Nalley Smith, Arkansas

I knew at the age of five that something wasn't "right". I remember always feeling different from the other little girls. I was infatuated with my kindergarten teacher, who was a woman, and the girls I went to school with. I wasn't interested in little boys for anything except playing at recess, and I remember feeling oddly about other little girls wanting to have boyfriends. I've always been a worrier. So of course I worried myself sick over this matter until I worked up the courage to ask my mom what was wrong with me. She assured me by telling me "Lots of little girls have crushes on other girls. It just means that you look up to them and think they're neat. It doesn't mean anything bad. Don't worry." 

I continued on like I had been all through elementary school and middle school, the crushes growing stronger and deeper, but never bringing it up again to my mother - always in denial about it, even to myself. 

I had my first girlfriend when I was fourteen and in eighth grade. We were both young and unsure of ourselves and our sexualities. I was struggling with my Southern Baptist upbringing too. I kept trying to change what I ultimately knew to be true about myself; no matter what I did I knew I was gay. I was afraid that if my mom found out she would hate me, send me away, or never let me see my girlfriend again. 

I had thought about telling my mom for a long time, but it took me years to work up the courage. Something came over me and I had to get it out. It was like a fire inside that needed to be quenched. I called my mother and asked her to pick me up from a friend's house because I needed to talk to her and wanted to come home. She came and picked me up and we began the long drive home on the back roads. I asked her to pull over, but she refused. After a lot of hesitation, I finally spit it out:

"I think I'm gay." 

Silence.

"...I think I'm gay." 

"I heard you the first time. What do you mean?"

"Well, I like girls. I always have."

"Do you think this could be a phase?"

"No, I really don't, but I wish it was." 

"You know this means that you'll go to hell..."

That was the one thing that frightened me more than admitting those words – more than losing my mother or my girlfriend – going to hell. Immediately my mother was determined to squash my gayness like an insect. She tried to scare it out of me. She sent me to Christian counseling. Then she tried to send me to a Christian boarding school. She grounded me from life. My mother tried everything under the sun to "help" me. Unfortunately, I was just as ignorant and afraid of this thing that plagued me as she was, so I hated myself for a long time. 

Luckily, I had two best friends with very liberal parents through the rest of junior high and high school that influenced me, and paved the way for my mind and heart to blossom and learn to love myself again. 

By the time I was seventeen, mom and I had definitely had our problems with my sexuality, but I was very confident in myself and in my lifestyle. There was no going back. 

I am now twenty one years old, and am so in love with the person that I am that it's hard for even me to believe who I used to be. My mother has had a lot of time to adjust to the fact, and will always struggle, but she has opened her heart and her mind enough to become and LGBT supporter and tries her hardest everyday to support me in every way possible.