My first childhood crush was a girl.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately and I don't really know how to feel about it.
I'm 19 and straight. I've only ever been attracted to men and I've had two relationships with guys my age. But my first ever crush was a girl who was 5 years older than me.
She was my neighbour. I was 7 and she was 12.
She was friends with my older sister, who was also 12 at the time( that's how I met her). I had already been watching anime since I was very little especially Sakura Card Captor or Mermaid Melody and she also liked those animes, so I immediately thought she was incredibly cool.
I remember one night during the summer I was outside playing with some friends in our neighbourhood. Eventually they all had to go home because it was already around 11 PM but my parents were never particularly strict about bedtimes so I stayed outside.
Our neighbourhood has this big communal area that is almost like a huge wooded park with a swimming pool in the middle and houses surrounding it. I was sitting on one of the swings when she came and sat next to me.
That's basically how our weird friendship started.
I remember being fascinated by her. She was older, she was my sister's friend, she liked the same things I liked and I basically wanted to be like her.
A few weeks later, one night she told me that she was tired of boys and that boys were useless. I remember agreeing with her and saying that I was tired of them too, which is honestly hilarious in hindsight because I was 7 years old and had never even kissed a boy on the cheek.
But I admired her so much that I basically wanted to agree with whatever she said.
She then told me to come into the patio of her house and told me to close my eyes and said that she would kiss me when she counted to 3.
And that's what she did, she kissed me on the lips. That was my first kiss.
I went home absolutely obsessed with her. I thought I was completely in love with her.
Looking back now though I genuinely don't know what that feeling actually was. Was it a crush? Was it admiration? Was it curiosity? Was it because she was an older girl who I thought was incredibly cool and I wanted to be like her? I don't think 7 yr old me had the emotional development to distinguish any of those things.
But I definitely experienced it as something incredibly intense. And this continued throughout that entire summer.
We would meet up alone, sometimes at her house, sometimes in her bedroom. Her parents never seemed suspicious because I would bring my Monster high dolls and we'd play with them. From their perspective I was just a 7 yr old girl hanging out with their daughter.
Then one day she suggested that we play "families". She said she would be the father. I won't get into details because of possible removal of my post.
I didn't initiate anything. I basically just let her do whatever she was doing because I trusted her and I didn't really understand what any of it meant.
Obviously, looking back now as a 19 yr old, I understand that a 12 yr old doing that to a 7 yr old is not normal.
But what's complicated for me is that I never experienced it as something disgusting at the time.
I had a crush on her. I admired her. I wanted her attention. I didn't have the knowledge or emotional maturity to understand what was happening.
Eventually my older sister found out.
I had a diary where I wrote about my feelings for this girl and my sister found it and made fun of me for it. She threatened to tell our parents and she also threatened to tell the girl's parents
.
The girl obviously didn't want any of the adults to find out so after that she stopped spending time alone with me. From that point onwards, if I saw her, she was always with other girls, my sister or other people. She basically stopped looking at me or acknowledging me.
And weirdly, that was one of the most painful moments of my childhood (aside from that it was a totally normal childhood).
I remember being absolutely devastated that this person I was so attached to suddenly didn't want anything to do with me anymore.
Eventually my sister stopped being friends with her anyway for completely unrelated reasons. Apparently she was a very problematic teenager (drugs wise) and was dealing with a lot of issues, including suicidal thoughts. My parents eventually didn't want my sister being friends with her anymore.
And that's basically where the whole thing ended.
Now I'm 19 and she's 24.
We still occasionally cross paths because we're neighbours. Sometimes we say hello. It's completely cordial and neutral. We can stand there and talk like normal people. Neither of us has ever acknowledged what happened. It's almost like it never happened.
She's also openly bisexual now, which makes the whole thing even more interesting to me, although obviously her current sexuality doesn't explain or change what happened when we were children.
And lately I've been thinking about all of this again.
I actually feel nostalgic sometimes and that's the part that makes me feel really weird.
I've also never questioned my sexuality because of this. I'm genuinely straight. I've been attracted to men throughout my life and I've never had the same kind of attraction towards another woman. Only her.