Discover Kevin's world
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I learned early on how to disappear. I hid behind masks and rehearsed versions of myself because the real me felt dangerous to reveal. It was exhausting—so much so that life itself began to feel like a weight I couldn’t carry.
I buried every honest part of who I was because the world around me made it clear, in sermons and whispers alike, that people like me were wrong. Unnatural. Unworthy. No one said it to my face, but I heard it everywhere, and knowing deep down they were talking about me, even if they didn't know it, was its own kind of lifelong torment. Most of those people weren’t cruel—they were repeating what they’d been taught—but the damage still rooted itself in me.
Eventually you reach a crossroads: accept who you are or lose yourself entirely. I reached that point. I was tired of loneliness, tired of feeling broken, tired of believing I was a mistake. I lived with a constant void, always on the outside looking in, waiting for a place that never opened.
It took decades to realize the parts of me I feared weren’t flaws at all—they were simply me. I learned to stop apologizing for existing. I learned to breathe. I learned that the real me deserved not just to live, but to thrive.
That’s why I write. As a kid, the page was the only place where I could make up a world that I could determine the outcome and control the narrative. This was something like a therapy for me, even if I didn't know it at the time. Sometimes I would write stories that reflected my real self but, then, quickly destroyed them in fear someone would find them. I usually wrote stories of what I so longed to be. A popular, straight guy that got all the girls and drove the fast cars. My dreams come true. Hiding the tortured, lonely, shy, backward boy that I was. I would shut myself off in my bedroom far away from anyone that could see me, because I hated what I saw. My writing now, is completely unapologetic about the things of myself that I used to never show others. My hope is that I can impact others that are like what I used to be. Even in this different, more accepting landscape, there's still a whole world of boys that hide. It's time to pull off that mask and stop hiding who you really are.
