I'm not straight, but I am not broken.

I’m writing this because I feel like a lot of teenagers and young adults might relate to the way I felt. I feel the need to tell you that it doesn’t get better, it gets amazing.

When I was in middle school, I started to realize my attraction to the same sex. I was raised in a fire and brimstone church. This was not OK for me because I was raised my whole life believing that I will forever be condemned and I will have this horrible life if I was gay. I was taught how gross “those people” are and told “we don’t do that” as a child, and all it accomplished was making me insecure in myself. I felt like an outsider in my body. I was scared as hell of hell. I would talk about the girls who were gay in high school behind their backs to my friends to feel "normal" as if it were some kind of blockade to keep me from ever having to confront it. Doing the most to keep from going down this path. Denying it at all costs. At this point, I was hiding that I was on websites like MyYearbook listing that I was into girls and hoping no one from home or school would know. I dated boys and nothing ever really stuck with that. The closet that I was in was so deep that the Grand Canyon was like “Woah.”

My freshmen year of college comes and I get to leave home, and with that, I left that person I was meant to be behind.

Not originally, though. You see my school is a Christian based college so being gay here is pretty much kept hush, hush. My first semester flew by and went great, but December came. My roommate had talked me into getting the app Tinder to talk to new people and so there again I could hide I was into girls and nobody would know. I was in the mode of I’ll just try this out, I will set it on both and maybe I will meet this man that will make me forget ever thinking about women. That didn’t ring true. December came and I matched with this girl that, technically, I didn’t actually mean to match with. We talked and started hanging out and I had to face the facts, I didn’t just like her in a friend way and it was so different than men that it was inevitable. I was full blown gay. Still nobody could know. Everything was so hidden about that relationship. I studied and prayed about this, looked for everything that would let me know that I wasn’t completely eternally cursed to fiery flames.

I realized, God loves me. He would love me anyway I would come to him. That is the whole basis of our religion and I think a lot of people forget that. John 8 includes the story of the woman caught in adultery, and it is a verse most don’t like to hear because of the stepping on toes, it is just a part we can exclude when it fits our way of thinking. He tells all of us “he who be without sin cast the first stone.” We put our blinders on and think things can only be done one way our whole lives so it must be wrong because that is what I was told. Judgment without reasoning comes quicker than we would probably like to admit.

Finally, I got into big girl mode and told people. It was one of the best things that I ever did and one of the hardest. People weren’t as mad at me as I thought that they would be. I did get shunned by people that were supposed to be there, but I came to realize that if someone doesn’t want me in their life because of something I couldn’t hide anymore, if they would rather me hurt and shame myself and hide like the dirty family secret for who I chose to love, that isn’t OK and I will make it without them. I am still the same person, I'm just not going to marry a man.

After that whole ordeal, my self-worth has grown so much. I’m finally in a relationship with someone that makes me realize what true happiness is. Someone who makes me want to wake up in the morning. She is amazing, so why would I hide her? I refuse to be in a miserable relationship because of denying who I am. I have a lot of years left to live, and I refuse to be unhappy my entire life.

I am gay. I am happy. I am not broken.