I was 16 when I realized I was bisexual. It took months for me to come to terms with it and many more months to begin coming out to my close friends and my family.
I had the coming out that everyone dreams of having. My friends and parents hugged me and told me they loved me and that nothing would change—it was exactly what I wanted.
Despite the euphoria I felt from being honest with them, I kept my identity close to my chest. I grew up in Michigan and if you’ve ever lived in the rural Midwest, you know that very few people come out as LGBTQ.
I lived in an extremely rural part of the state and graduated high school with a class of 70 people. No one—not a single person—in my high school had come out as queer and I sure as hell was not going