I realized I was gay at a young age. I would always love for my best friend to stay over. The years passed and I would hear that being gay was wrong. I would hear it left and right so I would try and convince myself that I wasn’t. I would date girls but I would never have sexual relations with them because I would feel some sort of guilt.

My senior year in high school was when I first accepted it. I would work for my small town’s city pool, and that summer, a new guy joined the crew. I had strong feelings for him, and I decided to tell him because we had become really good friends. Well, it turns out that he had the same feelings and, well, things went from there.

One day, we were at my parents’ house (he would always come over because my parents worked in the afternoons). That day my mom got home from work early and we had not realized it. She found us cuddling in bed and she went crazy; she started calling me gay and my days at my parents were hell every day after that. We fell in deep very fast but I still had a little voice in my head telling me it was bad to be gay.

I had moved in with him and his parents one year after meeting him because I was having problems at home. His parents knew what was going on but they didn’t seem to care very much; they where really nice people and I loved living there…until that little voice came back and I was struggling with me being okay with being gay.

I ended up moving out of my boyfriend’s house and going back to my parents, and tried living a normal straight life but I couldn’t do it. I felt fake. Rumors had already been going around that I was gay because I had stopped talking to all my friends for this one guy, so everyone in my small town looked at me differently. I moved to another town to try and start over fresh, but nothing was helping. I would have endless crying nights.

Finally I broke down: I called my sister and told her everything, and that I was afraid of telling our parents because I was afraid that I was going to be shunned from the family. She told me that would never happen and that they all knew already, that they where just waiting for me to come out myself. So one weekend I went back to my hometown to tell my mom what was going on but I couldn’t. The next morning she woke me up bright and early and asked me to sit up, that she had to talk to me. I was nervous because I had no idea what she was going to talk to me about.

She grabbed my shoulder and told me, “I know why you came down this weekend. Your sister told me. And I just want you to know that we don’t care, you will always be our son and we will always love you.”

Now I live a normal gay life with no regrets. I’m happy and I wouldn’t want it any different.