possibly worked into my narrative

My mother told me straight up that she wouldn't accept a girlfriend for me. She insisted that her daughter wasn't a lesbian, there was no way. There was a pain that I was hiding, was what my mother told her. The reason she thought I believed I was lesbian was because I couldn't trust men, or because she hadn't been there enough for me, and now I was looking for what I had missed as a child in other women. I didn't think so. I am a lesbian because that's what I am.

I had tried so hard not to be. Whenever I went to the mall as a child, she would avert her eyes from the posters with the beautiful women advertising clothes. I felt guilty if her eyes lingered too long. As I grew older, she noticed more in her quick glances at the posters. The way the clothes clung to their bodies, the way their hair fell, how much clothes they were actually wearing and what they weren't. I wanted to look longer, to have more than a passing glance, but I tore her eyes away and made some comment on the males in the posters instead.

Puberty hit and my family and I wondered why I was more interested in looking at cars than at guys. The thought would enter my head: what if I like women? Then I would get a horrible feeling in my stomach and shove the thought away. Liking women was wrong, it was against my religion and my family would be in an uproar; there was no way to accept liking women. It couldn't happen.

Then, I fell in love, quite unexpectedly actually, much like it usually happens. I didn't even realize what hit me. I walked into the class room two weeks after the regular term had started and found her in the office. She was wearing a scarf in her hair, tight jeans, and flip flops. Her dark hair was pulled into a messy style bun behind the scarf. She had dark eyes, almost black, that made my stomach flip.