***This is looonnngg. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to write this much.
I was something of a late bloomer. Growing up, I didn't really have much concept of sexuality. This might have been due, in part, to being fairly socially isolated in my younger years. My dad was in the Military so my family moved whenever he would be assigned to a new duty station. This meant it was difficult to make any real friends - what was the point if you were going to be gone in a year anyway?
In addition my family wasn't part of a church or close with the extended family, so ever my parents' social circle was small. For the most part it was always just my parents, my sister, and me. I didn't know any gay people, and as far as I know the subject of homosexuality was never brought up in our house. So growing up I was unaware of the concept that someone could be gay, let alone able to apply that concept to myself.
When I was about 8 or 9 my mom bought a house in her hometown, so that my sister and I could have a more "normal" childhood and put down some roots. I started making friends and became part of a social group. As my friends and I got older, they would talk about having crushes on the cute boys at our school and I had no idea what my friends were talking about. I didn't think much about boys, but I remember feeling left out and making up crushes on random boys just so I'd be included in the talk.
Then when I was about 13/14 I got hammered by untreated bipolar disorder (wouldn't be diagnosed for another 12 years) and spent most of my teenage years out of my mind with anxiety or in a depressed fog. I wasn't interested in anything or anyONE.
I didn't start thinking I might be gay until I was 17/18 and I started wondering why I had no interest in dating guys like my friends. When I started college I fell hard for this much older woman (10 plus years) in one of my classes and that's when I knew for sure I was gay. She was into me, too, and bought me lunch a few times (once even offered to buy me lingerie! ).
I wish I could say that she and I dated or even just made out a bit but I was so inexperienced and overwhelmed by what I was feeling that I ran away. Literally! I dropped the class that she and I were in together and erased her number from my phone.