Gay Panic

When I think about my identity - when I think about trying to communicate my sexuality or my gender to people using a letter, or a word, or two, or ten - I kind of feel like I can't breathe. I get this overwhelming sense that I am not deserving of acceptance into the queer community because I love women, and hate men, and sleep with both. I don't know what to call a strong, powerful human being, capable of changing the world with their words, and their actions, and their voice, a person so wholly dedicated to this mythical 'greater good', who has empowered hundreds of teenagers to take agency over their lives, but looks at men and feels small, and weak, or looks at women and feels less than. I don't know what to call that.

What is it called when you have such a hard time identifying your own feelings that you don't actually know who you like? What is it called when you look at men and feel gross but also an incredibly overwhelming sense that you have to do whatever you can to appear sexually pleasing to them? What is it called when you look at women and feel this intense surge of the most intense jealousy that you will never look like that, and also the most deeply intimate sense of safety?

I don't know what I am. I don't know what of what I am comes from my hurt or my insecurity, and what comes from genuine unadulterated love. I don't know how to separate those out. I don't fit a stereotype. I am not a stud or femme or butch or I am not visibly gay or straight and I hate labels. I am untethered to an identity in a group of people who are all so comfortable in who and what they are. People who put L[G]BTQ+ in their social media bios because they want everyone to know something I have been begging to understand since the sixth grade. I love women, I love people outside of the gender binary, I love men - sometimes. I don't know what that is. I don't know if I want to know what that is.