English Class
My AP English class this year has taught me so much. It was taught by Ms. N., who is the greatest teacher on the face of the earth. I love her. For the first half of this year (in 2008), I suffered from depression. In December 2007, I left a 4 month program where I met a bunch of great people and made life-long friends. After leaving, I missed all of my friends from there, and my life at home felt woefully inadequate and lack-luster compared to my life at the Program. During English class, I realized that I also missed feeling accepted. I miss feeling like I belonged. At the program, I felt that everybody loved me for who I was and was completely accepting of me. I was not out as gay, and I didn’t even identify myself as gay at that time, but I just felt accepted. It was an incredible feeling. Never before have I felt that everybody around me would accept me, and I think that I will never feel like that again.
English class helped me identify the source of my sadness, and it played a large role in helping me get over that depression. During the second semester, we read Angels in America. I absolutely loved this book (it's a play, really). The issues it dealt with were really interesting, and I liked what it taught me about homosexuality. It showed me that life as a gay man would not be all terrible. There would be happy moments along with the difficulties. It also gave me hope for a better future. It was around this time that I began to identify as a homosexual, and I began to become more accepting of myself. I guess this is a testament to how homophobic our society is when I had to accept myself.
As time went on, I began to ponder the issue of my homosexuality every night. I thought about things such as how successful could I be as a gay man? Would my career suffer because of this? I realized that it probably would, but I also realized that it would not stop my from becoming successful. There are plenty of successful gays in the world. One of my inspirations was David Sedaris. He is a fantastic writer, and his short stories were a huge inspiration for me. There are many other successful homosexuals out there, and they all helped to inspire me.
At the end of the year, we had an English-History joint project that asked us to look at something from American history and analyze is on a personal, literary, and historical basis. My topic was not very exciting, but my best friend was in a group doing a project on homosexuality. During researching time, one of the group members showed me the channel of a youtuber named carlkr. Carlkr is a gay teenager living in North Carolina who creates vlogs about his life. He was especially inspirational because he is not your stereotypical gay.
He is not very flamboyant, and I think he gives a good name to gays and shows the world that not all of us are all the same. Of course, I have nothing against flambouyant gays, but I do not like how it is stereotypically assumed that all gays are flambuoyant. I believe that the gay community is just as diverse as any other community, and many people often fail to recognize that. Anyways, some of his videos talked about coming out, and they were a big help to me.
They talked about evaluating your environment and deciding if you will be accepted. I took this lesson to heart and looked around me and saw that my environment is accepting. My network of friends are very supportive of me, and I know they will stick by me no matter what. It was this advice that ultimately led to me admitting that I am gay in my letter to myself that my english teacher had us write while at the cliffs this morning. It was kind of terrifying, but at the same time a bit uplifting. It was the first time I had ever written down that I was gay, and writing has a certain degree of permanence to it that cannot be replicated.
I will always remember the spot where I wrote that: I was seated right at the edge of the cliff. The dirt was perfectly white, and very fine. In front of me was the cove and the gentle waves broke on the rocks. The cliff dropped below me almost 100 feet, and it was a bit frightening, because I knew that if I slipped, I would die. I think it symbolized the journey ahead. It would be treacherous – just as descending a cliff would be --, but if I succeeded, I would have the whole world – the ocean – in front of me. I knew that in the end, I would make it down, but that I would probably suffer a few bruises and injuries along the way.
The hardest thing about dealing with this is you have nobody to talk to for help. That is one of the reasons why I am making this blog. I have/had nobody to talk to, and I wish that a resource like this were available to me through my journey. I didn’t want to email any of the youtubers that inspired me either because I didn’t want the first person that I told was gay to be some guy out there in cyberspace. For the closeted people out there, you can feel free to send me any messages asking for advice or you can just read along. I know how hard it is to go through life without someone to give advice, and I don’t want anyone to have to struggle with that like I do/did
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