,""You just need to kill yourself, Fag!" This was only a minimal portion of the signs that people were holding up on the television screen before me. As a seven year old, all I knew to believe was what my mother believed in. I looked over to my mother, who was sitting on the couch across the room. She had this look of complete disgust on her face and she muttered, "I hope all the fags burn in Hell; God punish them all ".
For the next few years, I believed that people who were attracted to the same sex were inhuman, completely disgusting, and were the scum of the Earth -- or I thought I did. When I was eleven, my mother, brother, and I moved across the county. I made new friends, three of which became closer to me than any of the others. One day, we were strolling through the halls, laughing and cutting up as always, then they pulled me aside, surrounding me by a few lockers. I felt like I was locked in a W.W.E. wrestling ring with no way out. They proceeded to calmly explain that they had something important that they needed to tell me. Everything that they could possibly have to tell me ran through my head. As we were all girls, nonetheless best friends, I thought we told each other everything. Boy, was I wrong.
One girl stood there shaking and turning really pale, while the others calmly began to express the statement, "We know you are repulsed by homosexuality and you do not believe in it, but just know that we do ". I felt like someone had lit a fire in the pit of my stomach, but just barely enough to ignite embers, due to the amount of disgust and anger I had toward this. They noticed my look, and then one girl, who happened to be the closest to me out of the three, stepped forward and explained that she was attracted only to girls and not towards guys at all. My stomach fell to the floor. The embers in my stomach grew to flames, bursting through my lungs, and out my ears. I felt my eyes well up with tears of anger, and I shoved through their barricade around me.