Status: This isn't supposed to offend, I'm sorry if it does

Rainbow Pride

Chapter 10

Present day

‘Sitting here writing about my life is hard, it’s not all been bad though… I’m not ashamed of who I am. I have great friends, some family that support me through everything I do, and a boyfriend who means the world to me… a boyfriend that I never thought I would ever have.

In my life my bright moments are the best I’ve ever had, but with all the good there has to be bad, and the dark parts after coming out are the darkest I’ve ever experienced. I can sit here and tell you that my life is a mess… that I lost people I never in a million years expected to walk away, but I can’t.

How can I say that when I still have hope for my future? Everything I’m writing at this precise moment may sound dramatic, and irrational but the whole idea of this story was for me to be honest. Honest about being gay, and the effect it can have on your life, because lying won’t get me anywhere.

Being who you are is probably the hardest thing in the world to do, but to deny yourself that chance, that opportunity to shine is wrong and I would never recommend it. Be yourself, discover who your real friends are… discover which members of your family really believe that blood is the most important thing… the truth isn’t always nice but at least it’s real.

I’m not saying that coming out is easy… its far from it, but acting one way and feeling something completely different isn’t the answer… hiding isn’t the answer. I know how it feels, I’ve been there and I’ve done it… I’ve experienced the disgust, and the hate, as well as the support and the love. Not everyone will accept it, if that was the case then there would be no problem in the first place… we’d be classed as ‘normal’ in everyday life.

Walking around with signs, shouting ‘hey hey ho ho homophobia has got to go’ is all well and good, but it won’t solve the problem… people need to be educated, they need to understand that being gay is not a choice… it’s just life. Some people are born to love the opposite sex, and some are born to love the same… there is no black and white, it is what it is and no amount of homophobic comments is going to change that.

Reasons such as ‘it’s unnatural’ or ‘it’s just not the way god intended us to be’ make no sense, because at the end of the day we’re all just human, we’re flesh and we’re bone… colour, religion… sexual orientation will never change that… time won’t change that.

I get it… I do, some people are simply scared of what they don’t understand, and they’ve lived their lives believing that things should be a certain way, and that’s okay but hatred isn’t the answer. Take away religion, take away colour and sexual orientation, language… we’re all the same… we’re just people trying to live our lives happy and content with ourselves.

To anyone in the closet… don’t let the fear of being hated stop you from showing your true colours, show a little rainbow pride in the face of discrimination, and stand up for who you are. They can hate, and they can have their own opinions of us, but at the end of the day who you are is personal, and there is only one person who knows who that is… you’