Design by Ingrid Frahm I’ve always felt that dating, sleeping with, and loving whomever I please is an active choice, as I am choosing to put what I want first. That said, I can almost remember the moment I acknowledged that I wasn’t heterosexual. It wasn't a huge, defining moment or a sudden exposure to a side of life that I hadn’t experienced before, but rather a slow realization that the girl crushes I was having on celebrity women extended further than just sharing their pictures on Tumblr a few times. I won’t lie and proclaim that I was immediately comfortable venturing into dating both men and women, but my nerves were quickly dispelled after learning from the people I had around me. In my late teens and earlier 20s, I hung around a lot of queer people as a result of my weekend job at Urban Outfitters in Central London. The racial politics of queer representation meant that, at that time, I was more likely to find gay cis white men to party with than queer Black people. There was something heartwarming about seeing gay men proudly embrace and love each other openly in a space that accepted them as young queer people. Though my Blackness made me stick out like a sore thumb, I still felt like part of the fold, and this kind of acceptance helped to further calm my jitters surrounding dating women.