There was not a big revelation or event that made me realize I was not straight. It was something that I chose to never think about. The very idea of such a thing felt cursed to even enter my mind when I was younger. It was like a monster that needed to be hidden. It would hide under your bed until you finally faced it. Living in my shadow, waiting to pounce, the creature latched on to my soul and would randomly pop out to scare me. I was such a naive child with anxious thoughts overfilling my head and spilling everywhere. Innocent, childish comments would sour into hidden feelings and trapped desires.

A memory trapped inside my head from when I was younger revolves around a conversation with my mother. This flashback is the one memory I think of when people ask me “When did you know?” I had been getting ready for school putting my navy uniform stockings on one at a time and I wondered aloud, “I understand why people like boys and girls. You are attracted to someone’s personality, not what they look like. So, how could you even know what gender they were?” My little brain had all the puzzle pieces but could not quite fit them together. Then there was silence. No response from my mother. A feeling of fear filled me. I could not think about such things or it would happen to me I thought. An excuse fell from my lips perfectly, “But I like boys. I do not understand it but I do.” I would continue to have that conversation with myself as I grew up. It became that I refused to put the puzzle together, it was not allowed.

I do not know when the whole lesson of “a man should be with a woman, not another man” was ingrained in my head, but even from a young age I knew that “fact” by heart. It could be from the countless religion classes that made me learn about Catholic matrimony between a man and a woman only. It could be from the harsh comments my father would make at gay couples on the TV. It could be from the fact that I never even learned what the LGBTQ+ was because my parents never wanted to “expose” me to it. A rainbow flag could very much as well be a foreign country to my younger self. Unlearning such a lesson that was drilled into me as a child took time and acceptance. I had to learn that there were no rules to life that I had to follow. I had to look at that “monster” that was following me and realize it was not scary, nor something to be afraid of. It was a part of me that I did not allow in. Slowly, I accepted it and did not banish it from existence. I left the doors of myself unlocked and the windows open.