Hey... I'm Max. I'm a seventeen-year-old gay teenager in Walled Lake, Michigan (about 23 miles NW of Detroit). I've been out now for two years and I will be starting my senior year of high school on Tuesday. I'm pretty much the only openly gay male student in my school. Yeah I have friends who are supportive of me, and I have a friend outside of school who is gay who can help me with these things, but it's hard being one in a crowd of two thousand. My dad and stepmother and her family are non-judgmental about it, but my mom and her family continue to have issues with it. She doesn't have a problem with homosexuality in itself, but it's because I'm her oldest son, and the fact that the life she had planned for me fell apart when I came out, that bugs her. And my grandparents, whenever my mom or someone starts up, don't defend me. In fact they blatantly refuse to discuss it. High school has been Hell for me, even before I came out. I've been bullied since I was eleven, and its never stopped. I mean, it hasn't always been for the same reason, but for the most part its been consistent on because I'm perceived as "different" in some way. Whether it was for having Autism, or now because I'm gay, its always been because whatever made me different angered people. But even before I came out, I was made fun of for being a little more effeminate and more emotional, and for having an interest in theater and singing. Not that those are "gay things" but they tend to be perceived as only partaken in by "homos and fag lovers". Hell last year I was only one of two gay male students in my school's choirs. But the thing that annoys me the most is when my so-called "friends" make fun of me for being emotional and more effeminate, at least by their standards. I don't appreciate it and I don't care if they're supposedly "allowed to" because they're my friends. If they really cared about me they would stop because they know it annoys me. But now I'm just trying to forget all that, get through my senior year and get into the college I want to go to. Actually if anyone on here attends Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, please message me so I can get an idea of what life is like at GVSU for LGBT students. And I have goals for myself. I want to be a writer and musician. To some degree I want to stay involved in theater. One day I still do want to get married and have a family, regardless of all the pain I've felt because of other guys. But that's a whole other story... So yeah, that's me. If you want to get to know me, feel free. I'm pretty cool, at least I think so. But be warned, I'm really weird and emotional and generally all-together fucked up.
