What was it like when you came out to yourself? I mean, when did you first say/think to yourself 'I am gay'. This is different from acknowledging gay thoughts when you were younger, I mean the moment you first realized that this wasn't a phase and that you were, in fact, gay.

For me, I remember waking up in the middle of the night extremely emotional. I couldn't go back to sleep, I felt... off. I ended up having little anxiety attacks every time I tried to go to bed, so I started pacing my home. I went into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. As I was doing this I kept asking myself, "what is wrong with me? Why am I like this?" I wasn't asking why I was have anxiety attacks, I was asking a different question that I had no answer to before. It was like a deep thought rumbling in my subconscious that I couldn't identify, but I could feel. I was looking for something on my face, something physical that could somehow tell me what was wrong.Then, the thought came that changed everything."Why am I gay?"As soon as I thought this, everything suddenly fell into place, but it didn't make me feel better. I never thought those words before, they just never occurred in my mind. I knew I was attracted to men, but I was convinced before this moment that it was just a phase and that attraction to women would simply come later. I thought puberty started with attraction to men and that my true, inborn attraction for women would somehow overpower it as I continued going through puberty. But it never did. I noticed my attraction to men when I was 12/13 and I realized and 'accepted' that I was gay when I was 16. I felt weird, I felt scared, I felt strange because that was the night that I realized these feelings weren't going to go away. I realized that I was gay and that nothing was going to change that. I cried when it happened because I was very religious back then, and I was taught that homosexuality meant that I was going to hell and that God didn't love me.