Coming out of the metaphorical closet is a very hard thing. We often see on television and film issues of the ridiculously masculine jock struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. But what about the other side that you don’t see too often, people like me who could never exactly “hide” in the closet to begin with. Unfortunately, the struggle is just as hard and just as real.

I’ve never been someone who could “blend in”. From my personal experience, people knew I was gay before I even knew myself. It was hard to hear people ask me if I was gay as young as 8 years old, with me shrugging them off and dismissing their claims strongly because I never even understood what it meant to be “gay”. How did they know, you ask? Another unfortunate part of my life is my voice. Try having a voice that makes people refer to you as “Miss” over the phone or makes cats flee as fast as they can when you break out in song. My mannerisms didn’t help either. Even though it may have been obvious to everybody, it wasn’t to me. This constant assumption that I was gay made me fight it even more, resulting in a struggle I was not prepared for nor could I ever be prepared for. In fact, I said I wasn’t gay so many times that even when I knew for a fact that I was content with being a homosexual, I still protested that I wasn’t purely out of tiresome habit.

Anyway, I eventually (and happily) gave up and proudly accepted who I was and it was truly uplifting. Even though everybody else already knew, saying it to myself was quintessentially more important to me than to what everyone else had been telling me for years.

Often, when someone or even a celebrity “comes out”, people are quick to raise up their hands and say “I knew all along”, like it’s some competition. It isn’t a competition and even though you may think you know if someone is definitely gay, be careful of their feelings and think that their internal struggle can be just as great as those who can better blend in to the straight society.