Being Gay Is ..., by Ricky

Being gay is a many splintered thing. A gay person faces many splinters during their lifetime.  If these splinters are not removed and the wounds treated properly, the splinters will remain under the skin working their way deeper and deeper into a person’s psyche infecting the brain with festering and toxic mental traumas.

One such trauma is the lack of knowledge resulting in confusion as to why one feels “different” from other boys while growing up; resulting in making interpersonal mistakes at a young age and becoming labeled, shunned, isolated, or assaulted. These negative experiences last for years or a lifetime if not diagnosed and treated.

Since the seeds of a happy life are sown from the moment we are born, traumatic splinters must be removed as soon as discovered lest their toxicity prevents the seeds of happiness from growing and propagating.

In America, gay orientation is slowly being tolerated on the way to becoming acceptable to the heterosexual culture.  I anticipate that today’s gay youth may have fewer splinters in their lives and may live to see a time when gay boys and girls can become complete and mentally undamaged or traumatized by toxic attitudes towards them.

© 29 September 2014 

About the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.