When the only reflections you of yourself are negative, it can change your entire outlook on life.
The first thing Tom Wicker remembers about anything gay related was a terrifying ad abouts AIDS when he was 4 or 5 years old. For the next 18 years, that was what he associated with “gay”- illness, sadness, death.
When he was a young teenager, a man in a public toilet, who was not actually using the toilets, pulled him into a stall. He pulled away and ran, terrified.
When he came out at 19, he’d had no positive gay role models, no one to look at or look up to, and he was already battling depression.
It wasn’t until, as an adult, he found help from a therapist, who helped him work through his fears. In his words:
But also what I realized at that point was that I didn’t really have any gay friends. For all of these years, my overriding impression of gay men was that ad. Or that man in the public toilet. Or any number of movies I watched in my late teens which invariably were about gay men getting AIDS.
So I thought, one of the things to do here is to make an effort to change that. Rather than to see men as the things I wanted to have sex with and the things that would kill me. Actually go out and see them as people.
I started working for an online magazine interviewing people involved in gay initiatives and reviewing and just broadening my circle, and you know in the end, with the combination of the therapy, and just seeing other gay men as people, to talk to, to have a laugh with, and to be a part of community with, made all the difference.
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This is why it matters when athletes, celebrities, politicians, and other public figures come out.
Because maybe a teenager like Tom was will feel less scared and alone.
Originally published at I’m From Driftwood. I’m From Driftwood envisions a world where every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person feels understood and accepted, and every straight person is an ally.
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