I wasn't going to kill myself, but I wasn't going to stop dumb luck from taking me out either.

Sometimes coming out isn't about us. It's not fair that we have to carry the emotional burden of sharing our secret and making sure the person we're coming out to is okay, but we make concessions for the people we care about. Besides, I may have run the scenarios for this conversation but my mom had been running scenarios about my entire life since the day she had learned she was pregnant with me.

Instead of being able to go out and buy a book about a closeted gay kid who's scared of becoming a stereotype while coming to terms with being gay that could have helped me understand what I was going through, I' needed to write my own.

It was the feeling of finally finding a puzzle piece that fit into place. Of bursting through the surface of the water and taking the breath that had been burning in my lungs. Of remembering the word that'd been on the tip of my tongue for decades. This was the feeling I'd been missing all those years.

Wilhelm's hands trembled. “I'll bring you only misery.” “I'll take a lifetime of misery with you over a day of love from Mr. Dubois.