A Young Gay Mans Journey

I'm seventeen, a senior about to graduate in two months.
I'm the eldest out of two kids, I have a younger sister.
I'm a phenomenal artist.
I'm wanting to go to college and get a degree in either art education or nursing.
I'm also gay, but that is not what defines me.

I guess I've always kind of known. I remember the age when boys start looking at girls and girls start looking at boys. I was the boy who watched the boys look at the girls. I didn't understand it, but I just shrugged it off.

As I grew, I was the one always being pushed around and bullied. I talked funny, I acted different and all my friends were girls. Then came the word faggot. Automatically, it fit my description. I was harassed and school became my own personal nightmare.

I became bitter and hateful. I spent two and a half years, my seventh, eighth and half of my freshman year hating everything. I was severely depressed, and my grandparents, who I was staying with for four years, didn't know how to deal with my problems. My parents were divorced, I was unhappy I had not come out, and my mom wasn't calling or writing anymore. School was horrible, my grades slipping and I had driven all my close friends away.

My sister and I decided to move to a small town in Wyoming, to live with our father. I slowly became happier. I was in a new place, and I was going to start over a new life here. I was really happy for about a year and a half. However, there was still that secret part of me that it killed to keep hidden away. I knew that I should come out, else it would tear me apart.


It was in May, near Mother's Day, when I found out my mother had passed away from a drug overdose. I was devistated. I went nearly catatonic for a week. I remember nothing but me, dealing with her death. I became depressed again. I became that hostile person I was a few years ago. I started to hate myself. I knew I wouldn't ever get the chance to tell my mom anything. I knew she didn't even know the real me.

I started cutting. I became a pill popper, taking about 12 to 14 tylenol or ibuprofen a day. I didn't care, I knew it was downhill from there. My father, and my sister watched as I became this destructive, self-loathing person.

That went on for a while. I got the help I needed and I stopped the self-injury and the pills. I never really was happy, and I knew I wouldn't be till I told someone.

My sister became pregnant. We grew distant. In a final attempt to reconnect with her, I planned a day trip to go see a movie with her, and to go shopping. I was going to tell her that I was gay. And I did, on the way up there. I ruined the whole day.

Since then, I have came out to everyone. My father knows, but is dealing with it. My grandparents know, and still accept me as their grandson, unchanged. My friends know, and love to have a gay best friend. My sister finally started to talk to me, and we've become really close again. She still loves me, and she she tells me everyday that she does.

That was two months before my senior year. I'm finally that happy person that I always dreamed of and loved. I'm many things, and now, I can finally say outloud, that I'm a gay man.

Anon