But now, five years on, I can say for certain that what I wrote then was the gospel truth.

There is something powerful in the saying, something truly liberating in unloading your secret and your shame.

I had to simply say to the world that I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. The act of saying it began the reparation of the damage it had done. And, it helped me to see that the vast majority of the damage was caused by trying to keep the offense in the dark.

I had to simply say that I was a bisexual man in order for me to begin to not only accept that but to celebrate it, to begin to see that my sexual identity was distinct from my sexual abuse.

At the opera, people kept worrying about me, asking if I was O.K., saying that seeing the show must have been hard for me.

Actually, it wasn’t. Not at all. I sat there thinking just how far I had come in five years. I thought about how speaking my truth was to me like an act of being reborn and how much stronger and sure-footed I felt now than I felt five years ago.

The act of standing naked before the world, not in shame but in truth and honor, had remade me.

So, during this Pride Month, I want to say what countless others have said: “It gets better.”

And, I want to say that to the throngs of people who are not necessarily today’s most celebrated queer narratives: those who come out late in life, those whose families are not affirming, those whose identities don’t necessarily adhere to the sexual binary or may well be fluid, those queer people who still feel out of place even when they are in the queer community.