I hope that my story about being SGL (same-gender loving) will inspire others to do the same.
Tell me how you guys like it, and as always, feel free to share. Thanks.
As a child, I was always an introverted soul. One that liked to examine my own thoughts and the thoughts of other people. I always had a heightened sense of self-awareness that I never really talked with anyone about. I felt as though the other children I could talk to would not understand me — and vice-versa. This mutual rejection made me continue to go throughout grade school as a quiet kid who really kept things to myself.
I often played video games as a hobby which always made me a happy child, but while playing those video games, I would look out the window sometimes and see the other children of my neighborhood laughing and playing together outside. I never really liked going outside as a child because I just never really had a calling to it — somehow I just felt more comfortable being inside of my home.
I knew that the other children of my neighborhood wondered why I never was as outgoing as them. But I think it really sank in for me one day when I decided to go outside to ride my bike up and down the street I lived on. While I was riding my bike, I saw a parent of a neighborhood friend of mine who was just arriving home. She stopped the car in her driveway, rolled down the window and said, “Kevin? …You’re outside?” The shock in her face was very present.“…Yeah?” I sheepishly replied. “Oh, …you never come outside.”
It wasn’t until then, I started to think that I was a really weird child. I rode my bike back home, feeling myself becoming more emotional as I peddled. When I arrived home, I went to my brother’s room to tell him what just happened, in hopes of getting a comforting statement from him so that I can feel better. Unexpectedly, he said, “Well, what do you expect? You’re never outside.” Hearing that from my brother really hurt me and almost made it seem like what people thought of me was validated. I truly felt like the weird child of the neighborhood. It’s safe to say that I was a really sensitive soul, at a very young age.
This sense of detachment to a social life started to decrease as I began my journey in high school. I was becoming more social, and I was also becoming more aware of my sexuality. I always knew that I was attracted to men, but I have always repressed it due to the immense amount of casual homophobia and heteronormativity I witness within my family and also Jamaican culture.
In high school, I learned to get in touch with my creative side. I was very fashionable and always in touch with what to wear, and what not to wear. However, I wasn’t the most masculine person either. So in the eyes of teenaged, highs school boys and girls, this made me the perfect person for them to express their homophobia towards.
High school became a society by itself for me, in which there is almost little to no help when being attacked by whomever. It started to become ugly when I underwent immense bullying and rumors surrounding my sexuality. It sort of became fun for people to participate in the rumors surrounding my sexuality.
As this continued for about a year and a half, each and every day, I felt myself going down a dark, depressive hole in which I now thought there was no hope of getting out of. The severe depression I was undergoing started to manifest itself into my report cards. My academic grades of A’s and B’s slowly started to slip into the categories of C’s and D’s, ultimately becoming F’s.
At this point, the super smart student I always believed myself to be, has now failed the 10th grade. Receiving the letter in the mail stating how I will be retained in the 10th grade really pulled me even further down into the dark depressive hole I was already in.
My parents scolded me greatly because an academic failure like this has never existed with any of my other siblings, so at this point, I really felt like a failure not only to my family but to the future Kevin as well. By chance, a summer school program was being offered to me through my school, in which I accepted. This allowed me to academically redeem myself, in which I was able to.
Within due time, I graduated high school in 2014 and was now feeling the freedom from all the negativity my high school embodied. Graduation ensued a three-week vacation to our homeland country of Jamaica, in which my parents decided to renew their vows with my entire family to watch, at the sunset of a pure white sanded beach. This was so peaceful for me as it showed how deserving I am to finally relax, for that time being.
When we came back to the states, I got my first job and started working at a grocery store. One day when my mother picked me up from work, we were on our way back home and the conversation of girlfriends unsurprisingly came about. “Why don’t you ever tell me about who you talk to? Your girlfriends, do you have any? What kind of girls do you like?” my mother would ask me. All that I could do at the time while still not being fully expressive of my true sexuality, was just say, “I don’t like many women, the right one hasn’t crossed my path yet,” knowing that I am not sexually nor romantically attracted to women. All of this foreshadowed what happened the next day.
The following morning, I did my morning routine in which I make my breakfast, watch some television, and hang out in my room. My father came knocking on my door telling me to open up. I opened the door, and he said to me, “Kevin, the police just called us and they’re on their way shortly to talk with us about you.” My heart sank, I felt sick to my stomach, and I felt disgusted with what I had done to attract this situation.
Over the years, I have always dealt with being lonely. Wanting attention, but specifically, romantic attention is what I had longed for. I was seeking romantic attention in the form of sex. Law enforcements eventually found out and decided to have “a talk” with my parents. While waiting for the police to come to our home, my father worryingly asked me, “What is all of this? What did you do?” And so I proceeded to tell him the things in which I had done, and ultimately telling him that I only had an attraction towards men. Within minutes, my dad gave me his car keys (knowing that I haven’t obtained my driver’s license yet) and told me to carry my phone, go and drive to another neighborhood, park, and just sit there until he tells me to come back. My father was thinking of ways to stall if something were to happen for me to go to jail.
I ran to the car, weeping at what just happened and how fast everything was happening. The biggest secret of my life was now revealed to my parents, yet I’m temporarily driving away from home for my own safety. While waiting in a nearby neighborhood, I received a phone call from my mother. My mother was rushing home from work, weeping from the news she heard from my father. “How long have you known that you’ve always liked men? Why haven’t you told us? Why haven’t you told me, especially with the conversation we’ve had yesterday?” I answered truthfully this time, explaining all the reasons why I felt like I’ve had to suppress my true self, even during the time of me undergoing a tremendous amount of bullying. She wept even more and asked, “Why don’t you ever feel like you can come to us and talk?”
After coming back home, I found out that everything was indeed okay. The officer just wanted to talk with us about being safe on the internet. Even though the situation was something minor, it opened an entirely new chapter for me in the book of my life; it turned over a new leaf. My father, mother, and sister now knew about my secret, with the exception of my older brother who lives in another city. I dreaded having to tell him because I knew that my family did not like to keep secrets from one another.
Growing up, I heard the homophobic rhetorics in which my brother used to speak around me. He would talk about burning his child if he turns out to be SGL (same gender loving), or he would simply castigate any SGL individual whenever we would go out to eat or shopping together. Being raised around this normalized homophobia, I had internalized it and hated myself for years, just for being the person that I am. I would cry almost every other hour that current week, knowing that at some point, I would have to tell my brother soon.
With the help of my mother, she was able to introduce the topic to him, and I was able to comfortably communicate with him about everything. While talking and explaining everything, he kept telling me that he wishes I would have opened up to him about what I went through and that he would have protected me. I appreciate the love a lot, but I still couldn’t get over the fact at how quick he was to go from openly castigating SGL people, to wanting to protect his very own brother for being SGL.
Over time, my family came to understand who I was and I am thankful to have a family that loves me for who I am. I now realize that I attracted all of this into my life for a reason, in which it gave me the push and the drive to be authentically me.
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