Closeted | Boy x Boy

~Achtzehn~

Internalized homophobia.

Internalized homophobia.

Internalized homophobia.

Many young teens that are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community suffer from internalized homophobia. A phenonema where they feel that their sexuality is wrong, like they aren't allowed to be what they feel inside. They're scared of rejection, scared of people judging them, and if they've grown up being taught that being the gender you were assigned at birth and being straight is the norm makes them feel even worse. Here are some helpful articles to teach you about internalized homophobia-

https://www.rainbow-project.org/internalised-homophobia/

I frowned, even more confused. So... because I hated myself, and I hated the idea of me being gay, that meant that I had internalized homophobia? Was it a mental illness? Was I mentally ill for feeling this way? 

I stared at the screen for so long that my eyes started to burn. I was in my dark room, scrolling through dozens of articles about this and trying to figure out what the fuck was going on in my head, in my body, and in my heart. I didn't want to be gay, I wasn't gay... and it wasn't because I didn't like them, it was because of Oliver. 

I closed my eyes briefly, going back to that moment. Oliver and I were best friends back in first grade. He was gay, and I thought I was too. Or at least I was questioning, and I remember kissing underneath the bleachers at the football game, and holding hands underneath the lunch tables. Oliver was a cute blonde with freckles and green eyes. He came out in second grade, while we were still testing our boundaries, and everyone... everyone shunned him. They saw him and saw a monster, a freak of nature. Oliver tried to tell everyone that it was fine, that it was normal, and he had turned to me for help. That hurt look on his face as he turned to me, trying to get me to tell the people arguing with him that he was normal, but I stayed quiet. He kept pleading, and finally I said one word.

"Freak."

I never looked at him the same way again, I just couldn't. When Oliver moved away, the kids turned to me for the teasing, since Oliver had asked me for help they assumed I was gay too. It got so horrible. The guilt, the shame, the taunting... When I told my parents, it upset my dad. He was homophobic, and he was so fucking pissed that he packed his bags that night and just left. All because of me. He never came back, and my mom and I were forced to move. We were shunned from our old town, treated like outcasts, and my mom lost her well-paying job and we were forced into a small town where she has to screw people just to get paid enough to pay our bills. I covered my face with my hands and closed my laptop, and when my hands came away from my face they were wet. I was crying again.

Dad always said I was weak when I cried. He said that only fags cried, and that I couldn't be a fag. Mom usually told him to watch his language around me, that I shouldn't be using those kinds of words at my age, and I never understood Dad's hate towards LGBTQIA+ people... now, maybe I did? I had no idea. All I knew was that I couldn't be gay, because if I was gay then that meant that I would lose more people. That I would lose my friends and my family and Jay and Marley and everyone that I loved, because that's what happened when you came out. People left you.

They always left you.