~âĽ~ Wynter ~âĽ~ 12. Have you ever come out to a cute person of your preferred gender just to see if theyâre LGBT also?Nah. The town I live in isnât exactly homo friendly, so the less that know, at least where I live, the better and safer I feel. So most of the time I hide my attraction. Iâm just kinda thinking to myself âOh, sheâs cute. Way outta my league too. Iâll just keep my mouth shut.â 19. Any times that you almost accidentally outed yourself?Being at the age I am, family get togethers are friggin hell to try to stay as closeted at home as I am. Because I always get asked, âWhy havenât you settled down yet? Youâre 30 already, you sure you donât wanna get married?â Or âDonât worry, the right guy will come along soon.â And half the time it makes me wanna scream. I got bombarded with questions like that at Christmas dinner by my Grandma who is highly religious and feels the LGBT+ community are nothing but abominations of God and sinners who need to be converted. Midway through dinner, Gram started on me asking âWhy arenât you married yet? Almost all of your friends are and they have kids. Why havenât you done anything with your life yet?â As if marriage is the only thing in life that defines success. BULLSHIT! But while she was going on and bashing me, I lost my temper and almost said âBecause Iâm gay.â Which would have most likely gotten me kicked out and disowned by that side of the family as well, seeing as theyâre the more religious side and dadâs half of the family already acts like I donât even fucking exist. I got lucky though. My cousin, who is one of the only ones in the family that I know I can trust to come out to, had my back. I got out the âBecause Iâm g-â and he cut me off and finished it saying âGoing to wait. Sheâs been hurt too much already. She just doesnât want to get married, and thereâs nothing wrong with that. Look at me, I didnât settle down until 2 years ago, whatâs that make me?â Gram dropped it then. My cousin pulled me aside later and told me âPlease be careful with your tongue. Youâre always safe to talk to me in privacy about your girlfriend or bring her over if you need to get away, but remember, even though times have changed, there are still those out there who arenât as tolerant or accepting and I donât wanna think of what they might do to you if they knew, or what I would have to do to them if I found out they hurt you.â So while my cousin is accepting and supportive, what he said still kind of hurt, but I do understand his reasoning. Just because of some revolutionary movements that scored more rights for the LGBT+ community, that doesnât mean everyone out there is accepting and tolerant, so itâs still not 100% safe and probably never will be. So Iâm just really thankful that even though my tongue slipped, my cousin had my back. But it really put it into perspective that even though itâs become more normalized than way back before, itâs still not safe for some of us and it may never be. I could end up taking a lot of hate or even being threatened for posting this. But itâs a risk Iâm willing to take. I know I crack jokes about it a lot, but honestly if I didnât get a laugh out of my sexuality I know my name would be among the list of LGBT+ who have committed suicide already. Joking about it is the only way I can cope in a world thatâs constantly fueled by stereotypical media thatâs shoving straight couples and happy loving supportive families down my throat while the only LGBT characters I see are being sexualized or harassed and bullied, disowned by their families and kicked out of home and exiled or theyâre dead already. The part that hurts the most is because itâs the truth. This shit happens every fucking day! A lot of us canât come out because weâll be disowned, kicked out and abandoned, beaten, harassed, even sexually assaulted and raped or killed. I was lucky my cousin stood up for me at dinner. And my heart breaks for those who were less fortunate when something like that happened. But it opens my eyes a lot and even if youâre just a straight ally, if something like that ever happens, I hope you have that personâs back. Because you might be the only person who does have their back, the only one in their fucking life who cares enough to support them and gives them a safe space to talk about their life and their lover and that could be the one factor preventing them from becoming just another victimâs name in a hate crime statistics list or LGBT+ suicide statistics list. And please donât ever forget that!Â