My Story: Cyril

Hello, my name is Cyril. As every other person, I have my own interests, experiences as well as favorite things, and I also like boys. As you might have guessed, my story is about my awareness, acceptance and survival, it is about being myself.

My story starts at the beginning of 9th grade when a particular person – the boy who helped me understand the part of myself that wanted more than a friendship with him – appeared before my eyes. At first, of course, I did not understand what was happening. Everything became clearer at a later stage and to this day, in 12th grade, not a single day passes without me thinking of him.

I did not share my story with anyone until the end of 10th grade when the "drama" happened - I was outed by him in school. Now you're probably thinking to yourselves, "How terrible!", but it was actually wonderful. Yes, I certainly did not enjoy the insulting hints, but they were nothing compared to the feeling of freedom that one feels after coming out.

For everyone else of course I kept on embodying the role of "the jerk" who was after a straight boy, and I kind of presented myself that way. You can imagine that my pride was kicking in by then, but despite all of the hatred of both the school and more particularly my class, I was flying with happiness.

As far as my parents are concerned, it's all a secret because I cannot bear to see the people that love me the most suffer because of me for whatever reason. In my case, my parents are not the people who would accept every aspect of me. I was quite confused at this point. There were times when I was asking myself strange questions that I do not even want to mention.

In the end, I understood something extremely important – that every person is perfect as they are and we should never be afraid of change. Of course, at the end there should be a piece of advice, so my advice to everyone who is still in the process of discovering their sexual orientation is not to waste time with too many questions, to look ahead and to not lose faith in themselves. My hope is for those who are alone to realize that there will be someone or something to inspire them to fight and to guide them forward, regardless of all of the negative thoughts and opinions.

This is the personal story of Cyril, written and sent by him.