Growing up, I'd always idolized my cousin Kenneth. He was five years older than me, which, to a boy as young as I was, instantly made him crazy cool. It only added to my awe that he seemed to be good at absolutely everything. Sports, school, music, video games—you name it. He was perfect in my eyes. My idol.

    It started when I was five, the first time I met him that I was old enough to actually remember. He showed me all of his Pokémon cards—he had so many—and even gave me a few. That was when I decided that he was awesome.

    I never saw him too often. His visits were biannual, since his family lived all the way in Manhattan. That was another thing I loved about Kenny—as a kid growing up in Nowhere, Nebraska, his stories of the Big Apple amazed me. The busy streets, the museums and theaters, the subways and skyscrapers, the diverse people; I'd never experienced anything even close in my catholic, suburban town. Kenny always promised he would take me someday, and I believed him. Years later, my dreams still lived in the Big Apple.

I'd always wanted a brother growing up. The only sibling I had was my little sister, and she bored me with her Barbies and My Little Pony. So, despite our scarce interaction, I saw Kenny as a big brother figure. He was smart and athletic and charismatic, which meant a lot to a shy, scrawny kid who'd barely dodged being held back in the first grade.

It was no shock that my favorite parts of each year were when Aunty Lacy and Uncle Brock came to visit. For four weeks a year—three in the summer and one in the winter—I got to spend time with Kenny. I would hang onto him like a leech whenever he was around, but he never seemed to mind. Maybe that was weird, since most preteen boys wouldn't want to hang out with their clingy little cousin, but he seemed to enjoy spending time with me, playing video games or kicking around a soccer ball or doing whatever we were doing.

That all changed when I turned ten. Kenny was fifteen at the time, and his family had joined us for their yearly summer visit as usual. Our parents called my cousin and I to join them for dinner; we'd been playing soccer in our backyard. I didn't want to go inside yet—Kenny had just laughed and told me that I was getting better at soccer than him. After that, I wanted to keep playing, to show off and earn more praise. Our parents insisted, though, so we reluctantly went inside, not expecting the hell that was about to break loose.

Dinner started off fine. At one point or another, my mom started prying the way aunts do, asking Kenny how school was and what clubs he was in, how his friends were and if he had a girlfriend. Casually, as if it were nothing, Kenny said that he didn't want a girlfriend. That he didn't like girls that way, but he had a sort of, unconfirmed, boyfriend. I thought that was cool. Weird, yeah, but since it was Kenny, and everything Kenny did was awesome, I instantly approved. My parents didn't.

The rest happened so quickly, I couldn't keep up. All I could recall were shocked expressions, then my parents yelling, his parents yelling back, yelling, yelling, yelling. A few words stood out—disgusting, homophobic, small-minded, sinful, faggot. Some of them, I'd never heard.

Within thirty minutes, Aunt Lacy and Uncle Brock had stormed out, taking an overwhelmed, crying Kenny with them.

I was ten years old, I had no idea what was happening. When I asked my parents, they simply said that Kenny was sick and that they didn't want him to get me sick as well. That night, my dad suggested we pray as a family. I remember the way he asked God to "heal that family" and "cure Kenny" and "protect Nathaniel from their sinful ways". As he tucked me into bed, he kissed my forehead and told me to be wary of people like Kenny. That they would try to corrupt me. I argued that Kenny was nice. He said he had thought so, too.

That Sunday, at church, the pastor preached about homosexuality, a word I was relatively unaware of. I understood its meaning soon enough, though, and I wondered if the sermon was a request by my father and mother. The news about Kenny spread quickly, and suddenly kids I didn't know were approaching me at school, asking me what it was like to have a "faggot" cousin. Adults would hold my hands and pray for me and hug me whenever they saw me, as if there had been a death in our family. I suppose, in a way, there was, because Kenny was dead to us now.

It wasn't easy to shake my love for him. He was my favorite cousin, my brother, my idol. But my parents worked hard. They took down pictures of him. They cut off all communication with that part of the family. And every chance they received, they emphasized the danger of homosexuality and the "evil" inside of Kenny for practicing it and his parents for supporting it. The entire town seemed to be determined to make me believe that Kenny, what he was, and how his family supported him, were wrong. I did. Of course I did.

After all, my parents and my town were all that I knew. Both had raised me and shaped me into the child I was. Their words were gold. It took time, but eventually, I didn't idolize Kenny anymore. I saw him as what everyone around me wanted me too: a disgusting sinner. They made it clear that being anything other than straight was wrong, and I trusted them. The model image I'd had of Kenny had been completely, totally, ruthlessly destroyed.

