag :)

I first realized that I'm gay when I was in sixth grade. It was October 2005. I was reading a comic book, and I found myself staring at the girls in the book. I thought innocent things like, "Ooh, she's really pretty." All of a sudden, I realized what I was doing. I was staring at other girls' bodies. And the crazy thing was, I liked it. I had had many more of these weird feelings during my life before this moment, but I had just pushed them away back then. This was the moment I realized, though, that I couldn't deny it any more. I liked girls.

I hid behind the "bisexual" label for eight months, surfing LGBT web pages and learning about what being gay means. I told myself that since I had supposedly had crushed on boys before, I had to like guys. But in May 2006, I suddenly realized that I was, in fact, gay. The "crushes" on guys that I had before weren't really crushes at all. All of the guys I had liked before were merely friends who I felt a deep affection for. They also tended to be shorter and skinnier than me, not to mention slightly girly looking. These crushes I had on boys weren't special, unlike the ones I got on girls. Whenever I saw a pretty girl, it felt like magic was in the air; when I saw a cute guy, I thought, "Meh. Whatever."

It may have taken me a while to get out of denial about this, but I'm sort of glad I pretended to be bisexual. This way, I got used to my sexuality at my own pace. However, I'm still glad I finally accepted the fact that I'm gay. Denial may have helped me get used to myself, but I still feel like an idiot whenever I look back at my memories of my "bisexual" phase. Sometimes when I reminisce, I want to scream at my stupid younger self, who couldn't understand what was going on inside her own head.

"Women in rubber will ALWAYS be flirting with me!" --Maureen in the musical RENT

hmm that's easy... The first real day of junior year of highschool... 7Th period... about 30 minutes in.... when I couldn't stop staring at this totally gorgeous (tho I didnt know the term then) emo/goth boy... I mean... I knew... that well.... boys were always really cute... and girls were... meh... but that was the moment it crystalized...

I believe that when we leave a place, a part of it goes with us, and a part of us remains. Go anywhere in this place, when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while you will hear the echoes of all our conversations: every thought and word we've exchange

it interesting because i never had this huge moment of understanding. well, i did confess tearfully to my father once when i was ten that i thought i was gay, but other than that....

anyway, to me it feels like i always knew. didn't always have a name for it, but always knew. i've always had crushes on girls, with a slight attraction to a male every once in a while. i never dreamed of having some wedding to my husband. never wanted to play house (although i think that was just my feminist side showing, who wants to pretend to do something we'll be doing in reality in 20 years???) i always found the female form attractive.

i think i came to the realization i was gay when i was about thirteen. it wasn't a huge deal to me, it was just kind of, "hey, you're gay..."

so yeah....that's it....

"Yes! No! Oh, damn!"

I was 3, when I figured out I was different. By the time I was in the seventh grade I knew I was gay.

When I was three, my grandpa use to take me to see his WWII buddies and their grandchildren. One day, the other grandchildren and me were playing. The boys decided to play war. While the girls wanted to play house. This was one of the first times I was ever playing with other children. I didn't like the ide of house, so I played war. I liked it, playing that. Over time I had a preference for "boy things", I started to think I was suppose to be a boy. Nobody really cared, but that was when my grandparents were raising me. It wasn't till my parents were finally able to keep me at age 4 when I found out that people could get angry about little girls doing boy stuff. My mom and dad were furious when they found out. I didn't know why they were so angry. Eventually my mom forced me to do girl stuff, cooking wasn't so bad, but the skirts were evil. I wasn't happy. I didn't like the fact that I wasn't able to do the things I like, that stayed that way till I was in seventh grade.

In seventh grade, I met a very great girl, Allyn. She eventually became a he. He told me, I didn't have to listen to my mom. He told me I could be a boy if I wanted to. For a long time I thought that I did, but eventually I figure out that I didn't want to be a boy. I just wanted to be a girl who did boy things. Slowly, I developed a crush on one of my friends. I asked Allyn what was that about. Then she said it bluntly, "Aren't you gay?" Me in my fairly naive state, didn't know what that meant. She then started asking me a bunch of questions like, "would you want to kiss a girl or a boy?" I answered a girl to everyone. Then he said, "You are as gay as the sky is blue." I didn't want to believe it, because I knew what the church thought about it, and I knew what happened to my cousins who were gay. But I ended up accepting it in the end. Now I am a Senior in an all girl school, my whole school knows. The only people who doesn't know would be family. But I know my grandpa would have been fine with it, he didn't care who I liked or what I wanted to be like, he only cared that I was happy. But he died shortly after I was returned to the custody of my parents, I miss him still.

V is the bomb, he blows with anarchy!!!

I can't remember when I realized I wasn't straight.
It was somewhere around 6th grade...
Or was it fifth?
The line between not knowing and knowing is fuzzy... maybe because it didn't matter.

It was when I knew that it was right, when I knew that it was safe and beautiful and totally, totally me, that was the real moment of clarity, the moment that stands out.

8th grade. Earlier this year. Sitting in science class. The guy next to me turned and asked, "Are you gay?"
And I said yes. And I wasn't scared. And I didn't care what his reaction was. And I didn't care who overheard.

And from then on, my answer was always yes. Yes, I'm gay. In the word yes, said with my head held high, were a hundred other answers. Yes, I'm human. Yes, I'm real. Yes, I'm in love. Yes, I'm happy. Yes, I'm confident.

And that's when I knew. Not when I knew I was gay, that was years before. That was the moment when I knew that it was all going to be okay.

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.