Growing up in the conservative Midwest, at the time, I felt like a change I began one year ago this evening was a life altering move. While in all reality it wasn’t a change, it sure felt like a tornado was about to hit. I had escape plans, backup escape plans and felt like I was ready for anything. Little did I realize how ill prepared I was at the time for what was standing right in front of me.

Two and a half years ago I moved up to Seattle Washington, a very liberal city, and began a clean start after college. It was a pivotal moment in my life, being submerged in a new culture with such different political and religious views. As a kid in the Midwest, topics such as homosexuality were either not spoken of or were made a mockery of by leaders in the media, religious and political realms. Growing up as a closeted gay in the Midwest, I heavily turned against politics, religion and traditional media and branched out to the internet. Thankfully, there was a huge community of people to turn to for help, from internet forums to YouTube and ultimately a new city, hearing other’s struggles and successes pushed me forward on the path of coming out.

A year ago I began the journey of publicly coming out, albeit not in the best way ever, but I did what it took and after two weeks of struggling in person to tell my best friend Amanda, I sent her a text message. She was in complete disbelief, and a bit groggy since it was well into to the next morning in her time zone. This is where my planning should have kicked in. In tears, I was ready for the most negative reaction ever, or even worse no response; I was ready to start over, yet again. This is where my plan failed; Amanda reacted in a very positive way, realizing nothing actually changed. She helped me plan for the next few weeks of telling other close friends and how I could strategically tell people as to not let my family find out without telling them in person, months later.

Knowing I had a trip home in March, I decided to tell my parents in person. It was one of the most difficult and emotional things I’ve ever done. My parents are two of the best people in the world, I should never have expected a negative reaction from them, but we had also never talked about LGBT issues, people or anything of the sort, so I didn’t know what to expect. It took a few days and many failed attempts until it came down to the wire of the eve of my departing flight to tell them. Of course, they also pulled the same move as Amanda and were very welcoming and positive. My Mom was concerned because she didn’t want me to face discrimination or potentially be injured, thank you media for instilling that fear in my mother, but it was yet another positive reaction. At that point I pulled a cop out and asked my Mom to spread the word so I didn’t have to tell others, I also didn’t feel like it was that big of a deal.

I had no plans of telling any of my colleagues or allowing my employer to know about my sexuality. Beyond the fact it wasn’t their business, I was also still under the fear of being held back, discriminated against or even fired for my sexuality. This may sound crazy to some people reading this, but as of this writing, you can legally be fired in most states in the USA for simply being gay. No, not acting on it, not harassing people, but just being gay; legally fired. Over time the word spread and people started to find out, most people reacted positively and looking back there wasn’t a real reason for me to be so wary, aside from the fear of the unknown.

Even with knowing how great my family and friends are and even my work environment, looking back the fear of the unknown and negativity in the media drove me to make escape plans along the way. I waited until I was 100% financially independent and lived far enough away that I could start over without too much struggle. I’m excited at the progress our culture has made over the last year alone with celebrities, sports figures, news media and even our President acknowledging LGBT-Americans exist, and aren’t a detriment to our society. As they say, history repeats itself, I’m looking forward to the day when we’re all treated equal and kids don’t have to grow up in a society that treats homosexuality as a sin, crime or mental disorder.

What a journey this year has been, and a wonderful one at that. Who knew fast forwarding 365 days it would feel like 5 years have gone by. This year alone marriage equality was passed at the ballot for the first time ever and public support for LGBT-Americans is over 50%. Heck, if you asked me a year ago if I could have written this blog post I would have thought you were crazy.

Much love,
Tyler