Growing up in a conservative but extremely close family made my journey with my sexuality and self-acceptance an exceedingly difficult one at times.  Years of compulsory heterosexuality still have me occasionally questioning what I know in my heart to be true, but today I find myself confident and proud enough to say that I am bisexual. However, I keep one foot in the closet, with the profound hope that readers of this letter will not share my story with my family. The fear of being rejected and resented for my sexuality runs so deep that I find myself constantly hiding the truth from my family, even as I viciously defend other members of the LBGTQA community in front of them. They will never understand. They will never understand. I repeat that to myself like a mantra. For years, my greatest fear has been that my family would cease to love me if they discovered the truth about my sexuality. And perhaps in such a close-knit and loyal family, these thoughts have no basis in truth and come entirely from my own paranoia. Even so, listening to my relatives express their desire to keep marriage “between a man and a woman,” refer to bisexuality as “fake,” and use “f*ggot” and “gay” as insults, my worries seem valid. I fear that I will not hold the same privilege that my heterosexual relatives do when they bring their significant others to family reunions and are met with nothing but acceptance. My sexuality is a fundamental piece of who I am, and the idea that a family would disown a person for something that they did not choose and cannot change is absolutely ludicrous. And yet it happens every single day.  Every single day members of the LBGT+ community find themselves attacked, harassed, and rejected for their sexualities.  Even in a country that has made remarkable strides in human rights over the past few years, forty percent of homeless youth are LBGT+ and politicians are actively trying to prevent transgender people from using the bathrooms that they are comfortable with.  I write this letter as someone who knows how incredibly fortunate she has been at this point in her journey.  In just a couple of days I will graduate from a high school that elected an openly gay and lesbian homecoming king and queen and consistently pulls a large group to support the Day of Silence. I have been able to be openly queer in school and receive nothing but love and support from my friends. I can count the number of times I have been on the receiving end of homophobic comments on my fingers, but I am far from unaware of the danger that bigots place me and the other members of the LBGT+ community in every day.  I sincerely hope that one day I will be able to walk down a street holding hands with a woman without any fear and the world becomes a safe and accepting place for people of all sexualities and genders.  Yes, my fear of rejection runs deep, but if my soulmate is a woman, I will introduce her to my family without any shame.  My relatives are incredibly important to me, but I will not let my love be subject to their judgement. Familial love should always be unconditional, and everyone deserves better than to be rejected for elements beyond their control.  And, as a dear friend once said to me, family is more than just blood, and I will always find a loving and accepting family within the LBGTQA community.

Happy pride.