I knew I liked girls probably when I was 12 or 13 but of course growing up in the rural southern US the only thing I knew about being gay was that it was bad and I definitely didn’t want to be gay so I mega-suppressed my feelings towards women for a really long time. I was seriously bisexual though, so I would constantly have to literally drill into my OWN head “you think girls are pretty but you aren’t attracted to them sexually” even though I most certainly was. I always had crushes but when I went to college I developed a serious crush on one of my really good friends. She is beautiful, kind, smart, hilarious, literally everything someone could ask for. It took having a crush on her to really admit it to myself. Kind of just said to myself “you like her in a different way you like your other friends, just admit it” and I did. This was about two-three years ago when I was 19 yet it still took me about a year to admit to myself that I was actually the label of “bisexual”, not “straight” like I always said I was, but once I did I felt like I was free and everything in my life including my own thoughts just made so much more sense. I’m now out to a handful of close friends and counting. :)