I have a good life, at least I think I do? Well, I don’t necessarily have a bad one. If I said that then I’d sound ungrateful for what I have, and I am definitely grateful! I have a great brother and mom, who I love a lot. But so much has been happening, and not only during this year. For starters, my brother, Noah. From as far as my memories can go, Noah has always been different compared to most people. Don’t get me wrong, Noah is the best brother ever. He’s everything to me.

Though I remember a time when I was eight years old and I asked him if he thought I was cute, at the time I was getting annoyed since people always called me that. He replied with “I’m sure you are.” which I didn’t understand, I continued to ask him questions, he explained that he couldn’t tell what I looked like by the face. But I only started to understand what that meant when I got older, he did go to a lot of therapists and doctors after all so it kind of made sense. Noah is different, but he’s family. So I will literally punch anyone who dares to hurt him.

Now for my mom, Olivia Flores. We rarely get to see her since she only comes home late at night. I’m not really bothered by it anymore, and I don’t think Noah was ever bothered by it. Mom works two different jobs, she works at a restaurant as a waitress, while the other is at a club, Noah says he doesn't want to tell me what she works as, but I think he knows that I know what it is. 

I sometimes hear her and Noah disagreeing about that job. He says that we are making enough money without it, but she doesn’t agree with that either, I try not to pay attention to that though. I would talk about my dad, but I’m actually not comfortable with that. So that’ll be a story for another time I guess.

I’m trying to think of something else to talk about other than the last subject, but I’m having no luck. So it probably means that I can’t avoid it. Well, the next thing to talk about is school. This is the worst one, I really don’t even know where to start. But I’ll try my best to explain from the beginning. It all started a few months ago, September to be more precise. I had my first kiss, someone saw us and told everyone. People would pick on me, there were also other things like name-calling. But then it got physical, I’ve never liked violence, I only fight back if it’s something really important, so I don’t really do anything. You could say that I was getting bullied by people. Just because of one simple kiss. But I know why, it’s because I kissed a girl. Wow so surprising, right?

There you have it, and not just any girl, but my best friend, Chloe is her name. It was in school, we were fighting because she found out that I’d been keeping things from her. It may sound selfish if you put it that way, but we have been friends for years. We promised that we wouldn’t keep anything from each other, Chloe is all about honesty, so I know that she won’t lie to me unless it’s really personal. I never lied to her either, until I started to have feelings for her a year ago, I’ve always felt weird around her but I never really knew what it was. Everything changed when I continued to like her. I knew it was bad and tried to ignore it, but it didn’t do anything at all.

Chloe began to notice that I was acting differently some time ago, even though I said it was nothing she still knew I was lying. Then on that day, she confronted me. I hadn’t ever seen her that hurt, and it was killing me. We were practically shouting at each other. But I couldn’t say anything about the truth, I didn’t know where to start.

The saying ‘Actions speak better than words’ came into my mind. I couldn’t think of anything else to do or say, I was hesitant but yet still did it. I kissed her. I surprisingly wasn’t pushed away, I’m honestly not sure why but she didn’t refuse. It lasted some time, when we stopped she was blushing a lot. She was looking at me in confusion so I explained everything to her. Every single word that came out of my mouth was the truth.

What I didn’t know was that Chloe was pansexual. Apparently she wanted to keep that from me because she was scared that I wasn’t going to accept her. Her parents are very strict, they’re not accepting either. Which affects her confidence a lot.

I guess you could say I confessed, she said that we could try because she really wanted to. But normally when it comes to relationships Chloe gets really anxious, so I’m not going to pressure her about it, I’m just happy that she’s trying her best with me.

Now back to the ‘bullying’. Someone saw us kissing, I’m not sure how. When that happened, it was behind the school and it had also already ended. But the person didn’t see who I was kissing, they only saw me, I’m glad though, I would never want what’s happening to me to happen to Chloe, but then they told everyone else.

Two weeks ago I came home with a large bruise on my face, my lip was bleeding a bit too. I was lucky enough to get home before my brother, it hurt a lot but I put some of my mom’s makeup on to cover it up. Even though I normally did that, today was a lot worse than usual. I managed to make it pretty believable. As I was walking out of the bathroom, I heard the door unlocking, without even thinking I rushed to the living room and jumped to the couch, then took my phone out and opened a random app.

When Noah walked into the room I didn’t make eye contact with him, almost everyone I know is aware that I’m terrible at lying, so I just pretended to be doing something on my phone. I’m not even sure how but Noah immediately realised that something was wrong, I just acted like I wasn’t aware of what he was talking about and something about a comic. After our conversation ended, Noah went to his room and I let out the biggest sigh of relief. I don’t know if I convinced him, but at least I tried.

Not too long ago I talked to him about it, but I said that it was a friend of mine instead of telling him that it was actually me. He gave me advice, I wasn’t planning on standing up for myself, but what he said really helped me. I also remember passing this guy while walking to school, I was already happy and he looked so nice and friendly, so I smiled at him, he smiled back and I couldn’t help but blush a bit. It's not like I like this dude or anything, he was just so freaking gorgeous!

But back to that topic, hopefully next time another bad situation comes up I’ll get enough confidence. Now I didn’t say it was me for three simple reasons, 1 being that I didn’t want my brother to know that I was lesbian. 2 being that I didn’t want him to know that I was being picked on, and 3 because I didn’t want him to say or do anything to the ones who caused that problem, I’m fully aware that Noah can fight when he wants to, so I do not want him to get angry. Though the first reason may not make much sense because Noah is out, meaning that the people who are in his life do know that he is gay. So he would possibly accept me, but I’m just scared that he’ll turn out like my dad, I really don’t want that.

That’s all I have to say about my life for now, I’m still excited to know what will happen in the future. Sure I’m scared, but doesn’t life throw these challenges at you because you can get through it? So I’ll stay excited, because life is always better without negative emotions. I hope to keep it that way.