For the longest time, I never even knew that something was wrong. Boys were pretty. Girls were pretty. My parents explained to me that my uncle was in love with a man, and, if anything, wanting a chance to experience love with both seemed like the most accepting way to be.

But then, as rain pelted on the tinted windows and the family minivan pulled slowly to the side of the road, my mothers words, though spoken softly, roared through the car as if a window had been rolled down and a hurricane had been allowed inside. She asked me if I was gay.
Apparently, my love for the singer Hayley Williams had betrayed me, and I was caught at a complete loss. Yes. No. Maybe. I have no idea. Shocked, having never been expected to explain my sexuality before, I explained to my mother the concept of bisexuality. I sat while she told me that bisexuality was a façade put on by sex-crazed fake lesbians just trying to find excuses to do it with more people. I cried while she told me I did not exist.
The way I had learned to see it, I had simply started to notice girls in the same way I had been noticing boys since the third grade. For a while, I thought that people could either be gay or straight. Every time I thought I had officially decided on which of the two I identified as, like I was supposed to, I would see a cute boy or girl walk past, and I would be thrown suddenly back the opposite direction. Then, I read about the spectrum that exists between hetero and homosexuality. There was a grey (or rather, purple) area for people like me and I was happy there in perfect confusion surrounded by attractive people of all gender identities.  I did not have to figure out if I was gay or straight, I did not have to worry what it meant if I wanted to marry a man in the long term, or if I even wanted to get married at all. I was bisexual and that covered it all.
Unfortunately, that was just the way I saw things. My wonderful and well-intentioned mother, on the other hand, saw bisexuality as an idea created by either in-denial lesbians or sex depraved freaks. To her, the world was still divided into gay and straight. Nothing else existed.
I could not believe it. I could not believe she accepted LGBT people as long as the “B” had been scratched out. I couldn’t believe that she was open to people who strayed from the worn path of hetero-normativity until one of those people was her daughter.
I was thirteen, and I already didn’t exist.
My mother was not alone. Many people still don’t believe that bisexuality is a real thing, either agreeing with my mother or suggesting, “all people are a little bi” as if straight girls calling Selena Gomez pretty is akin to my mother making me cry in the passenger seat because I was attracted to boys and girls. To others, sexuality is a prize to be won, as my coming out speech was responded to by “don’t you have a crush on [insert boys name here]?”  Because somehow, to some people, simply my saying that I was also attracted to girls was not enough proof that I was truly the sexuality I identified as. Still others were insisted that me being bisexual meant that I was automatically attracted to them. Again and again, I had to reassure my female friends that as pretty as they are, I never had been and never will be attracted to them physically. To top things off, even within the LGBT community, my existence is paper-thin. A large percentage of gay women say they would not date a bi girl, and shows like Glee, which are watched by millions under a guise of groundbreaking open-mindedness, feature lesbians feel who feel cheated because they have never dated an “actual lesbian” but rather a series of bi girls.
I can hardly blame them. Who would ever want to date a ghost? To lesbians, I’m a poser. To straight men, I’m an anomaly or, at best, an accessory to a fetish.
Thus, I continue to not exist, seeming instead to float through a hazy fog of sentences that start with “for a bi girl, you…” and questions that somehow involve the concept of a three-way. The word “phase” still hits me like a sock filled with nickels and the sound of my father telling me to “keep it to myself” fills my lungs with water every time.
However, I have grown up since that night freshman year when my mother came out for me. Though I am turned into a frightened child again by a single slur or momentary shadow across my father’s face, I am beginning to become solid again as I learn more about who I am and the broad spectrum of people who tell me that I am not abnormal, and that my mother was wrong. Today, I have friends who feel the same way I do, or at least are open minded enough to understand. Today, I can look at the television and see celebrities and characters that more accurately represent me. I am a member of my schools Gay-Straight Alliance as well as the LGBT affinity group. My mother and I have talked it out since, and, though I can tell it still makes her uncomfortable, she is trying. One night a few months ago, she once again used a short series of words to dramatically shift my self-esteem. This time, however, it was in a positive direction. She was talking to me about my future, and was midway through her usual cliché parent speech that I was trying my best to block out when she said the following: “All I want is for you to find some guy who really loves you…. Or some girl.”
Again, it was just three words, but it my eyes widened. She continued to talk, not knowing that I had suddenly been pulled back into existence. All it took was that, the simplest gesture, to show me that she was willing to acknowledge the concept that I had introduced to her two years ago as something real. We would still fight about it; I would still get hurt by my parents and friends and classmates, but things were different now. Even she could no longer deny my corporeality.
I had been growing stronger and as I continue do so, more and more people will be forced to look at me. 
At 13, I was told I did not exist. At 16, I learned to say I do.