I Was an Open Idiot Once

For most of my life, I only knew of romantic love between a male and a female. Ironically, this was because my family was so insanely open to anything related to the LGBTQ+ community, it all just went right over my head. In fact, I even thought that two of my mother's close friends were sisters when they had actually been in a relationship for my entire life. But everything changed on my first day of high school.

My high school is so pro-LGBTQ+ that the straight kids are in the minority, with most everyone at least identifying as bisexual. On the first day of freshman year, there was an assembly for all of the freshmen. I wasn't really listening, and was just chatting with my friend Katrina (not her real name). But one of the things the upperclassmen who were speaking confused me. "It's okay to be gay."

I turned to Katrina and asked her, "What does that mean?"

"What does what mean?" she asked.

"Being gay. I thought that 'gay' meant happy!" Katrina almost lost it at that point. She was holding back laughter as she told me, which I responded to with a simple, "Oh, that makes sense."

When I got home, I proudly told my mom that learned about 'being gay'. Unlike Katrina, my mom utterly lost it.

Here's the part when this goes from happy to less so. See, I'm a Christian. It's a bit unusual for somebody to both be gay and Christian, but not like it's unheard of. I interpret the bible as condemning same-sex lust, not love. But the thing is: the church we go to isn't pro-LGBTQ+. Oh, they don't say that they're against it, considering I live in Massachusetts, but they most certainly are. I even know for a fact that two of my church-friends are completely against LGBTQ+. (Also every single person my age at church is a boy, which is super awkward to me.) It's been pretty stressful for me to not accidentally mention anything related to LGBTQ+. I keep wanting to tell my church-friends about prom and how I had my first kiss, but then I'd have to tell them that it was with my friend Cassandra (not her real name).

But that's the only hardship I've ever faced. My grandfather thinks that "gays" should all take medication to "get better", but he also thinks that kids differentiate people based on race. (He's trapped in the 60's, and we're all terrified that he might have dementia.) My sister is asexual, we're all waiting for my brother to decide to transition (seriously, he'd be so much happier), and my mom is waiting for me to get a girlfriend.

Well, this sure has been a long ramble. Thanks to anyone who's read this far, and remember that it's okay to not know what "gay" means!