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There Was This Girl On My Soccer Team by Madeleine Lychek

There was a girl on my soccer team, who was tall and thin with mousy brown hair. I would have to keep myself from staring, she was painfully beautiful. My mother thought she looked just like her brother.

I used to watch the Victoria Secret Fashion Show every year and knew all the models by name. I thought it was their long legs or taught abs or perfectly curled her or puckered lips that drove the infatuation. I didn’t develop crushes on my close friends, which probably would have helped with the realization.

Once, at my grandparents house, I was surrounded by my cousins in the basement. I was singing ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry and my cousin remarked something along the lines of ‘when you sing something, that’s how you really feel’. I remember feeling defensive and exposed. I know now that she wasn’t insinuating anything she was just busting my balls.

When I was about twelve or thirteen my mom asked me if I liked girls, I objected, she said she asked because I never told her about any of my crushes. She told me that she could remember the name of every boy she’d ever had a crush on since kindergarten. I had crushes on boys, I just didn’t tell her about them.

I used to say that I would make out with a girl but wouldn’t sleep with one. I remember one of my friends saying that if anyone in our friend group were to be a lesbian it would be me. It bothered me. I went to Catholic school, I was already not Italian, I didn’t want there to be something else that made me different.

I didn’t have a boyfriend in highschool, it didn’t seem like many of the boys liked me in that way but I didn’t care. One of my friends who was gay used to call me butch and tried to convince me I was a lesbian.

There was this beautiful blonde girl who was tall and thin, I was jealous of her and found my eyes wandering back to her. I was nervous to talk to her when she plopped down right infront of me on the grass. I still follow her on Instagram.

I went to a party when I was seventeen and I think I made out with this really pretty girl who was friends with the host, but I blacked out so the story was never corroborated. In my senior yearbook one of my friends wrote “You’re a lesbian, but that’s okay.”