By Lorena Tellez

But I’m a Cheerleader!

Step One: Admitting You’re a Homosexual

I used to be a cheerleader — red-lipped, pom-pommed, school-spirited. My team and I dominated sun-drenched sports fields, our voices rising above the crowd in a chorus of manly, mean growls. On one blistering Texas afternoon, we escaped the relentless heat to cheer for our most talented sports team: girls’ volleyball. The gymnasium was packed to the rafters, the air thick with anticipation. In the brief intermission between sets, we executed graceful flips across the polished linoleum floor, our hands and feet thumping in rhythmic synchrony. I felt the energy of each set radiating in my bones, as if the veil dropped, and fate was whispering incoherently around me.

Amidst the controlled chaos, a flash of curly hair and wispy limbs caught my eye. A figure sprinted across the court, waving a massive flag adorned with the fierce scowl of our school’s mascot. The flag billowed in the air, its colors vibrant against the harsh gymnasium lights.

As my eyes locked onto the determined gaze of the flag bearer, a surge of emotions slammed into me, violent and undeniable. She was a girl.

Step Two: Rediscovering Your Gender Identity

At cheer practice, my teammates scrunched their noses and muttered asco when gossiping about lesbians. At school, “That’s so gay” was the universal response to anything disgusting. Lesbian was a slur, a curse. It’s a shameful condemnation shoved into dark corners where it can gather dust, where it belongs. It’s a deplorable evil I guiltily looked up in the privacy of my room — tingling in between my legs and a burning feeling in my chest.

When I first realized I was gay, I didn’t realize I was gay. Instead, I felt something I had no name for: something I had never seen reflected back at me in books, in movies, in whispered confessions between friends. When I caught myself staring at a girl, I convinced myself it was jealousy. When I longed for a woman’s presence, I imagined I wanted to be her friend. When my heart fluttered with prolonged physical contact, I deluded myself into believing it was nothing.

But, at my core, I knew what I felt wasn’t a friend-crush, idolization, or even deep, crushing envy.

So I pushed the feeling far, far down. When it inevitably resurfaced, I shoved it deeper, burying it beneath layers of denial until it clawed its way back up on one lonely, dark night. And then another. And another. Each time, the realization left me gutted, sleepless, unraveling.

I hated my tainted mind. I fought against the world’s voice echoing inside me. I mourned the white-picket-fence future I had always envisioned.

Until, one day, I simply started saying it.

I like girls.

Step Three: Family Therapy

I told my mom on the drive home from a cheer competition.

“Mijita, are you sure you’re not just doing this for the trend?” She said this gently, like she wanted to believe me but didn’t know how. I swallowed the lump and stared out the window, counting road signs to keep from crying.

That triggered the nights of denial once again.

The thing about first coming out is that you start the process all over again at the smallest hint of rejection. One member of the pyramid falters, leaving the team to build it over. And over. And over.

In the following year, every time I spent quiet moments with my mom, my mouth ached to let my secret slip; I could feel the weight of the world on my tongue and deep in my chest. After long practices, I would lay in her bed while she gave me cosquillas, her fingers tracing gentle patterns on my back. I always wondered if she felt the weight between us — how our rift was burdened by my facade.

My dad cried when I told him. But not the way I had feared. He held me, tears of joy in his eyes, and said he was proud.

It felt like undoing an impossibly tight, hairsprayed ponytail after a four-hour football game. Like peeling off the stiff, sweat-drenched shell of my uniform. Like finally, finally, exhaling.

Step Four: Demystifying the Opposite Sex

Associating with the label ‘lesbian’ was scary. I felt that with one fell swoop, the entire image I’d built for myself would shatter. No one would see me the same. So I said I was bisexual. Unlabeled. Queer. Gay. I did anything to avoid that horrible word: to avoid the way boys’ once-admiring eyes flickered with something else, something sharper.

It’s easy to understand. “Lesbian” is dirty, sexual, and provocative. It’s the most searched word on Pornhub in most states. They’re bra-burning, man-hating, hairy rioters. It’s an insult hurled at any young girl who fails to conform to the hairless, skinny, and submissive rigid female archetype. The word itself feels foreign in your mouth — the way it snakes from the tongue to your throat, all slime and bile.

So I kissed a couple of guys. Maybe it was more than a kiss; maybe there were more than a couple. But when I was in my room alone (or lucky enough to be in the arms of a woman), I knew. It only feels right here.

Step Five: Simulating Sexual Intercourse

After I slept with my girlfriend, I thought I’d feel more like a lesbian. But lying in her arms, I was simply overwhelmed with love for her. Tangled in her sheets, I wondered if that was what made me lesbian.

No — I wasn’t a lesbian until I said it for the first time with conviction. But, I’ve also been a lesbian my entire life. The truth was a scar I didn’t notice until I traced it backward, a pattern only visible once I’d already been shaped by it.
It’s hard to come out almost every day, restarting my journey with every “Nice to meet you.” But when I compare my life now versus how I was living before — in deep, dark, murky denial — I know it’s worth it. I live every day staring hate in the eyes, standing proudly for all the little girls I’ll meet who will know lesbian is more than a label. I walk through life taking a term stained with history and making it my own. I speak it without flinching: I say it proudly and watch the world flinch instead. ■