Normal

I've never wanted to be gay. I'm not one of those people who knew from childhood; it never crossed my mind. When V and I first decided to be together, I called myself a straight girl with a girlfriend. I didn't identify with the LGBT community, nor did I particularly want to. I felt forced into it - yes, I loved V, and no, it wasn't that I wanted her to be a boy, but...

In many ways, I'm still in that place. Having a friend visit last weekend, a childhood friend, a guy friend, brought all this back, hard. We ran a few errands together, and I couldn't get out of my brain the fact that people probably assumed we were together, had no problems with that, an, well, we looked normal.

Normal. That word is so tantalizing. V said it's why she wants to move: to be around more LGBT people, as well as couples. But for me, that doesn't change anything. I know I'm not normal. (Yes, I realize how that sounds. Bear with me.) My parents will never think I'm normal. The vast majority of people in the world will never think I'm normal.

Here's where I'm about to get even more ridiculous. After spending time with this good friend, it crashed into my head: I could've been normal. I brought this on myself.

Do I love my wife? Yes. But...

A friend wisely told me, "You'd be different. Loving V changed you." She knew me before I knew V, and watched our relationship come into existence. (V's response to that: "Yeah, you might have even voted for Romney.") And it's not that I don't want to love her. It's not even that I don't want to love girls. I just want to be with a boy, right now. Irrationally. Because...then I could be normal.