Happy Pride 2021
I want to wish everyone a Happy Pride Month! I guess this is also my official coming-out post to the world. At the ripe age of 27, I told my family that I am bisexual. Funny enough, I tried to come out about ten years prior while I was in high school but was told it might just have been a phase I was going through. While I knew at the time it was not just a phase, I decided that it would be best to keep my sexuality a secret. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was hurting myself psychologically and made a choice not to date anyone until I figured things out
Trying to come out and then going back in the closet was a dark time. I felt this sadness continuously growing inside of me but never shared it with anyone. I bottled up my pain, put a smile on my face, and suffered alone. This was just one facet of my sadness.
High school can be a challenging time. You are trying to discover who you are and what you want to become. Coming out as part of the LGBTQIA+ community adds another stressor. I have grown up in the rural South, the Bible Belt, and have heard many terrible things about our community. What my parents did not know was that I had a girlfriend and then a boyfriend. Unfortunately, I was on the receiving end of many hateful comments. Again, I struggled alone through this process and bottled up my pain.
I found The Trevor Project and TrevorSpace while trying to find resources to help me cope. I am forever grateful to the people who organized this project and started TrevorSpace, a place for LGBTQ youth to connect with other teens like themselves. It helped me realize that I was not alone and made me hopeful in a time filled with darkness.
My experiences have helped mold me into the person I am today. I am a 27-year-old Master of Public Health Candidate focusing on community health. My dream is to become a physician, and I hope that some day I can reach that dream. Until then, I have focused my research interests on STI prevention among the LGBTQIA+ community. Unfortunately, there has been a history of stigmatization of the group I belong to in the medical field. I am an advocate for changes in the medical field to recognize and treat all patients equally.
If anyone finds this page and is struggling, please know it does get better. If you are in crisis, please reach out to a trusted friend, a loved one, The Trevor Project (for youth) at 1-866-488-7386, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.
Monthly Update
I just wanted to share that my summer course is coming to a close. Bioethics is a topic that I feel many medical and public health professionals should have a keen understanding of. I will be taking my final exam in the course sometime next week!
See you guys in a future post!
–Dylan