“You used to have feelings for me, didn’t you?” (part 2)

A while after, I broke up with my boyfriend because I felt like the feelings faded. During my time of “confinement” inside my house, I did a lot of self-reflection and realized that I had feelings for both males and females. The way I thought about issues surrounding gender and sexuality has always been pretty open, so I embraced myself with ease. Then I started thinking about my best friend more often, about how I cared for her, how I noticed her, and then I wondered if my feelings for her this whole time were more than platonic, but romantic love.

“I wondered if my feelings for her this whole time were more than platonic.”

Summer came, my college organized a military training session for all the freshmen. Students from every major were training together, so I had a chance to run into her again. It was really awkward at the beginning because I figured out my feelings, but then everything went back to normal. We started talking more. Before this, I had never mentioned my break up, so she accused me of “falling into love’s devious trap” and abandoning our friendship. Then one day I decided to come out to her as bisexual. We sat side by side at that moment, I noticed a bit of shock in her expression but that soon went away. I kept on talking about my feelings for people of the same sex, the kind of feelings I couldn’t even put to words when I came across a girl. Surprisingly, she said she had already noticed this for a while. She said that back in high school, she saw me treating some girls a little extra “special.” Finally, she asked:

“You used to have feelings for me, didn’t you?”

Dear God I liked her a whole lot, so much that I became jealous and possessive. I came clean. She only smiled and said she was, unfortunately, straight. That smile of hers wasn’t critical or mocking but regretful and empathetic, since she could not feel the same way. We talked a lot that day, about gender and sexuality, about coming out, even about all the feelings I had kept hidden all those years. To me, she is my secret first love and a soulmate who deeply understands and respects my true self.

**********

Rồi Sẽ Ổn Thôi (“Gonna Be Alright”) is a project that collects coming out stories from the LGBTIQ+ community and their loved ones in Việt Nam. To find out more details or to read more stories from the project, please visit our official social media site on Instagram at ComingOutVN.