Opening up the navy blue curtains beside my bed, I saw the snow pummel to the ground outside my house. Winter was finally here. The tears had somewhat dried from my face after I had finished crying around fifteen minutes before. This wasn’t just a one-time thing but rather a nightly routine after I had finished screaming at myself inside my head that I liked girls and that I was straight. The blue light above my head shined through my hands, glistening from the moisture still left on my fingertips. I tried to slowly pull myself out of my “sad boy hours” and opened my ears to hear my mom and dad talking and watching “The Walking Dead”.

I needed to finish my Algebra 1 homework and I thought about how could I have so much homework being only a freshman. Of course, I was busy trying to “convert” myself to the “heterosexual lifestyle” which was not going too well. My mother and father’s voices soon faded away, leaving me with the deep crackling breaths of my body which was trying to recover from the panic attack I had just gone through. I tried, once again, to make myself stop thinking about being gay and looked back to my math homework. I flipped through the packet of complex quadratics when I was met with a calm voice.

“Hey bud, I’m heading to the gym. Be home later,” my father said as he cracked my door open.

“Alright love you,” I said while rushing to make sure all my tears were gone.

The door closed shut and I tried to wrap my head around the fact of why I ever need to know about quadratics. Opening my computer to check the answer key, I saw a message from my best friend Gretchen. She wanted to Facetime and I knew what that meant. Gretchen talking about Gretchen and Will talking about Gretchen. Good times, am I right? I clicked Facetime in the bottom left corner of my screen and called Gretchen. We began to talk about her love life and how she and her boyfriend, Ryan, were doing. While she was explaining that mess of a story I was focused on the way her words ended in a lisp of “-th” and how her fake eyelashes were so beautiful. All I wanted to do was talk about her makeup collection and tell her how hot I thought her boyfriend was, but of course, I kept my mouth shut and constantly pushed back my hair just like I saw all the boys do at my school.

“What about you Will, how’s your love life?”

I was put in a quick state of panic and suddenly I had asked her to turn off all her lights and be quiet. The blue light from my lamp disappeared from my walls and hands and I was faced with a curious best friend and a broken heart. I knew I could just say it. I knew it would be alright with her. I knew she would support me. But the silence was the only thing my brain would allow to escape from my body. Her eyelashes were still gleaming from the screen light and I continued to focus on them until I could quietly say,

“I’m gay.”

There was an uproar of cheering coming from the computer and all I could do was cry. The tears soon turned to laughter with Gretchen telling me how amazing I was and how she was going to be the surrogate for my babies. I had finally said the one thing I never thought I could say. The snow started to blow even harder like Mother Nature was saying congratulations to me.

“You should tell your Mom”

I thought to myself, “Excuse me? Umm, repeat that for me.”

“Come on Will you already told me just tell your Mom”

Once again my body resorted to silence. I didn’t know if she was being serious but apparently, she was because her eyebrow furrowed and I knew that meant she was being serious.

“Just write her a note or something”

“Perfect,” I thought to myself. That way I can just give her the note, run back upstairs and cry. Turning on my blue light, I scribbled a note down on a ripped sheet of paper and told Gretchen I would call her back after I had finished giving it to my mom.

“Bye lover!” she said as she ended the call.

I finished the note, ran downstairs, slid the note underneath my Mom’s bathroom and quickly dashed upstairs leaving my mom in a state of mystery and chaos. Again the tears started to explode from my eyes.

“What have I just done! What if they hate me? What if they kick me out.” I thought to myself.

After ten minutes of yet another panic attack where I was paralyzed, my mother cracks open my door and walks in. My eyes had naturally closed and I was more frightened than the birds in the blizzard outside my house were to open them. Slowly I opened my eyes and the face of true joy was gleaming down upon me.

“I love you no matter what. You are just better because you are proud of who you are. No one is ever going to take that away from you. You are an amazing person Will and the best son I could ask for.”

The tears had started to fall from my mother’s face as she started to say those kind words that I had wanted to hear since the first time I had noticed how cute a boy was. My mom jumped into my bed cuddling me and repeating over and over again how much she loved me. All I could do was think about how happy I was and notice how hard the snow had gotten. Mother nature was snowing tears of joy. I guess winter was finally here.