When I was a child, I remember thinking that it wouldn’t be possible for two men to fall in love. I had just never seen it happen before, so I assumed it just didn’t happen. But, given the fact that I am applying to this scholarship you can probably guess that I didn’t keep that line of thinking. I can’t exactly recall the moment I realized I was gay, but I know it was middle school. And like the anxiety riddled teenager I was, I was scared out of my mind to tell anyone. Despite my school having a GSA and a handful of out teachers, my mind was constantly on the fact that I was gay and no one could know. The reason being straight boys. The source of all evil. I kid, one of my best friends is a straight man, however when I say straight boy I mean a very specific kind of straight person. Those “bro” types, the ones who seem like a stereotypical frat boy. The type whose humor was asking out other boys as a joke or joking about being gay for one of their friends and immediately laughing about it so they know it was a joke. It seemed like they had never met a gay person in real life. They were some kind of mythical or extinct creature that had no bearing on the current day. I don’t know what they would do if they had known I was actually gay. Because unfortunately, I was a common target for their jokes. Target isn’t the right word, I was more like a comedic prop. They didn’t direct any vitriol towards me, so I never felt like they knew I was gay. For example they would often say, “Hey dude, would you make out with me?” and then laugh just to be clear it was a joke. I don’t know what was funny about that, or why I was chosen out of everyone to be a banana peel in this little sketch. Statistically, one of the boys who was making those jokes is gay and trying to hide it with layers of irony and misogyny, and that is just so sad. That is why representation matters, to show people, both LGBTQ+ and not, that being LGBTQ+ is normal. It’s fine, it’s just a thing people sometimes are. While strides have been made in representation in recent years, it’s not enough to have two random background characters holding hands or a character offhandedly talking about his dads. It is important for main characters to be queer, to show people that they themselves are allowed to be. That is why I want to be a writer, so I can share stories about queer people. I want to demystify being LGBTQ+ to people, to show them that their identity isn’t all they are. Writing was my only form of creative expression for a long time, especially during middle school. And during that time when I was scared of saying I was gay, my expression of it was through writing. I owe so much to writing, so I am sure no matter what I do, writing will be a part of it.