As a gay kid, I felt the instinct to hide. I feel it again now.

I wasn’t too young, at age 6, to hear that “queers deserve a bullet between the eyes,” nor too young, at 7, to be called a “faggot” by my classmates, despite not knowing what the word meant. I wasn’t too young to start skipping the classes where I knew I’d be bullied right under the nose of an apathetic teacher, or too young to reach the conclusion I’d be better off dead. Before I was allowed to be a kid, before I had the chance to figure myself out, I was given an all-consuming directive, spoken and unspoken: Hide.