I am not telling the following story to elicit sympathy, but to be visible.

Telling this story is for my own sake, for the sake of the younger me who needed this visibility, and for other people in the world who are trying to find people like them all over the place. We're arguably in a much better place in terms of visibility and representation of queer and trans individuals in the world than we were when I came out, but at that time in my life, it was very difficult for me to feel accepted.

When I was a child, I often hid out in the basement of my childhood home.

After my homework was finished and I had eaten dinner, I would watch copious amounts of television while my older brother locked himself in his bedroom and my younger siblings ran amuck through the rest of the house.

Easily, television and the innumerable universes that existed throughout every channel consumed my life, the same way that people fall into books. Watching so much television made me realize that every show and every character was proof that a new life and new way of existing was possible for me.

Growing up as a cradle-Catholic (that is, a Catholic from birth), there wasn't a lot of wiggle room.

Blazing my own trail or finding my own path wasn't something that was "encouraged" in a traditionally Catholic environment. Transferring into a private Catholic school in sixth grade didn't help because there wasn't much opportunity to be myself. So really, television was all I had. And it was television, on a disgustingly cold March evening in 2010, that showed me a glimpse of queerness. Specifically, it was an episode of "Degrassi" where Zane is a part of a Bachelor auction and then Riley comes in and has this big romantic encounter with him.

From this glimpse came a whirlwind of change.

I didn't even know, prior to this experience, that it was possible for two people of the same sex to be attracted to each other.

I knew love and affection as a very singular thing that existed in only one specific way: man and woman, together in matrimony, forever.

That night, I messaged a friend of a friend on Facebook; I didn't know her very well but I needed to tell someone, anyone, my newfound identity. I sent her a message and said, "Hey, do you have any... like... gay friends?"

She said "No," to which I responded several days later with, "Well, I think you do now!"

We don't talk anymore, which goes to show how much that conversation means to me now, but at the time it meant everything to me.

Over the next seven months, I played this sort of game with myself.

I would find someone that I considered a really good friend and I would find a new way to come out to them. The second person I told was my friend Liz. She was this edgy scene kid in the grade above mine, who had piercings and wore raccoon stripe colored extensions and wore all black with neon colored socks or fingerless gloves.

The perfect example of counter-culture that I could identify as an underweight, shorter-than-average cradle-Catholic in a Catholic middle school. Oh, and my mom hated the fact that she was my friend.

I can't really remember the third, fourth, or the rest of the people I told, but what I do remember is that I always started the conversation with, "I haven't really told anyone yet, but I really want you to know." I don't know why I needed people to think that they were the only, or one of the first, to know my secret.

And that was the game. Every new person I told was the "first."

I'd set up this elaborate scene, like laying on a big raft in a friend's pool under a full moon and clear skies, having a deep conversation with someone and then coming out to them in that moment, or coming to someone in a shamble of tears and sadness, and laying everything on the table like an open book. Until November 5, 2010.

It was past midnight, and I had assembled everyone that knew in a Facebook message group chat. I needed counsel because I was bursting at the seams with this secret and I couldn't hold it in any longer, but I was afraid of negative backlash. I needed help brainstorming ways to come out so that it was no longer a secret and no longer taboo, but also because I didn't want to deal with this heavy weight on my shoulders anymore.

This group chat pushed me to post it publicly, and I did, merely hours after the day had begun.

And after that, my life was never the same.

An aunt pushed me that next morning to tell my mother in person before she found out through a Facebook post, and I did, through the worst ugly cry after we dropped my siblings off at school.

And my mom told my dad that day. And all I really remember is my mom being worried about her parent's reactions and my parents yelling about something back and forth for a couple weeks after that. I was figuring out my new life, my true life, and my parents were figuring out theirs.

The next few months were pretty lonely, but they weren't bad. Later in life, I found out that people had been saying things like, "I should just kill myself because fags go to hell anyways," but none of that reached my young ears because I had friends who wouldn't tolerate these things being said.

In the moment, I felt like I found out who I was but also felt that I was the only real one in the world.

Because of that feeling, I Googled every queer film I came across and became a master at finding bootlegged streamings on the internet. I did this to reaffirm my life.

But of course, with my immersion into social networks like Tumblr and Twitter, that loneliness subsided. I met one or two people here or there who had similar struggles and we bonded through those. We created and fostered relationships that were unconventional in nature but that benefitted us both. That kept us both alive.

My coming out has never ended.

As I started becoming sexually active and exploring my identities in that way, it started over again. As I went off to college and had more freedom to decide my personal aesthetic and how I viewed my own gender, it started over again.

This is a fraction of what I went through emotionally, the people that helped me, and the relationships with others that I was able to create, foster, and dissolve, as a result of my public identity. At the end of the day, the most important thing to take away is this: queer existence is revolutionary.