Hello.

"Hiding who you truly are isn't necessarily easy, but it's not something you really think about when you feel your survival is on the line. I never had the specific thought that I was hiding certain behaviors, and I never had the specific thought that my survival was on the line. It was just a given, it was reality. I had a thick, heavy mask and I had an idea of who every single person in my life needed to think I was in order to "get free". I had the whole thing planned out in the back of my head, which lead to me graduating a year early and moving out at 17. Leaving a situation that is harming you is the first step, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the situation leaves you. I was free, but I was still living within the constraint set forth by the people who raised me. It wasn't their fault - it was the way they were raised so in their heads it was the right way to raise children. It was normal. But, the normalized homophobia ate away at my identity until I found myself with so much self-hate that I corrected my own behavior without them even having to be there. It has taken years to shake off the residue of being raised with homophobia, and I am still affected by religious trauma. A few years ago, I started unpacking everything. Along the way, I've used music to regulate and express difficult feelings. In the songs that have come out of the experience, I hope to connect to other young, queer people struggling to find their true self through religious trauma and other hardships. Every single day that I live as my true self, every day that I express myself in the way I always knew I needed to, I come closer to true healing."