I don’t think I ever thought about the whole process of coming out until it was right in front of me, like an unspoken deadline looming over my head. The funny thing is, no one was waiting on it but me. I had built it up into this massive, earth-shattering moment in my mind, but the world wasn’t in a rush for me to blurt it out. That’s the thing about coming out—it feels like it should be this climactic event, and sometimes it is, but most times, it’s not a party or a grand announcement. It’s a quiet realization, more internal than anything. People talk a lot about the pressure of coming out, and yeah, I felt that too. It’s this odd weight, like you’re carrying around a secret that grows heavier the longer you hold it. But the truth is, no one is demanding it of you. There’s no rulebook that says you have to come out at a certain age or tell certain people. You can tell everyone, or no one at all, and both options are perfectly valid. When I first came out, I expected everything to change. I thought it would be like crossing some kind of invisible threshold where suddenly, everything would make sense, where my identity would be fully realized, not just to me …
