The Silent Struggle: Growing Up Gay in a World That Didn't Acknowledge You

When invisibility becomes your first language, finding yourself takes a lifetime

If you've ever felt like you were missing from your own story, this piece is for you—and the child you once were.

Like a watercolor left in the rain, I learned to disappear in plain sight before I learned to tie my shoes.

Not the dramatic vanishing of fairy tales—no puff of smoke, no magic words. Just the slow erasure that happens when you realize the person you're becoming has no reflection in the world around you. No stories. No futures. No proof that boys like you grow up to be anything at all.

At seven, I sat cross-legged on our living room carpet, watching TV families navigate their predictable dramas. Mother, father, children. Dating, marriage, babies. The same story recycled endlessly, a future as inevitable as gravity. Except somewhere deep in my bones, I knew—without language, without logic—that this gravitational pull didn't apply to me.

The silence wasn't cruel. It was complete.