u/hearteyes444ellie

Hey guys, I have no idea if this is the right community to post this but it is what it is.
Blatantly? I am struggling with queer identity, my current relationship, and relationship with my girl best friend.
I am a 16 year old female. Growing up I’ve been surrounded with homophobia and disgust regarding queer relationships—I assume that this has led to some part of internalized homophobia? I have a really hard time determining whether I like women in that sense but there’s someone who makes me less ‘afraid’. I wouldn’t say I’m at all opposed to dating a woman. I’ve grown and changed as a person and I’ve gained my own beliefs regarding queer relationships and other controversies. I’ve experimented with one of my friends, but I’ve only felt platonic regarding me and her relationship.
However, I have a boyfriend. A really good boyfriend at that. He’s the sweetest guy ever. We’ve grown to become really good friends and have been together 11 months. I don’t want to break up with him. He expects us to marry after we’ve both graduated. Also, he wants to go into the Marines to prepare a future for the both of us and it’s such a conflicting feeling because I don’t want to be tied down to that lifestyle but I don’t want to break things off with him either. I love him.
But I think I love her too? She has such a beautiful soul and genuinely feels like my other half. I feel like I’ve expected my boyfriend to fulfill this gap. I feel like we work together well, but I’ve never felt so emotionally connected and intense with another person before except with her. There’s a sense of understanding between us that’s unshakable. At moments I even find her ‘breathtaking’ and can’t help but stare at how perfect she is. We’ve embraced each other and we’ve cuddled together. It feels like a soul tie that I’ll never be able to replicate.
She’s moving away. Tomorrow. I was at her house about two hours ago and we were intertwined. We were hugging and I was scratching her back delicately. “This is kind of gay,” she said, and I was like “I don’t care.” We still laid there enjoying every last moment we could before I had to go home.
Now, I wouldn’t act on my feelings because I’m in a committed relationship. I don’t want to flush 11 months down the drain. We work together well enough, and he tries his very hardest to understand someone as difficult as me. We share all the same values and virtues and mindset but it doesn’t feel as powerful. It is so much easier to be with a guy than with a girl. Especially since I have parents that would 1. Lose it if I ever broke up with him, and 2. Don’t support…and lastly, 3. The fact that she’s leaving, tomorrow.
I’ve been crying my eyes out over this whirlwind of confusion. Do I love her like I love him? Does she? Do I love him like I love her?
I’m so, so guilty because I don’t want to hurt him at all. I’ve tried discussing this feeling that I haven’t been able to discover myself entirely, and that I’m scared of never learning who I am and just shoving it all down and trying to ‘cover it up’. He understands to a certain extent, supports the fact that I’m not straight and want to express myself a certain way, but he’s DEFINITELY not okay with me ‘figuring myself out’—aka “trying stuff with girls”. I completely understand. That would be cheating. I know it would be immoral and I wouldn’t. To live with that guilt and not be able to tell either of them would hurt so badly.
I forgot to add—They literally know each other. We have all hung out together at once, such as going to the mall or to cute markets and whatnot. I can’t let my boyfriend know that I’ve felt this way about her—and she can’t know that I might be in love with her.
It’s just a lonely, incapsulating feeling. I have no one to talk to about this situation. The best thing I have to try to cry out all the guilt and pain is to loop “Pushing it down and praying” on repeat at 2 am in the morning.
How do I get over this? Is it a sign that she’s leaving tomorrow that I need to learn to ‘let her go’? Will I feel this way forever? Will I forever be wishing to know what it would be like with the other person? Am I bisexual? Am I a bad person for thinking this way?
I just wish I could be happy with him and not think of being happy with her.