Childhood

I have been going through a pretty hard time lately in my life and I figured that writing things down helps me to center myself and to reveal more thoughts, feelings and insights that I wouldn't have otherwise. Also, I want to remember how I felt in the past experiences that I talk about to help guide where I am headed now.

I was a pretty blessed child. My parents helped me do extracurricular activities like gymnastics, soccer, diving, basketball and then eventually dance (which comes later in my teenage years that I will get to in another post). I wasn't the most liked child in the world, because let's be honest, I was very different from the rest of the kids in my grade. I liked dolls and such over trucks, I had an incredible fascination with animals, and I was fabulous (no other way to put it). To exemplify my fabulousness, I remember distinctly wearing my sister's yellow princess Belle dress and loving every minute. When my parents told me I needed to take it off, I cried. Now that story seems silly to me because I would never wear a dress nor anything particularly feminine.

I became vaguely aware of my sexuality when I was around 5 years old. Seems a bit young doesn't it? I get asked questions like, "How did you know you were gay before you even hit puberty?" And I just think about all the boys and girls when they're little talking about their crushes. It's just like that. As little kids talk about how they like the opposite gender, I had crushes on the same gender. How I describe it to people is it's like there was a dormant animal that was sitting in the back of my mind. I acknowledged that it was there, but it was asleep and not causing a commotion. It was when puberty hit when that animal awoke and decided to wreak havoc on my life.

So I think that I established that I was always a pretty gay child growing up. I was teased, harassed, and bullied about it clear until I was about 15, but since I'm focusing on my childhood for this post, I'll limit it to elementary school. One day when I was in the lunch room with my best friend, I noticed that two of the boys had snuck an extra piece of pizza out of the lunchroom. Me, being the responsible little boy that I was, told the lunch lady (yes, I was that kid). After she scolded and punished the two boys, one of them looked over at me and said, "Hey. Hey Trevor. You're gay and you sleep with men."

I was utterly distraught. After boldly declaring that I was no longer going to sit with them, I collapsed into a puddle of tears as soon as I was out of eyesight. This was my first taste that being gay was "unacceptable." That I was unwanted because of it. It was the beginning of my closted experience. I was maybe 9 or 10.

Finally around the middle of 6th grade when I was 11, I realized I was gay. At first it started out with me seeing a guy I found attractive and then saying to myself, "I want to look like that." I was realizing that I found that attractive and because of such, I wanted my body to look good. Chiseled abs, nice biceps, you know, the works. But eventually this turned into me actually being attracted to people in my class and that sort of threw my world for a loop.