Life is full of labels and being proud of who you are is a universal message we should all strive to achieve and help others around us to achieve also. But often, we can lose sight of who we truly are because of a label.

Being gay is hard, even in a world that seems to be a lot more accepting than in the past 100 years, but still has drastic changes that desperately need to be made. Equality amongst marginalised groups has always existed and almost certainly will continue to exist in our lifetime.

It’s instinctual, as a gay man or woman, to become defensive when you hear on the news about gay bullying, or same sex marriage being rejected in certain countries and states and by all means defend your rights, defend your honour and defend your integrity because if you won’t, who will?

But there is one thing you cannot forget and that is yourself. Make sure you are defined by your actions, by the goodness you do and bring to the people around you as well as your personality so that if someone were to ever ask you to describe yourself in one word, instead of saying “gay” you can replace that with something more important. Don’t let your sexuality or who you chose to sleep with be the summary of your life, exactly how the world already tries to corner us into stereotypes and marginalisation and that we’re nothing more than “a gay person”.

You hear it all the time, how marriage shouldn’t be gay or straight, it should just be marriage, so why can’t the same be said for ourselves as an individual? Look, we can’t stop labels, it’s an inevitable factor of life but we can be more than just that label.

Be you. Not a label.