What Pride Means To Me

To celebrate the last day of pride month, I thought I should do a short piece on "pride" and what exactly it means to me. To me, pride is about so much more than being gay or bi or trans or anything else on the LGBT+ spectrum. Whether you are straight, gay, trans or anything in between, pride is about humanity coming together to not only embrace but to also celebrate our differences. It is about going out and telling, not just the haters, but everyone that you love every part of yourself and nothing that anyone says will change who you are or who you love. Pride is about letting people know that it's okay to be different, no matter who you are or who you love, we will love and accept you no matter what. I celebrate pride, not only for myself, but for the people who can't. So here's to everyone, whether you can celebrate or not: Happy Pride! And I hope that, if you can't today, one day you will be able to join us in celebrating being ourselves.

The B in LGBT

As many of you probably know, the road to self-discovery is often a rather difficult one. Well, I'm sure I can speak for most, if not all, of the LGBT+ community when I say that it is even more so true when one is trying to come to terms with their sexuality or gender identity. Though I cannot speak for those who have struggled with their gender identity, seeing as I am a cisgender, biologically born as a female, I am able to relate to the difficulty of coming to the realization that I might not be straight. Unfortunately I learned this the hard way by falling for a friend of mine who, of course, happened to be straight. I think the reason that it took me so long to figure it out was because I never really had a label to put to what I was feeling, and I am sure that many non-straight people can relate to this, closeted or not. I know for a fact, looking back, that I'd had crushes on girls before, but because I did not know how to explain these feelings, I just assumed that we were really good friends or something. It wasn't until I was 13 or 14 years old that I started to think that I might not be straight. I remember I was so worried about how my parents would react that I literally started balling my eyes out, crying so loudly that my parents came rushing upstairs to see what was wrong. I told them and they responded with the exact response I was expecting: "We'll always love you and be there for you no matter what." Or something like that. Of course at the time I felt relieved knowing that my parents would accept me and not throw me out of the house if I turned out to be gay. However, 5 or 6 years later, right before I ended up coming out to them, I was so f***ing nervous I could barely think straight. Haha. See what I did there. Ha, gay jokes! Okay, anyway, I postponed coming out to my parents for a long time because I wanted to be 100% sure that I was, in fact, bisexual and not a lesbian because I am honestly as close as you get to being a lesbian without actually being a total lesbian. Honestly, at least for me, coming out to my friends was much easier than coming out to my family. It's harder to tell people who are closest to you because, not only do you probably have more respect for them, but they also tend to have more control over your life. I never officially came out to my dad because my mom told him for me, which I was completely okay with. The night I came out to my mom, it was late and I had just come home after hanging out with some friends. She was sitting on the couch watching a movie. I walked right up to her and told her that there was something that I wanted to tell her, but as any person who has ever had to come out can tell you, your mouth moves but no words come out. I knew what I wanted to say I just didn't know how to make the words actually come out of my mouth. For a good 5-10 minutes I was just standing there in front of my mom, who either knew exactly what I was going to say or had no f***ing clue and started thinking of a bunch of different horrible things that I might be trying to tell her. Eventually, I forced the words out of my mouth. I didn't have to wait long for her response: "Okay." She was so relaxed about it that it actually concerned me. At least at first because I still had that lurking feeling in the back of my mind that had kept from telling her in the first place which was that she actually wasn't okay with it, but for my sake she was trying to hide how she really felt. Of course she was actually okay with it and was probably so relaxed about it because she already knew. But, unfortunately, even in very accepting homes kids still feel nervous to come out to their parents because of that sliver of fear that the parents are going to end up being secretly homophobic and throw you out of the house. Even though that did not happen to me, it is still an unfortunate and surprisingly common, reality for many. Whether you fall into this category or not, please, if you have not already, reach out to someone in your life about this. I know just how alone you can feel, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you don't have to be so alone in this process. Whoever you are and wherever you are in this process of self-discovery, I wish you and hope that you will soon be able to not only show your true colors, but to be proud of them.