An identity is who someone is. An identity is what a name represents. An identity is someone’s life; their past and their persona. The way one acts and behaves, the feelings and emotions one has, one’s troubles and triumphs, decisions and desires, and habits and principles all make up one’s identity. It is what distinguishes one from another, and it is constantly  changing and evolving. An identity is developed through a lifetime as one progresses through the different highs and lows of life.

Denying one’s identity is a minacious practice that can lead to overwhelming feelings of shame and self-loathing, which is why self-acceptance and awareness is imperative as one matures. With that being said, it is also crucial to be conscious that the acceptance is reserved for one’s own identity and not the identity given to them by the world around them. 

A prominent aspect of my identity is my homosexuality, but I was labeled gay long before I became a gay man. 

Growing up, it was evident that I was not a “typical boy”. I enjoyed sports, but I would have much preferred watching a college gymnastics meet over a bowl of chocolate-chip cookie-dough with my mother in the living room than watching Sunday Night Football with my father in the “man cave”. I would spend hours on my Xbox playing Batman instead of Madden. I liked wearing Converse and Uggs more than neon blue chunky Reebok sneakers. I was not gay when I was eight, nine, or ten, but I was certainly different. 

I remember the first instance where I felt like an outcast from the rest of my peers. In second grade, a classmate of mine showed up to school sporting a four dollar set of Claire’s press-on nails. I was mesmerized by the polka-dotted, state-of-the-art contraptions and made her give me the rundown on the sophisticated accessories and the groundbreaking science behind them. When one fell off, I couldn’t help but to try it out for myself. I pressed it on my index fingernail and went about tapping it on my desk and attempting to write with it on. When I looked up from my exploration of long nails, my eyes were met with the disturbed gaze of another one of my peers.

 The news that I tried on a fake nail spread like it was hot off the presses. I could hear, “Jarred was wearing one of Madison’s nails,” behind the cuffed hands of my classmates as they whispered to one another, and I could feel the repugnance thrown at me from the stares that were burning into my body. I felt outed and uncomfortable, and I remember pleading with a higher entity to allow me to travel back in time to undo the deed. 

As per the rules of being a kid, I acted different, so I was treated different. I was not a girl, but I was far from being considered a boy. I was a foreign thingamajig and every aspect of my life became as odd as I was. When I first became alienated from the standards was when I was first labeled “gay”.

Today in modern culture, gay is synonymous with weird more than it is homosexual. I was gay because I walked differently, talked differently, and behaved differently than all of the other boys; I was not “gay” because I was gay. 

I used to lose sleep over the assumptions the ones closest to me made about my sexuality based on the way that I behaved. The most prominent example of this is the way my mother treated the fact that I favored female friendships over male ones. Whenever speaking of my social life, which was dominated by my female friendships, my mom was notorious for the line, “Either he’s very smart, or I have something to worry about.” That sentence is branded into my spirit and echoes in my subconscious everytime someone says, “What if Jarred was actually straight this whole time?” As an adolescent, my mother would have preferred me to be an unchaste exploiter primarily governed by hormones rather than gay.

Since I was gay for not acting in accordance with the social norm, I had to be actually gay. I was robbed of the experience of being curious about my sexuality and the journey of becoming a gay man. I was not allowed to be attracted to girls whether I wanted to or not. I was not allowed to be considered a straight boy whether I was, or I was not. 

I hated the idea that I was gay. I hated being different. I wanted nothing more than to be as generic as all of the other boys I knew, because being gay was not apart of my identity, but my identity as a whole. I was not a friend; I was the “gay” friend. My feelings and opinions were never results of experiences or perceptions- I thought the way I did because I was “gay”. I wore the clothes I wore because I was “gay”. I read the books I read because I was “gay”. Everything I did was a result of my assumed sexuality. Jarred was not Jarred, Jarred was “gay”.

This created a vicious cycle of denial, resentment, and self-pity. I did everything in my power to change myself. I forced myself to sit through countless hours of brain-numbing sports. I devoted an obscene amount of time and energy trying to increase my rank on Call Of Duty. I filled my closet with bland, tasteless sneakers. I would snicker at the idea that I was a homosexual, and I attacked anyone who dared to poke holes in the facade of the typical straight boy I was parading around as. I twisted my mindset to the point where I had my democratic family and hyper-liberal friends believing I was a die-hard, Donald Trump supporting, xenophobic, homophobic, predjudice Republican. I would study essays and blog posts about the danger the LGBT community is to the country, and pledged myself to the idea that a companionship is between a man and a woman- no exceptions. 

To my dismay, I could not hide forever, so I began to justify my homosexual tendecies. I would rationalize that every man can appreciate when another man was attractive, and that everyone that had the notion I was gay because of the traits I inhibited was close-minded. 

When I was 15, I finally came to terms with my sexuality, and I was fearful. I was afraid of the blatant homophobia that exists in many people’s everyday conversation. I was afraid of always being seen as foreign. I was afraid of the headlines I saw on the news, and I was afraid of being a minority whose rights were discussed in politics. I was afraid that being gay would be my whole identity for the rest of my life.

Coming out was simple, but it still was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. All of the reactions went along the lines of, “duh”, and I predicted as much, but it was the act of doing it that elicited so much anxiety. It was the first time I had to apologize for who I was. The way I see it, coming out acts as a warning to your loved ones. Coming out to my sisters was me telling them that their friends will always refer to me as their “gay little brother”. Coming out to my parents was me preparing them to have to watch me face extraneous adversities- that there are people in this world that want to hurt me for who I am. I had to forewarn them that the person I will spend my life with would not be a woman, and I may very well become a victim for it. Despite the inimical factors of the coming out process and the long term effects it has, it was also the most liberating thing I have ever done. It was the first time I showed autonomy over my identity; it the first time I decided who I was.

All things considered, I am a better person thanks to the obstacles I have faced. I have learned to pay no mind to the words said in a whisper behind cuffed hands and the repugnance that lives in the stares of my peers. To this day, I still face adversity. My friends still love to fantasize about how different our lives would be if I were straight, as if I am a direct and absolute product of my sexuality. My car is still referred to as the “gay-mobile” because it is an oddly shaped compact car and not a typical sedan or SUV, and because I, a homosexual, drive it. I am subjected to inappropriate and invasive sexual questions that a straight man would never have to hear, and questions about my relationship with my father because it is presumed that my sexuality impedes my dad’s ability to love me like his son. I have learned to allow the absent-minded, subtle homophobia directed at me to go in one ear and out the other. I have learned to disregard stigmas concerning how I should and should not act. Disregarding precedents is a dangerous way to live, but it is the only way to ensure I am acting, behaving, and carrying out my life in a fashion that honors who I am. One cannot preserve his/her identity if his/her identity is governed by the people around his/her instead of his/her own morals and qualities. Conforming to the patterns of a conventional society disfigures a person’s sense of self and individuality, and allowing the orthodox habits of a specific culture dictate the way one lives is an exceptional injustice to one’s being.