This is Blake's story.

 This is Blake's story of encountering success through the face of adversity.

Thanks for the submission, Blake. 

Blake

Dallas, Texas

This is a story about the power of words and dreams.

Like almost all other LGBTQ teens, I was bullied in school. My story isn't about being shoved or hit, though, and I was never kicked out of the house. I have enormous respect for those who endured that. I'm not sure I could.

Words, not punches, made me hate myself. Words wouldn't let me sleep. Every day, the words I heard made me understand I was unnatural and unwanted.

In 7^th grade, I knew what “faggot” meant. For about three years after that, I was exhausted and irritable all the time. No one wanted to be around me. My own corrosive self-hatred precluded the possibility of having friends. I had internalized “faggot.”

I thought, through all those years, that if I made it to college, if I survived high school, I would meet people who could accept me. They wouldn't have to like me, they wouldn't even have to accept me, but they could. They wouldn't automatically exclude me, demean me, by saying “faggot.”

It turns out that my dystopian vision of high school was wrong. I was happy towards the end of high school, and I made it to the school of my dreams: Stanford. I knew that no school that close to San Francisco could harbor too many gay-haters. I was right.

I came out to my straight roommate on the first night we lived together. I wanted two things from him. I asked him if he was ok with living with me, and I asked him to never say “faggot”. I didn't want to force my ailment on him. I had resented out and proud LGBTQ kids because I didn't believe they could be happy, being the targets of more pointed harassment because everyone knew. I didn't want to make my identity public to anyone except him. He had to interact with me on a daily basis, no one else did. Being gay was my private business, and I didn't want to give other people a reason to hate me.

As it turned out, my straight roommate had spent the summer studying gay rights in the Middle East. He had never said the word faggot in his life. He was more out and proud than I was. More than anyone else, he welcomed me to school. He made me feel like I could reinvent myself from the exhausted, nasty, not-gay person I had been.

The next step was giving a speech. At a vigil for the many LGBTQ teenagers who had killed themselves in 2010, I told the same story I've told you up to this point. How the awful power of words had brought me to the same point as those I spoke to honor. The one difference was that I kept reminding myself how happy I would be at Stanford if I could just hold on. I had a goal, a place where I knew life would get better.

After the vigil, people came to me, crying, thanking me, saying that I must have known their stories, too. I didn't know what to say; part of me had thought that such horrible feelings could only be my own. I had made people happy because I was gay; I made friends because I was gay. Someone even said, “Congratulations on coming out.”

Then I had a boyfriend. He made me happy; happy like I dreamed I would be at Stanford. Happy like I had never been called a faggot. Like the internalized faggot didn't exist.

He also cheated on me. He brought me back to feeling so fatigued I couldn't speak.

Coming out is just the first step. Things undoubtedly get better after high school, but problems don't
disappear after the harassment goes away, and new ones appear in the context of relationships. My dream isn't perfect.

I still take medication for the insomnia that started in 7^th grade. I'm still scared to come out to people. My biggest fear to this day is that someone I love will rebuke me for being gay, and I'm uncomfortable when people don't know I'm gay because that possibility still exists.

Being at Stanford means I made it. I believed that if I could just work my way into Stanford, I would win. I would beat my fear. I would beat all the people who ever said the word “faggot.” I've made it into college, but my journey isn't over. I still have to overcome the part of myself that still resists saying, “I'm gay.” I still have to learn to really enjoy things I like that were once “too gay.” I still have to transcend the part of me that's a faggot.

To share your story, contact Mason at mason.fitch@gmail.com.