Knower’s Profile
By: Arash A
Tags: Self Love, Growth, Gay, Teens, Adult

Knower’s Profile

My life changed completely when I realized one thing about myself – I am gay. Living in a outspokenly homophobic household has obligated me to be very closed off and independent from my family. It got to a point where I did not even feel the purpose in talking to my family because I knew I was going to be abandoned by the end of it. This has taught me not to say anything to anyone about myself without knowing the precautions of where and who it could go to, in turn making me very closed off from people. In grade 7, I started a journal because I felt so suffocated with my own thoughts – I for one could not confide in people and keeping it stored in my mind was very detrimental to my mental health. Skip forward to now, in my grade 12th year I still find it hard to share my deeper thoughts with people and ultimately feel like my only safe place is myself. The friends around me are very accepting of this however, I do not think it is understood. I do not think anyone is able to understand why someone is gay, I mean I still don’t even understand why I am. I walk the earth and approach new people with the preconceived notion that I won’t be understood, so there is no point in trying. However in some way, it has made me try so much harder to be liked. Because I know I wont be understood for who I am, I try to be liked for what I do. For example, I became very close to this group of people and one conversation led to another and we became close on a personal level, however I never felt comfortable opening up my thoughts. I don’t trust things or people easily, I feel like I live a very emotionally independent life.

Mental illnesses in parents represent a risk for children in the family. Ever since I was young my mom suffered with very bad anxiety and depression. It got to a point where I did not know if I was going to wake up to her alive. Little noises in the house would make me wake up and go to her door to see if I could hear her sleeping. I felt fear walking out of my house, I felt fear walking into my house, fear of what I would see. This led me to have anxiety myself. It got so bad to where I found it extremely hard to get out of bed in grade 9, I had no motivation for anything. I think anxiety and depression are one of those things I will carry with me my entire life. But what really shapes me and how I see the world is every detail in my moms health I needed to pay attention to. I approach situations with too many thoughts and I focus on details but in a negative way. For example, the most simple math question I will get wrong because I will overthink it and focus on little things like, “why is it so simple.” Tying this to my inability to open up to people, I focus on details about people a lot. Sometimes this means I feel love for them fast. When every detail about them makes me happy and makes me feel like home, I love, I admire, and I feel very strongly. I never felt like I was able to emote anything because I felt that my mom would get even worse because she would see that it was impacting me, so I never did and I think it lead me to develop an independent personality protecting who I really am, someone extremely sensitive.

The one thing that these two things have embedded in me is my sensitivity to other people’s feelings and to my own. I’ve become very aware of how people will feel about things, and sometimes I even purposely look out for it because I have the inclination to make other people feel good because I know it is hard for me to feel good all the time. When I hurt, I hurt deeply and that is because I am sensitive.