I Have Something to Tell You

by Chasten Glezman Buttigieg

One of my biggest regrets about those years is that I was so hard on myself in every respect. Even after my parents and I made up, I was so obsessed with how people would react to me that I incorporated the horrible things I suspected they thought of me into my self-image, regardless of whether they actually expressed them. I never stopped to consider what I believed, what I thought, and it prevented me from making good choices for myself in many areas of my life. At the time I didn’t know that what I was feeling were common symptoms of internalized homophobia. Surely I don’t have value, I thought. My feelings and emotions are not valid. I am an embarrassment.