If kindergarten was when I first learned about the concept, then fifth grade was when I first heard the actual word.
The G word.
Gay.
It was as if overnight the word didn't exist and then suddenly everyone and everything was "gay". Or at least it was according to my classmates.
I knew the traditional meaning of the word from holiday songs and from the Little House on the Prairie books. Gay was happy, light, and cheerful... So it made no sense to me that my classmates were using it as a bad word.
I didn't know exactly what "gay" meant to my classmates, but I certainly knew it wasn't something I wanted to be. "Gay" was definitely something disgusting, gross, shameful, demeaning, and stupid.
Every time I was called gay I felt worthless. Every time I was called gay I wondered what it was about me that made them use that awful word to describe me.
That word hurt me to the core at age 10.
When I found out what it meant, two people of the same sex loving one another.... I swore to never be that.
I couldn't bear the thought of that word describing me for real.
I couldn't bear the thought of the G word becoming my daily reality.
