As a girl enters her teenage years, her thoughts are expected to turn to romance, particularly when concerning the opposite sex and crushes on every boy from the movie heart throb of the moment to the guy who sits in front of her in math class.

I wasn't one of those girls.

Tradition in my family dictates we don't talk about personal things like love with other family members, or preferably at all. My mom often squirms if I mention a romantic subplot in a book I'm reading; my dad still tells me to look away from the TV if people are kissing; and at 18 I've yet to receive the sex talk.

So during middle school, while all the other girls cut out pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio, I sat back and watched them with a slightly aloof feeling. I felt I was better than them, since I hadn't let hormones get the better of me.

But teenagers don't take to aloof peers well. By the ninth grade, the question 'Are you gay?' became quite common, even among my so-called friends.

For awhile I blew off such questions, but eventually I had to start facing them head on. After all, with my completely lack of interest in guys and preferring to spend my time with other girls, it was a pretty fair question.

But I couldn't share such questions with my family. My mom had told me she thought homosexuality was a sin and probably a very lonely lifestyle and my dad is not only racist and sexist, but a homophobe as well. Add this to the unspoken rule about romance and you have a family where it'd be easier to be a high school dropout than a girl with questions about who she wants to date.

The situation wasn't any better among my friends. I'd never shown them that I was capably of a really deep emotion. I could be happy or angry, there wasn't much in between. And I had no idea how my friends, born and raised in small, conservative Holland, would react to the idea that I was questioning the status quo again, but this time over something that some people found sinful.

By 11th grade I knew who I was, though that didn't make my life much easier. I knew that I was indeed gay, but that left me with the same dilemma I had while still questioning.

So I was miserable during most of my junior year. I knew I could easily pass as straight until I got out of high school and could re-make myself in college. After all, the stereotypes of lesbians that I fit were few and far between, and by 11th grade most of my friends were mature and knew me well enough that my lack of interest in the opposite sex wasn't an issue.

What was an issue was honesty, both to myself and the people I love.

So I began coming out at the beginning of the second semester, quite surreptitiously. The only person I actually told was one of my closest friends; the rest had to figure it out on their own from what I wrote or painted in art class, or I was accidentally outted thanks to a talkative teacher who didn't know that I was not yet publicly out.

But even these quiet steps out of the closet didn't alleviate my feelings of guilt about not being completely honest. One of my best friends only saw me a couple of days a week during lunch, and then we were always with her boyfriend, so I had no opportunity to actually tell her. And then there was the issue of my family.

It was not being out to Mom that hurt the most. She and I always had a very open relationship, but she was also one of the strongest enforcers of 'don't ask, don't tell' in my house.

It was seeing Rosie O'Donnell's coming out interview in March last year that finally convinced me it was time to be out to Mom. I had a reason to broach the subject with her, and I had a large enough support network of friends that I'd have people to run to if things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to.

Fortunately, I didn't need that support network. While she didn't hug me and say she was proud that I could tell her, my mom didn't kick me out of the house or go on a tirade about how I was condemned to burn in hell. She said she'd hope I'd remain a virgin for a long time, told me not to tell my dad, and that was basically it.

Over the summer I became much more comfortable with myself and the friends I was out to. It became possible to joke around about me not joining in the conversation when they would talk about guys. For the first time since I'd begun questioning I was happy.

Almost.

There was still that one friend I wasn't out to. And I still felt isolated. While joking around was fun, the fact was all of my friends were straight and couldn't quite understand what my life was like.

And then, at the beginning of senior year, I fell into the best group of friends a girl could ask for. Some are gay, some are straight, all are completely accepting. And that one friend I was so paranoid about telling? She'd figured out I was gay all on her own, and was already friends with several members of my new group.

In four years, I've come completely full circle in my life. From quietly questioning my place in the world as a freshman, to embracing my place on the fringe and living my life to the fullest as a senior. Your senior year of high school is supposed to be your best ever, and for once in my life, I'm happy that I'm going to be living up to a stereotype.

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