I got to thinking about how my queerness (bi/pan-sexuality) is often invisible, even to me. Perhaps more to me than to others.

The environment in which I was raised provided narratives and tips to help me contextualize my attraction to the male of the species. In time I learned to distrust the immediate crushes on all the shiny ones, and to only take action if it persisted. Hail the mysterious workings of Azz's brain.

It did not prove half so helpful with my feelings for other girls and women. A sudden tropism for the company of a guy, and a need to know all about him, shyness in his presence -- probably a crush. A girl? Friendship, right?

At some point I became aware of lesbians; I was also aware that no matter the nature of my feelings for other girls, I could absolutely not be a lesbian, on account of the way I liked boys very unmistakably.

It took A. grabbing my hand and clutching it to her chest in an extravagant display (of grief, I think at her twitfaced ex-boyfriend dumping her or something; we were very teenage) for me to finally get all my chemistry working right with other women. Until that moment, I'd needed convincing that "bisexual" was an actual label that applied. It had been all theoretical. My mind was open to the possibility, and my one lesbian friend had to give me permission to join the club.

The label and the hormones convinced me that what I was feeling for A. was every bit as real as the feelings I had for guys. My bisexuality was no longer theoretical.

Despite the new context, I still had -- have -- trouble realizing when my admiration of another woman is an actual crush. If my thing for my male preschool classmate was a crush, my sudden fascination with that female first grade classmate (before my attention was distracted by the guy who ate the glue) was probably a crush too. The thing for my sister's violin teacher, definitely a crush. In retrospect.

It still manages to take me by surprise. I was just thinking about how actually even when you get me up next to a lot of my friends, my dear queer community, I still could be mistaken for straight a lot of the time. I certainly do have various things for various men, some reasonably appropriate and some very not. I started attempting to measure this by the time-honored yardstick of People About Whom I Have Been Miserable At jd, and I was brought up short facepalming. Why yes, I was entirely aware of the crush on her; it was sort of amazingly hard to miss, but the crush on her entirely flew under my radar because it was not included in any of the models that I've been using to attempt to figure out these things.

Not all my crushes have sexual desire as an element. This makes it a lot harder to sort out.

I lack good words to describe the sorts of relationship roles I'm thinking of here. I'm not sure they entirely exist. I know "butch" and "femme" are things, but this isn't about gender presentation. "Top" and "bottom" are more sexual and BDSM than I'm thinking, though certain of the power dynamic things feel slightly related. In my head in the shower, I was thinking "heavy" and "frail" -- the protective/needs-protection dynamic. I can recognize a crush when I'm the frail. It's close enough to the masculine/feminine narratives, and I have been socialized feminine in addition to being issued with a female body. I can see myself in this picture.

I have a much harder time recognizing it as a crush when I'm the "heavy", despite the fact that I intermittently fit that role during no few of my relationships.

It's sort of like playing Lego with electromagnetized pieces. They can fit together, but it's not until someone throws the switch that they leap into position of their own volition.

I had a crush. The fact that my brain is now making angsty breakup playlists is not in fact coincidental. I can roll with it, now that I know what's going on. I yet again mourn the fact that being raised in isolation in a house with a heterosexual couple deprived me of my rightful share of lesbian role models.