This piece originally appeared in the author’s memoir, Late Bloomer, and is reprinted with the permission of She Writes Press.

The train is picking up speed. I don’t see an end or exit anywhere. My husband is hurting. My kids are about to inherit the childhood I had. I allowed myself to become dependent on my husband and I’m scared I can’t make it on my own. I tell Grace, “I don’t have the strength for this. I know there’s no way back, and I can’t stay here, but going forward scares the hell out of me.” I’m suspended in the messy middle, fearing I’ll become the bad guy, the one responsible for turning everyone’s life upside down. What if I lose them all?

I analyze those random comments I’ve made over the years. I think about Eve, my friend in graduate school—the happiest time of my life. We accented our emotional connection with words like soulmate. When I told a therapist about her, she questioned our relationship, raising a flag about my sexuality. I thought her old-fashioned for not understanding that two women could be close and not be gay. And yet I ached for Eve like I would have a lost lover when our friendship ended. My short time with Raia has shed new light on that experience, along with the missing emotional connection between my husband and me.

All I have hangs on this retrospective and prospective journey; I need to get it right.

It’s a few days after returning from our road trip. I’m suffocating. My skin doesn’t feel like mine, a drum plays in my head, and my heart runs laps in my chest. I call out sick from work. The unending thoughts of my sexuality and the increasing lack of contact with Raia make me feel like I’m detoxing. I beg Shira to call me.

“Heterosexual people don’t question whether they’re heterosexual,” she tells me. “When you’re living a life that doesn’t feel true, when you’re married to a great man but can’t figure out why it doesn’t seem right and what can be wrong with you, when you don’t want to put your finger on what it is because you know it won’t be easy, you probably have the answer.”

“Is that really true?” I ask her.

Exasperated, she says, “Melissa, you’re head-over-heels in love with a woman, what more proof do you need?”

I don’t argue with her assessment, nor do I entirely agree with it. I question if I’m in love with Raia, but certain that I love the feelings roused in me when I’m with her.

“Is this it?” I ask. “Do I already know? And if so, how do I move on from here? How do I help my children? How does one remain in a world that hasn’t changed even as you have changed?”

I consider my intrigue with the LGBTQ community, my longing to be near gay women, and my immediate comfort with them. The fact that how I look at men, including my husband, has changed. The answer clicks into place like tumblers in a safe. When I dare to look far into my future, I see a woman as my life’s companion.

Shira’s story correlates with mine. She also made unusual comments with no impetus to question her presumed sexuality. Like me, she developed an emotional connection to a woman she pined for when the woman moved away, and still she never considered the possibility of being gay. She is credible and straightforward.

Her candid words about Raia are the defibrillator paddles to my cardiac arrest; I’m shocked into facing my truth.

I am gay.

Claiming it is terrifying and liberating, a final acknowledgment that there will be no turning back.

Late Bloomer is available from Amazon and Bookshop.