Last night, when I realized that today is column day, I started to panic. How should I come up with a subject to write about for eurOut, a LESBIAN website, if I had felt so un-lesbian this week?

Don’t worry. It’s not that I question my sexuality, or that I intend to switch teams. I don’t. I like women, and that’s probably not going to chance any time soon, if at all. It’s just that this week, I somehow wasn’t very interested in specifically lesbian topics. Which isn’t very helpful if you’re a columnist for a website that covers specifically lesbian topics.

When I came out, I was eager to read up on everything that was only slightly related to lesbianism. I watched every TV show and every movie that had a lesbian storyline. Verbotene Liebe, Marienhof, Lindenstraße, Relativity, Buffy, Bound, Claire of the Moon, Desert Hearts, The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love – you name it, I watched it. I started to listen to k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge and Indigo Girls especially because they were lesbians. And of course, for a while I was only interested in reading lesbian books.

That’s probably something that most people go through when they first come out. It was a quest to find my identity as a lesbian, to find something that I could relate to, especially because I didn’t know any other lesbians back then. I have to admit that I even started to watch women soccer, if not only, but also because there’s such a high percentage of lesbian players. (The other reason might be that some of these women are incredibly hot. Oh yes, and the German team is actually very good.)

After a while, I started to loosen, and even allowed CDs by other, non-lesbian artists to be played in my stereo. Still, I tried to stay informed about every lesbian storyline on TV or in the movies, and tried to read all of the relevant literature. (Yes, I did read Rubyfruit Jungle, and no, I didn’t particularly enjoy it.) That’s why I was delighted when, back in 2002, I came across a brand-new website called AfterEllen that, through the following years, would provide me with everything that I needed to know about lesbians in entertainment and the media, and does so to this day.

For the last couple of years, though, it seems that the need for my regular dose of lesbian storylines or news stories has decreased and comes and goes in waves. And this week I definitely experienced a low tide. I refrained from buying a lesbian-themed movie because I suddenly felt that for now I had already watched more than enough lesbian storylines. When a friend asked me whether I wanted to visit an exhibition about the treatment of gays and lesbians by the Nazis, I declined. And I got much more upset about what happened to Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica this week than about Erica Hahn’s departure into the night aka to the parking lot on Grey’s Anatomy. (Hint: We’re currently watching the last episodes of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. If you already know that season, you know what I mean.)

Still, I’m not worried about this; I even consider it to be a good sign. To me, it means that I can now find in my daily life what I had been looking for in the TV shows, movies and books. I know who I am, as a person as well as a lesbian, and I don’t have to look for role models anymore.

And of course, I will continue to watch lesbian storylines on TV and in the movies. After all, I’m both an entertainment nerd and a hopeless romantic, and seeing a well constructed love story with two women will always be able to melt my heart.

The only thing that I’m a little worried about is being able to come up with topics for this column.

On the other hand, it worked this time.

Last night, when I realized that today is column day, I started to panic. How should I come up with a subject to write about for eurOut, a LESBIAN website,...