I want you to imagine what it feels like when you have a secret that no one else could know, not even your family. I want you to imagine what it feels like when you have to constantly police yourself to keep that secret under wraps. It gets to a point where you become an entirely different person in order to keep that secret safe, a person that you don't even recognize.

Now, I want you to imagine that secret is being gay

This past weekend, I had the immense pleasure of seeing "Love, Simon" with two of my best friends. Usually, the films that I see in theatres don't always have such a profound emotional effect on me. I'm able to get through them without so much as a tear. However, "Love, Simon" was different: I found myself crying through almost the entirety of the movie. While others (mostly straight people) cried over the sweetness of the film, I was crying for a reason far deeper than that.

I was Simon

I knew how it felt to constantly police yourself, to watch what you said or did so that it wouldn't get people's attention in a negative way. I knew how it felt to go through life with bated breath, living in constant fear of your secret becoming general knowledge. Most of all, I feared the rejection from my family, my friends, and society. I feared being completely alone and hated by my fellow man. However, no matter how hard I tried to blend in, I somehow stuck out like sore thumb to everyone.

I couldn't walk down the hallways of my middle school or high school without hearing any sort of snickering.

I was called a fag.

I was called a queer.

A freak.

A homo.

A cocksucker.

Any sort of derogatory name you can think of to describe a gay man was used to describe me. I tried to deny it, tried my damnedest to act straight, yet their voices were always louder than my own.

I had no queer people to look up to. I was told, by the society and by the media, that being gay was abnormal. It wasn't something to aspire to. It meant a lifetime of bullying and ostracization from society. I knew, deep down, that I was gay. A voice in the back of my head tried to turn my eyes to the truth but I refused to see it. All I wanted was to fix myself, to stop acting like myself and become the hyper-masculine boy that everyone wanted me to be.

Simon's fear was my own fear. It's the fear of so many other queer kids too.

Just like Simon says in the film, straight people never have to come out to the world. They have the divine privilege of being able to move through life unobstructed. However, for us queer folk, coming out is a process.

I want you to think of coming out like buying a car; you make the down payment (that is, coming out to your friends and family) but then you have to pay the monthly payments on the car itself, on insurance, on repairs, on registration, etc. As a gay person, I am constantly making those payments. I am constantly coming out to people and probably will be for the rest of my life.

"Love, Simon" is not just some sappy teen rom-com that straight people make it out to be. It is so much more than that. It is a coming out story. It is a story in which young queer kids can watch and finally see themselves reflected in a beautifully crafted and nuanced character like Simon. Is it a little unrealistic? sure it is.

Simon's family is a little too perfect and the ending was a little too neat. But, movies have a beautiful way of taking us out of our reality for a short amount of time before pushing us back out into the real world.

One day, I hope the Simons of the world will never live in fear of coming out. I hope they'll be able to go through life feeling loved and safe in their own skin.

But, I know that's just another fantasy that'll be portrayed in the movies.