The Second Post is the Hardest

The second blog post seems like a difficult one. It makes a blog a blog, rather than just a single statement. I want this to be a blog, so I thought I'd get my second post out of the way. I thought I'd tell you how I realized I was gay. And, how I realized I had my other condition.

So. I realized I was gay at what I would say is a a young age. I was ten. I knew that I liked boys before that. And that I was different from other boys even before that. When I was very little, I liked to dress up in my mother's and grandmother's high heels. I also liked to play with Barbies, My Little Ponies and other typically girly toys. But, I'm pretty sure that by the time I was in 1st grade, I had stopped playing with those kinds of toys. No one told me to stop, nor was I ashamed. I think it was just that by the age of five, sports had taken over as my main activities - soccer, baseball, basketball, and tennis. So I played more with boys and Nerf guns and action figures.

Now, to the day when I realized I was gay. As I said, I realized before that day that I liked boys rather than girls. I just didn't know that there was a name for it. I was in fifth grade and my class had lined up to go somewhere, because in elementary school, if a class was going somewhere, it was going there in a line. So we were all in line waiting to leave, and the girl in front of me, Emily, said, "Being gay means being a boy with the mind of a girl." I can't remember what lead a group of fifth-graders to talk about that, nor can I remember what happened after that. But, to my ten-year-old mind, it was perfect. I knew that I was gay. Or, rather, that what I was had a name. Then several things fell into place very quickly. I realized that Emily's definition of gay was a good effort, but not accurate. I knew that I didn't have the mind of a girl, but I instinctively knew I was gay. I was absolutely not ashamed. I knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with being gay. I have never, ever, not even once wished that I wasn't gay. Though I also instinctively knew that I would tell no one for a long time.

My realization about my mental condition happened over a much longer time period. Looking back, I can see it starting to affect my life around the 7th grade. But I don't think I realized that something was wrong until my freshman year in high school. I would find myself getting extremely uncomfortable in certain situations. Slowly, I began to realize that my discomfort was not a normal response, that it was in fact completely irrational. When I realized my discomfort was actually fear and that it also had physical manifestations, I was able to research what my probelm was and give it a name. I guess it was nice to know the name of my condition, but any relief I felt was tempered with the pain and disappointment of actually having it.

So, that's that. For some reason, it seems to me like I came to these realizations in the opposite way I should have. It just feels like I should have come to a gradual realization that I was gay and that I should have realized something was wrong with me much earlier than I did. Maybe that would have made things easier, at least.