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I always tried to keep as much of a positive attitude as I could. I had felt as though more people were coming to terms with my authenticity and the tension was rapidly declining.
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I surrounded myself with more selective and accepting people, and I began to fixate myself on the things in life that had once made me feel great.Īt the beginning of the summer I joined the track team at Juniata College. III school 45 minutes south of Penn State. I left that school for Juniata College, an NCAA Div. I needed my sport back, but more importantly, I needed my life back. I had managed to make things work, but I was nowhere near where I wanted to be. All around me I kept hearing “We love you, we accept you, and we want you to be yourself.but just not like that.”Īt the conclusion of my first year of college I had much to look back on. People close to me grew wary of what others would think of them just because they knew me and that I was gay. There were people who were really important to me who had disapproved of my “lifestyle.” My “lifestyle?” As I thought about this, I couldn’t help but constantly think, “Do you mean my life?” It was difficult for me hearing things like “What will this person or that person think of you whenever they find out?” My response was always, “I don’t care,” but it was still like I was doing something wrong and inconveniencing everyone else around me by simply being me and sharing that with the people I cared about. I found myself in a position where I was desperate to please others, ultimately putting myself last. I was in a new place where I was expected to do new things, and it was all very overwhelming. I was no longer pole vaulting, and that correlatively impacted my social life.
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I took the acceptance and the love, and I used it to combat the hate.Īrriving at my first year of college changed a lot of things. Some people just could not accept that I was gay, but I knew that I couldn’t let people hold me back from pursuing my own happiness to be honest and comfortable in my own skin. Hell, there were mountains in the road too, but I didn’t give up. Each person I told made it easier to tell the next. My coming out to her was the beginning of a domino effect.
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I’m not talking about “me” as in the “me” or the outer self that everyone thought I was, but rather. It wasn’t just me fearfully muttering the words “I’m gay,” but rather me realizing that telling that one true friend made me feel like I mattered. Coming out to Maggie was more impactful than I had ever expected. That day made our friendship stronger than before. She said that being gay would never hurt the way that she saw me, and that she loved me even more than she did before. Despite all of that joy and excitement, it was one of the scariest moments of my entire life.Īmidst my swirling fear and angst, I found a moment to tell her I’m gay.
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We had just finished playing with an entire room full of puppies at a pet store. I told my closest friend and teammate, Maggie, when I felt that the time was right. The months were counting down to graduation day, and I knew I would regret it if my high school career came to end, I was handed that diploma and no one knew the real me. I put my worries of being gay on hold and subconsciously used pole vaulting as a mask, a way to numb the pain. I dedicated such a vast majority of my high school years to athletics and academics that I didn’t give my social life much of a chance. I went on to break my school’s pole vault record and re-broke that very same record five more times. I finally found something that made me feel good about myself and brought me from the depths of self-examination to the peak of self-achievement. After joining a pole vaulting club, working out more frequently, and practicing year-round, I finally found something to devote myself to. After exploring event after event, pole vaulting had shone through as something I found I was good at. This began to change once I discovered my passion for track and field. I felt like each “It Gets Better” video was further and further away from reality and was unrelatable in almost every fashion. I felt as though I would have to continue my life in a secretive solitude, in a small, conservative town. I felt scared, helpless, like I didn’t matter. These were all thoughts that had been circling through my head throughout my youth. The conceptualization of this word has brought people together and ripped them apart making it difficult for people like me to think, “Is this what being gay actually is like? Is being gay really just another selfish notion that hurts the people close to me? Is this something that I accidentally chose? Can this word ever provide me with a sense of unity and community? Can I even say this word out loud?”. A word with only three letters and such a powerful meaning.