When I started watching The Bold Type, Freeform's new series about three millennial women working their way up at a magazine, I was immediately pulled in. Not just by the portrayals of female friendship or the empowerment-soaked premise, but by the unexpected queer storyline. Early in the show, viewers are introduced to Adena, a Muslim lesbian artist, who meets Kat, a woman of color who works for a women’s magazine. After learning that Adena has pulled her work from the magazine, Kat quickly tries to convince her to change her mind, and viewers (along with Kat) are surprised to feel pretty intense chemistry between the two. Instantly, I shipped them. Not just because they'd be a gorgeous, successful couple—because their narrative is still missing from the screen.

Often, when we do see queer narratives in movies or on TV, they’re reduced to a single, recognizable story: Typically, a white character, usually a guy, has always known deep down that they're queer, but felt they had to keep it a secret. Maybe they felt guilty or ashamed, or maybe they just weren’t ready to come out, but now their coming-out story is the focus of their entire existence.

The problem isn’t that this narrative isn’t real. For many, this is exactly how coming out goes. But for others, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Like me, who was a self-proclaimed "boy-obsessed straight girl" with zero question until, one day, I was questioning it. It wasn’t until the opportunity to date a girl presented itself that I had to ask myself: Am I actually straight? For me that answer was no.

I was never ashamed of my queerness. The only guilt I ever felt was hypothetical—like, What if I’m wrong? What if I start dating this girl and realize, Whoops, I’m straight? My queerness has been less of a straight line and more of a swirl of crisscrossing shapes, small moments and big moments that never felt quite like the crisis that coming out to one's self is often presented as in pop-culture. I never thought it was wrong to be queer. I just wasn’t sure that I was.

And that's why seeing Kat’s story on such an instantly popular television show felt so groundbreaking. Everyone’s story is different, but in Kat’s I see at least parts of my own. I see that self-proclaimed, "Wait, but I’m so hetero, right?" moment, the general curiosity.

But most important, we don’t see Kat overwhelmed by her potential queerness. We don’t get a breakdown. We don’t see it as something tragic, because she doesn’t. There’s nothing wrong with having a breakdown if you realize you’re queer, but it's freeing to see queerness presented as something light rather than heavy and dark. It makes it seem less scary and daunting for those of us who still feel our identities are in flux. It makes it seem like, maybe, the internal process of realizing you might be queer doesn’t have to be so hard.

On the other hand, we get Kat’s fluid identity up against that of Adena, who is sure of her own identity and comfortable with her label. It’s a necessary answer (or at least the start to one) to the continual tension between those who choose to label themselves and those who reject labels entirely. The Bold Type shows one queer person who fits into the former and one who fits into the latter, and chooses to show those women not only not competing with each other but actually growing quite close.

What makes this move so impressive is that it’s proof to anyone who still questions that we can have people who benefit from labels and people who suffer under their weight at the same time. The two don’t contradict.

And while we don’t know how Kat’s identity will grow and change throughout the course of the show, I’m excited to have the storyline presented to begin with. After all, our identities are always growing and changing. And being able to grow and change alongside a character I respect, proving there's no right way to be queer, feels monumental.