It’s not very often that we give ourselves opportunities to tell the whole truth. There are things that we push down inside ourselves or try to hide from ourselves. Aspects of ourselves that we don’t allow to come to light, out of fear that someone else is not going to approve of them. I know this all too well. Even as I write this, I’m thinking of deleting it all and pretending that I haven’t been trying for weeks to write this article.
And I could do that. But then I’ll just come face to face with this issue again a week from now. When you carry a big secret around for years, eventually it gets too heavy. I’ve heard this over and over, without believing it. But it’s true. Enough does get to be enough.
In a few of my articles, I have alluded to something about myself that I’ve pushed away from time to time because I felt that it would be easier for those around me. And maybe it is. But what I didn’t say was that I protected this secret more than I needed to, because, for a long time, I figured it would be easier for me too. But it’s started to do more harm than good in my life, so it’s time to let it go.
It was my New Year’s resolution to be more vulnerable. I stated this in the first article that I ever posted on Odyssey. Since then, this article was the one that I’ve been working up to, even if it might not seem like it. And the purpose of this article is to let anyone who doesn’t already know that I’m gay.
I’m not posting this to provoke, or to throw my identity in anyone’s face. I’m posting this because this is the truth that I’ve known since I was ten years old. I need to make my life better so that I can start being of help to other people, and for me, this was the first step to all of that.