Then, in seventh grade, I met a boy. Or maybe 'met' was the wrong word. I'd been introduced to him sometime before, because everybody knew everybody in our town and he'd been living there as long as I had—which was, to clarify, since birth. Yet it wasn't until I was twelve years old that I began to know him.

I actually met his twin brother, Shawn Morgan, first. We were on our middle school's soccer team together. I didn't know Shawn—or anybody on the team—very well, because I was still shy and nervous and had a hard time bonding with other boys, especially popular ones like them who had no interest in a quiet kid like me.

Our end-of-the-season party was at Shawn's house that year. When all of the pizza was finished and the boys had all clustered into their friend groups, I found myself, unsurprisingly, alone on the back porch. That was when Lucas Morgan approached me.

He was scrawny like me, but that was where our similarities ended. Where my hair was blonde, his was black. Where my eyes were blue, his were green. Where I was shy and isolated, he was charismatic and popular like his brother. Yet, unlike his brother, Lucas actually took an interest it talking to me. Suddenly, the party didn't seem so bad.

It only made sense that we became friends. Lucas was nice and funny and quirky and had a shiny charizard. We would talk at school in classes that I hadn't even realized we had together. I liked him.

Too much.

We were only a few weeks into our friendship when I started noticing that my heart would beat faster and my palms would get sweaty when he smiled at me. I realized how pretty his light green eyes were, how pretty his face was in general. I was crushing on him.

That was when I cut him off. In a panic, I blocked his number and avoided him and completely deleted him from my life, just like I'd deleted Kenny. I couldn't delete the impact he'd left on me, though.

Because, as I continued to grow to thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, I realized that Lucas wasn't the only boy I noticed. It didn't help that boys, including myself, were all starting to exercise more, growing less lanky and more muscular. Girls were getting better too—curvier and prettier—but I hardly noticed. I tried to notice, but no matter how much I forced myself to appreciate a young lady's beauty, I couldn't make myself want it. Even as I became more attractive and outgoing and gorgeous girls started flirting with me and competing for my attention, I could only pretend to flirt back. I didn't want to pretend.

I understood what was happening by the time I was sixteen. I was the one thing my parents would never want me to be, the one thing I'd never want to be. I was totally, unquestionably gay. That wasn't, in any way, okay with me.

It started off with denial. I told myself that I couldn't be gay. It wasn't possible. I was normal, and any weird feelings I had were a phase.

The second stage was anger, because I was gay. When I glanced at the other soccer players changing in the locker rooms, it wasn't because something strange had caught my eye. It was unfair. It was so fucking unfair! What did I ever do? Sure, I wasn't the best guy around—popularity changes people. But I surely wasn't the worst, was I? Why did I have to be cursed? Why was I such a faggot?

The final stage—which had enveloped me during my junior year and refused to dissipate since—was despair. Despair because I would never be the man my parents wanted me to be. Despair because I would go to hell. Despair because I was a monster. Despair because I would never be able to love, or like, or even tolerate myself.

After all, I'd been raised homophobic. My family was, my school was, my town was. I hated gay people, I truly did. I hated my cousin Kenneth. I hated Lucas Morgan, who was outed in sophomore year. Oh, I really hated Lucas Morgan. But the hatred I had for him, or Kenny, or any enemy I'd come to know, didn't compare to the despise I held for myself.

You'd think that the strain of carrying this burden, the burden of being something so horrible, would lessen with time. That I'd become more used to it, that it wouldn't still plague my thoughts every night after nearly two years of realization.

That was about as far from the truth as one could get. The longer I had to keep this dirty secret, the longer I had to watch Lucas Morgan get picked on in the hallways knowing I deserved the same myself, the less sleep I seemed to get.

Especially since the one thing that had kept me sane for the entirety of my sophomore year was the rule I'd set for myself to never act on my sexuality, emotionally or physically. Just because I was gay didn't mean I had to show it, or even think it. Maybe if I cut boys out of my life, I could get them out of my heart, just like I'd done to Kenny and Lucas. Kenny was no longer my cousin, and Lucas was no longer my crush, so why couldn't boys no longer be the objects of my interest?

At least, that was the plan. But of course, nothing can ever be that simple. It might've actually worked, you know, if Lucas fucking Morgan hadn't decide to weasel his way back into my mind at the end of Junior year. If I'd  never gone to see the school's production of Wicked with a date. Because maybe then I wouldn't have been reduced to a puddle of awe as I watched Lucas Morgan perform. Maybe then I wouldn't have caught a certain bitch called 'feelings'.

     It didn't help that there was a new player on the school soccer team this year—senior year. You guessed it: Lucas Morgan.