"It’s very empowering to find your identity. I’m more confident now because I know exactly who I am. I may not know who I’m going to be, but I definitely know in the moment who I am now and who I want to be".
It’s helpful because now I can really be an ally because I am no longer confused about who I am, what I identify as, or who I want to be with. It allows me to really support people.
Right before I really started thinking about my identity I was in a really deep state of depression due to not knowing who I was, and the constant bullying and criticism that I got. So I was definitely struggling, but when I found myself it opened my eyes to be more confident. It’s much easier to be able to brush off that everyday criticism when you’re confident with your identity, to just know that they don’t understand truly what’s going on. It’s easier to brush it off and keep moving on. But it gets harder when you see it on a mass scale, whether it’s in real life or on an online forum that you can just swipe passed. When you see a big group of people that are completely attacking this community, or even minorities and immigrants, its harder to deal with it on that scale. But when it’s one person, or even just two people attacking me for who I am then I can handle.
"It’s the hardest thing to do, but if you haven’t already done it talk to your parents about it. Your parents, your friends, and most definitely the other adults or your counselor here at school".
It’s hard to do but, but it’s one of the essentials in really being comfortable with who you are is being able to tell other people about because if you aren't comfortable with who you are then you can't really pull yourself out of that depression or confusion. There’s definitely a lot of power and self worth that you can find in identifying who you are and talking to the people you love about it. Whether you’re gay, heterosexual, pan, bi, black, white, hispanic, asian...anyone really, just stay strong until you truly find a group of people who support you.
Lex Hart