I'm not a lesbian, but my girlfriend is...

I'm not sure that I've been a cynic on love my entire life, but I have written confirmation that I definitely was at 17 years old and still a senior in high school. This comes in the form of a scrap book that we were supposed to complete about our lives. I loved this assignment, I loved what I did with it and I love that the teacher I had admired so much had liked it as well. I still have the scrapbook and so occasionally I look through it and at what my life had been for the first 17-18 years of my life when it was competed.

There was one prompt that she gave us, "It's Love This Time". I changed it to, "It's Not Love This Time" and posted a bunch of pictures of cute celebrity boys because I had no first loves.

Well, at this time in my life, I don't think I had ever been on a date before. I went on one date my senior year of high school and that was a set up through one of my friends. Let's just say we aren't married. He ended up marrying and having children with one of my other friends that kept talking about how cute he really was.

That was the town I was living in though. By senior year I had already lived in more than 20 homes, gone to several schools, and lived a life no child should have to endure. I had also just completed basic training for the military. I had grand dreams of moving somewhere and becoming someone. I wanted to become famous or at least be some type of big shot somewhere. I was living in a town where almost everyone had lived there since birth. Mostly everyone grew up there and mostly everyone my age wanted to stay and raise their own families. I didn't want any of those things.

Now at the age of 30, I have finally found someone I care about, and I'm being told that it's wrong. Apparently it's wrong because I'm a woman with a girlfriend and not a boyfriend.

This is a phrase I hear straight people say all the time, "you can't choose who you fall in love with." Those same romantic straight people hear that you're in a same-sex relationship and use another common phrase, "the Bible says that's wrong." If you can't choose who you fall in love with, then how can I choose what gender I fall in love with?

I lived with my mother as a child, but as a teenager I lived in a very religious environment, apart from my mother. I heard the phrase "hate the sin, not the sinner" all the time. All the time. Christians get it in to their heads that it's possible to love a person while also disagreeing with who that person is as an individual. At the time, I thought that was a good phrase. I used it to bridge a strained relationship with my own mother, because at the time she was a lesbian.

My mother was a lesbian for almost my entire life, until she remarried my dad when I was 20 years old. She had been in a series of relationships with women that were not really the desirable sort. I had no way of separating my feelings for these particularly bad groupings of women away from my belief that it was my mother's lesbian ways that made them horrible. I never realized how much of a condescending asshole I was at that time in my life. Knowledge of this ignorance is the reason why I listen to these Christian people tell me things like, "God says it's wrong, but I don't judge, that's God's place when we all go to heaven", and I don't punch them in the face.

To be honest, my relationship is not something I would have chosen. I actually fought... fought it hard.  I was against homosexual relationships from childhood because I saw what my mother went through in the 90s with her own relationships. People called her "sir" and asked her to leave the ladies' bathroom. The teachers and principals of my schools all condemned her and looked at me with pity because I was being raised by "one of them homosexuals." I was made fun of by the other children at school because my mother liked other women. Everyone asked me whether I was a lesbian. People wanted to adopt me because I was begin raised in that home. I was also adorable and very well behaved. There are many reasons why someone should have taken me from my home, and none of them involved my mother's sexuality. In truth, I wish I would have noticed at the time what my mother was going through. If I had seen that maybe my mom wasn't making a decision to love women, but rather was making a decision to be who she was, then I would have been proud of her. My mother was brave and she was admirable and I love her for the person she was at that time. She definitely made a lot of questionable choices in her love life, that could have been made better, but not the women part. When I found out my mom had started dating my dad again after 20 years of living a lesbian lifestyle, my comment was more, "are you kidding? That's just weird" rather than "yay my mom has decided not to be a lesbian anymore."

My mother might not identify with being a lesbian any longer, but she's definitely not straight either. I don't think she would care to read that, but that's what I think. People are in relationships for all kinds of reasons. Sex doesn't have to be a main factor. When you decide to tell people that they shouldn't be with someone because they have the same genitals, then you're making love and relationships all about sex. While sex is important, I think it's ignorant to think this way.

You can't love a particular person and disapprove of how they identify as a person. Disapproving of and not judging someone for being a Republican is not the same as "not judging" someone for being in a loving relationship. That is judging by the way. While I don't label my sexual orientation, I am currently in a homosexual relationship. I realize this is something that will form part of my identity and label me in society. When you disapprove of my relationship, you disapprove of me as an individual.

I'm not a lesbian, but my girlfriend is.

For my friend's Mad Men inspired party. Yes, I am wearing a bow tie and I was adorable.