I'm gay(no way, right?). There, I said it. I've known four years. I wasn't at all horrified when I found out, I was completely blase. I laughed at the notion that I could be gay, and denied it completely. And then I finally realized it was true. And it sucked. I kept myself closeted, convinced everyone would turn on me and hate me if they found out. I hated myself, and it hurt more and more everyday, there is no feeling worse than not being okay with who you are.
Eventually I got over it, I am okay with being gay. But I am a coward, and I am not okay with that. I stayed closeted because I was in boy scouts, and had not yet gotten Eagle. Boy Scouts was my only out of school Extracurricular, and I thought that without it, I could not get into college.
Being closeted sucks, I am ready to come out, I want to come out, I want to scream it at the top of my lungs, but I can't. And even though I can act straight, I would never feel comfortable having a girlfriends or anything of the sort. I was so uncomfortable and unconfident that I alienated friends and had few left. I have missed out on a lot of experiences in my childhood. I didn't go to homecoming, I didn't to to prom, i'm never going to prom. And I will never get that chance back. I have never felt a romantic connection with another person. I have spent so many nights of my childhood sitting in front of a television watching reruns of sitcoms I have seen dozens of times before.
Whenever there was a void in my life, boy scouts filled it. I have done some things as a kid I don't think most adults would be willing to do. My first time backpacking was at a place called mount pleasant. I hated it, to this day I hate backpacking. It was below freezing, at points you had to scale cliffs, and I was carrying a pack nearly half my weight. But after we climbed all day, we came upon a misty clearing. Once, we set up camp that night, we found wild apples and grilled them over the fire. That was the first time I felt proud of myself, and it is one of my favorite memories.
Another time, we went canoeing in the middle of a region of the James River called Dutch Gap. It was a labyrinth of small islands and sunken ships. At low tide, one of the ships just barely peaked above the water, and in a bold(and rather stupid) move, I climbed on the bough. When I tried to get back in the kayak, I slipped; when I tried to regain my balance, I sliced the inside of my hand open on a rusted chunk of the hull. I could barely paddle with my left hand, and the shore was almost a half mile away, which is a large distance over water. I cannot remember another time where my inner strength and resolve was tested like that.
I know that it seems like i'm just starting to ramble, but I do have a point here. XD
Last week I went to summer camp. At the final night of the week, we stayed up to midnight for a giant campfire by a lake. I watched the smoke plume and cross the moonlit sky. At one point I realized that next year, I would be eighteen, that this wasn't just my last summer camp, but it was the winding down of my childhood. I wasn't upset, I realized that in the end, my childhood would was much fuller than I pretended it was. So I savored this last night; I sang to each of the cheesy songs, smelled the last of the burnt cedar filling the air.
I still don't have the courage to come out, but I do have a date planned. I guess what I believe is that coming out cannot be a spontaneous thing. The way I see it, I had to grow up, to mature as a person before I could come out. And while I was afraid the whole way, self pity never helped me.
And the other thing I discovered is to experience life as much as possible. As a member of the LGBT community, you will miss out some on things growing up that typical teens don't. But if you fill your life with rich experiences and adventures, in the end it helps you to mature, and it makes coming out that much easier.

*I'm definitely not endorsing BSA or their unfortunate membership conditions, but it was the backdrop across which my childhood took place, and the circumstance that caused me to stay closeted all these years.


So what about you? Did you ever feel like you were robbed of a 'normal' adolescence? Do you think that your experience gave you a unique insight into your life?
Sorry that was so long. XD