I met two pairs of crossroads the year I turned 18 – the same year I graduated from a
shut-down high school. That newfound social isolation gave me the opportunity to explore
myself in ways I never had, while also granting me residence on TikTok, the social media app.
TikTok – if you’re unfamiliar with it – has a way, via their ominously complex algorithms, of
knowing yourself often better than you do. In less than half a year on the app, I was fed videos of happy gay couples, and met with mixed feelings of desire and shame. A conservative Christian upbringing branded an internalized homophobia that scolded me whenever I found joy in the content; even before quarantine, I’d always been attracted to men along with women, but never allowed myself to acknowledge it, and that’s only the beginning. Accepting it, owning it, and loving yourself for it – that’s the underbelly of the beast, leading to the hardest choice: being yourself, or what society wants you to be.

My mom made Sunday morning service mandatory attendance, much to my annoyance, being one of my only two days off. I’ve always struggled with faith in my religion. Despite my mom’s wishes, I was never baptized; I entertained and even embraced the prospect at points, but over time my faith withered, and felt I’d be lying to God by doing so. While I am philosophical, I don't know if there is a god, but I do know who I am, and regardless of perception of scripture, belief in something does not guarantee its existence. A period of staunch atheism in 2020 served to dissolve me of indoctrinated shame, but also caused me to become bigoted against religious people – in hindsight, it seems retaliatory. Confidence fueled by hatred is corrosive, so instead I learned to simply not care how other people viewed me, especially those who don't deserve the fire of a neuron. The prejudice dissipated soon after, and I came to peace with myself. Make no mistake, never knowing your newly hired coworker’s reaction to correcting your ex’s pronoun, or risking being called the f-slur while walking together with your date is exhausting, but it’s better – albeit discouraging – to live amongst the hate than it is harboring it.

In retrospect, there wasn’t another choice for me; it was either to be who I was or to live a
life not worth living – and why would you settle for such a life? When I ask my drearier bosses
about their hobbies, they’re often stumped, a reminder to hold fast to my passions. Granted,
working a job which you’d rather not be employed is vastly different from living in a world
where a facet of your identity is controversial and quite often deadly, because you (sometimes)
have a choice in that endeavor. Being in the gay community? Not so much. Be as that
unfortunately is, I love who I am, and I hope that disagreeable people will set their judgements aside and love me too. In late September of 2020, I came out to my mom as bisexual, and it’s still one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made.

Living authentically can be one of the hardest and most meaningful decisions we make
for ourselves, and I’m glad I did it early. Though I often wish our society was more accepting, I
feel grateful for living in such an already progressive period – not even a century since
Stonewall, but still less than a decade from Obergefell v. Hodges. Even so, I refuse to let our
reality prevent me from being who I am, regardless of the price I pay being halfway-gay.