What is Pansexuality?

For the past two or three years, I have been out as pansexual. It being one of many sexualities, I’m not surprised that people don’t know what it is. Pansexuality is liking a person, not for their gender-specific parts, but for their personality. It doesn’t mean that I prefer girls over boys or non-binary over both. It means that I prefer the mind over the body (looks can be an added bonus though). Being pansexual is not having a sexual attraction to pans. 

My Backstory

I come from a very small school from southern Indiana. It being a public high school that consisted of 400 students in total, including the junior high, everyone happened to know everyone. If you had an issue or a secret, everyone knew about it because they were nosy and begged for drama. It was fairly hard to keep anything a secret, even from yourself. 

It was my sophomore year and we had three foreign exchange students come to my school. One was from Italy, one from Mexico, and one from Spain and all were girls. The one from Spain happened to do all the same sports I did, those being cross country, basketball, and track (slight flex). Her and I would run the cross country course during practice and we became friends fast. Basketball was even better because she was an amazing player and good to compete against. We bonded on the varsity bench, waiting to sub into the game. 

It didn’t take me very long to realize that I liked her. I was confused at first because they weren’t many queer people around my small town and if there were, they weren’t out. So I found it difficult to wrap my head around me liking her as more than a friend. I didn’t really acknowledge it until one basketball game. We were sitting on the bench and she started randomly telling me words she thought were fun to say in English. Words like pudding or peek-a-boo (her favorite and my nickname for her). So we sat there– her cheering on our team, me thinking about what words I would love to hear her say.

After that, I was quick to flirt with her. Flirting with a woman is a very hard thing to do when you are also a woman and you don’t know if they are even into women at all. Heck, I even went on a week-long vacation with her to Florida before she went back to Spain. Unfortunately, I could never tell if she was flirting back or if I was being friendzoned.

What Comes Next?

Realizing my crush on a woman changed my point of view on everything. Did I actually like women or was it just her (Peek-a-boo)? Here was my crossroads, men or women? I tossed it around in my head because I still was checking out guys, yet I started noticing girls too.

Flashback to before me liking our foreign exchange student and I actually had a boyfriend.

At the beginning of sophomore year, I met and dated a guy from our rival school. We both ran cross country and decided to go to a haunted trail after a meet. He asked me out there and kissed me not too long after.

He was my first kiss and, honestly, I didn’t appreciate the kiss at all. It was out of nowhere and not asked for, but unfortunately, I was young and dumb. Another night, he was with my cross country team bonfire and he made unwanted advances (nothing terrible). Easy to say that I broke up with him.

After that relationship, I often thought of the matter and came to the conclusion that I was disgusted with any and all lower regions. With each relationship that I have, it becomes clearer that I am pan. It may not be the exact definition for me, but it counts. I fall in love with people’s minds and their actions rather than their gender and what they look like. Of course, I do appreciate a good lookin’ specimen, but if you love someone then it doesn’t matter what they look like because they’ll look perfect to you.

• LGBTQ+
• pansexual
• pansexuality
• queer