Learning to Show My Pride When Anxiety Says Hide
The bravest act I perform daily isn't loving who I love—it's choosing visibility when every alarm in my body screams to disappear.
The first time I wore a pride pin in public, my fingers trembled so badly I stabbed myself twice trying to fasten it. It was tiny—barely the size of a dime—six simple rainbow stripes against the black canvas of my work bag.
For most people, it would've been nothing. For me, it might as well have been a neon sign flashing above my head.
My mouth went cotton-dry in the elevator of my office building. Sweat pooled at the small of my back as I counted the floors. Ding. Seven more to go. Six. Five. Each person who entered seemed to look directly at the pin, then at me, their eyes lingering a beat too long.
"They'll all know now," I thought, suddenly unable to remember how I normally stood, where I normally put my hands.
The irony wasn't lost on me. As if they didn't already know. As if my voice, my gestures, the way I dressed, the thousand tiny tells I'd spent years trying to police hadn't already outed me long before that pin ever could.
But there's someth…