Music is a very personal thing to me. My deepest secrets are locked away in the songs I love the most. Everything I have ever cried about is held prisoner within the lyrics of a deep album cut by one of my all-time favorite artists. As the pages turn on my mental flipbook, each significant event is coupled with a song.

Because of the deep connection I feel with the music I love it takes me a very long time to want to share these songs with a boyfriend. I am only able to put a song that broke my heart on display if it’s someone I plan to be with for a long time. Someone who has already glimpsed into my canyons and valleys. Someone that has stuck around long enough in my sunlight that they’ve grown familiar with my shadows, too.

I arrived at Easton Mountain a stranger and went home a member of a strong and vital family. I’m homesick already.

It’s so out of fashion to say it aloud. To stand on a mountaintop and scream at the top of your lungs “Goddamnit I want so desperately for someone to fucking love me.” These are the kind of things you are never supposed to feel. And if you feel them you aren’t supposed to. Never say it out loud. Neediness equals weakness.

I stood in the club. Jennifer Lopez blared out of the speakers. An endless parade of shirtless douchebags nudged and elbowed me. My friends were in the bathroom and I stood alone. I reached for my cell phone to pretend I was texting someone. Saved by the cell.

Once upon a time I used to wear my hair long. I also used to take showers instead of baths. And there’s something else I used to do that I don’t do anymore: the second I became interested in someone I burdened them with a long grocery list of everything that was wrong with me and everything bad that had ever happened in my life.

Before someone got the chance to know me I warned them about everything awful I was going to do and I filled them in on the childhood trauma I was using as an excuse for that action. Long before I let someone know my favorite soda, what I liked on my pizza, and what my favorite Joni Mitchell song was, I let them know each of my defense mechanisms and what all of my flaws are.

With the trap door flying open on all my discrepancies, it’s no surprise not many stuck around for the pizza.

I don’t ever want to grow up. Thankfully because I am gay I’m allowed a longer lease on my youth.

I stand by something I realized sixteen years ago. The best way to change the world is to be yourself. When people see dollar bills with minority scribbling it doesn’t defuse their hatred or enlighten them. But when people see that their neighbor or co-worker is an awesome person who just happens to be gay, the impact could potentially be huge.

I’ve forgiven my father, my ex-boyfriends, my evil classmates, and shady former friends. I’ve forgiven my cousin that sat behind me in college and called me a fag. Only one memory races my adrenalin and it’s that of Coco the drag queen.

I’ve met “the biggest bitch in the world” at least thirty times. It’s line that’s been used more times than “I’ll call you tomorrow”.

Last night I saw Mike’s picture. I was caught off guard. Usually he made me grimace but instead I felt this intense urge to be held by him. To smell his hair. To love his voice instead of hating it like I did for two decades. I connected with a long-buried disappointment and realized that underneath all my hate for Mike was a long unanswered love.