During my nine years at an Episcopal school called Canterbury in Greensboro, North Carolina, I found a fork in the road and without knowing it took the road less traveled. There had always been an odd feeling of estrangement from the rest of the community. But, during this year, I took my turn away from the rest of my class. They all began to become worried about girls and what society thinks while I began to worry about human rights and became angry at society. The mere thought of school and the next day was a literal torment for me as another day did not mean another dollar, however, another joke against me, another racist or homophobic remark to hear, or something else generally negative. For example they might say something such as: "That shirt is so gay!" Now in analyzing this sentence, we realize that according to the use of the word gay something about the shirt is bad. But, if we look at the shirt more closely, we notice that this sentence doesn't really make any sense. Before this time I had no idea that shirts had sexual orientations, however, apparently they did.
In my confusion, I looked at myself. If someone were to ask me the question "Who are you?" I would answer with a shrug. There wasn't anyone around who was quite like me which made it difficult to understand why I was thinking the thoughts that I was. But in the mean time, all of the boys around me seemed to be obsessed with girls. I knew that this was supposed to happen to me; however, it wasn't happening at the time, so it seemed quite clear that these feelings would arise later. After all, I was going to marry a woman right? Much to my dismay, I found that Charlie, a new boy in the eighth grade made me weak in the knees. This bewildered me considering the fact that I was a boy and all boys like girls right? Wrong. So from that point on, worry had enveloped my mind. I went home each day and searched for some cure of these thoughts. Starting with my family's religion, Christianity, seemed to be the best idea. And for quite a while, I prayed and prayed to be cured of these thoughts, however, nothing happened. Then I started searching for a religion or something that might help. Then as my studies led me to Wicca and I began to study more and more and I found that people like me who were evidently called gay or homosexual were actually considered beings of equal standing in this religion. What a strange thought this was to me that someone besides myself felt this way.
In truth, I had known this since the fourth or perhaps fifth grade, however, would not admit it to myself as that would be admitting that I was that which no one wanted to be much less have around them. As I heard each homophobic comment, something inside of me became very tense and I was possessed with fear of discovery. Reactions and other emotions such as this lead me to be oral in the way that this offended me. Not in that it I was telling everyone of my new discovery, but rather became very political in my approach to "cure" the community as I saw it. My political beliefs were already well grounded; however, not until my middle school times did I begin to become vocal. Well, one must understand that I was the only and I mean only liberal or even remotely liberal person in the school (in fact I was radical for the setting).
After my eighth grade year, when I left, I began to worry about what my future roommate at the school my family had long attended might think. When I came to Westtown, I played it straight as I had in the past, though pretending to be another sexual orientation was not easy as I could not always tell which girls were hot and which girls were not. A lot of this was actually made into a guessing game. I might have asked someone, "Do you think that she is hot?" and I would find my opinion out of what they said. Then eventually I suppose playing it straight became boring and tedious as well as I had found a society that would not harm me if I were to claim myself to be out of the norm. And so, I came out. boy did I. I had to tell everyone and everything. Only later did I find out that the reasons I was saying what I was saying with such a wide audience was that these facts were still inconceivable to me.
Then, that upcoming summer, after I had alerted my immediate family of this, the real test began. I had to learn to deal with strangers who might suspect or make accusations. That was set up by me though, as I had signed myself up for an Outward Bound course as well as another community service based course with a group called The Road Less Traveled. During the Outward Bound course, I found myself in a predicament with homophobia and violence. Generally, I am not a violent person, and luckily there was no need for me to be in this time. There were many homophobic comments to deal with, however, and little I could do about it. It is very difficult to live in silence about who you are. How can anyone become used to lying about who they are? During this current school year, on grandparent's day, I was overwhelmed with the trouble of keeping my grandfather and his lady friend of finding out my secret. This hit very close to home; I suddenly became very aware of how painful it could be to have to hide yourself from the world and especially from your own family. It really and truly hurt. The only thought circulating through my mind at the time was something around "What if they find out? What would I do? He would disown me!"
In this world that we live in, I have found that there is little we can do to change the course of society without having some sort of fear in our hearts. It has also become very evident that inequality is the largest factor that holds our world back from being a community. It is hardest to have these troubles when there is no one there to help you because of fear that you might be discovered to be the scapegoat that no one wants to see. Anyone who has had to hide themselves, or any part of themselves for that matter, knows the pain that can come from having no one there to help. Life is a hard path to follow alone, but I suppose that I would not be anywhere near the same person if it weren't for that understanding of fear.

-Ted Winslow '07