I'm almost 20 years old and I've been queer for almost 20 years. In the past two years I have realized a lot more about myself and my identity. These realizations are things that I want to change and things that other people in my family will not support. The family I was given is one that has loved me and supported me my entire life, but there's a few people in it that would not support me through my queerness. I love my family. My crazy, religious, republican, conservative family- and they love me. However, they don't love all of me because they don't know all of me. The only person in my family that knows all of me is my mom and she is slowly trying to come to terms with who her kid really is (thanks mom!).

When I first came out as gay to my mom she was livid and said that she would not have a gay child and we weren't going to talk about it. Well, we didn't talk about it for two years and we got into another unrelated fight and she said "I just want you to accept me". Once she said that I shot my shot and told her I wanted the same, that I was gay and we hadn't talked about it for two years. Since then my mom has embraced that side of me and been a mom of a giant raging lesbian. Until things changed, but we're not getting into that.

I knew my sexuality and a few other things were "unfair" to put on my mom because of others in our family. The more conservative ones would blame her if things got out. They would say she should've had me in church, in Christian schools, disciplined me more, and a laundry list of things. But, I would've been me no matter what. When my identity started to change a couple of years ago, I started to suffer more mentally and things started going downhill for me. It was also around this time that my mom and my grandma (who now knew that I was gay) started pressuring me to come out to my grandpa. My grandpa is the one person I will never come out to and he is the one person that I am okay with never coming out to.

A lot has changed in my life and the one thing that hasn't is my decision to come out to my grandpa. I'm just as fine with my decision to not come out as I was the day I realized I was queer. I don't know when or if I will fully be out to him or to everyone in my family and that's fine with me. I love my life and I'm happy not being out if I get to keep my family.