Emerging

Without my choice to go to college, I may not have ever known who I am, or it probably would have been delayed much longer.

It only took a moment to realize my identity. Everything vanished in that split second. All I felt was horror. It was the summer of 2007 at a summer program for under privileged high school teens and high school graduates and I was in my first ever college class. After that summer I would be entering my freshman year in college. I don't remember the name of the reading assignment that opened my eyes but it revealed to me my identity within its lines. Some might say that I let it tell me who I am, but that is not true. It showed me a way of being that I had not thought about because it was never talked about in my small hometown. Once I saw this way of being, it was an instantaneous click in my mind that I was that way. I even looked back in retrospect after the realization and remembered times prior to the realization when I had checked out girls and somehow thought nothing unusual about it. It was odd, like I hadn't really realized I had been doing it.

I froze in terror in that single moment of realization. I was a homosexual and I did not want to be. Was I in danger? I was afraid of what felt like inevitable harassments waiting for me in the future. I knew that it was looked down upon in my southern Appalachian hometown even though it was never talked about. I knew that a lot of the world out there did not approve as well. Where I got this information, I can't pin point it. But I knew. It might have been the extremely rare occasions when my parents talked bad about homosexuals. The last time I had heard them speak of it was probably when I was in elementary school. It might have been the rare occasional thing on TV. I have no idea.

My life was completely altered in that instant. I almost gave up in the middle of the summer program. I wanted to go home and hide in a hole somewhere forever. But thanks to the incredible staff and fellow students in the program, I pushed through the fear and depression.

My sister was the first person I ever told. Her response wasn't great but wasn't disowning me either. I will never forget a much later time when she complained about how my sexual orientation inconvenienced her in social situations though because people treated her different due to her being related to me.

Eventually, I emerged from the fear. I did not remain in the closet for years. I embraced who I was within a few months. How I did this, I do not know. With all that weight in fear I felt crashing down on me, I must have had a lot of courage.