I met my first boyfriend when we were 13, playing Dungeons and Dragons in the basement of my local comics shop. We were from the same small town in Maine but went to different schools. He always played a paladin character—the holy soldier—and I played a druid, usually half elf—biracial, like me—and usually a woman. When I made drawings of my characters, they all looked like Storm from the X-Men.

I was a skeptic about God. He was a skeptic about druidic magic. We bantered like the nerd version of Bogie and Bacall and soon, one day, we were in love.

We hid it as a friendship for two years. We were inseparable until our relationship ended when I was 15. Something had gone too far, and I didn’t know what. A few months later, he called and wanted to talk. Before I could ask what was wrong, he begged me to tell him that he was not like me. That he wasn’t gay.

I had always believed he played a paladin was because he was from a conservative Catholic family. Now the idea that he might be gay had pushed him to the edge of suicide. He spoke of wanting to blow his head off. I knew he had guns in the house. And so I broke my own heart, and told him what he wanted to hear.

Yes, you are not like me, I said. Yes. We are different. You are not gay.