“It’s been 100 percent better than hiding myself.”

Kayla McCay first suspected her relationship with the LGBTQ community in elementary school.

“I was always super invested in the gay rights movement and when I heard people say offensive things, I would get upset and didn’t really let myself realize that it was because it was about me,” said the sophomore English major.

It wasn’t until high school that Kayla accepted she was a lesbian, she said.

McCay came out to her closest friends the summer after her senior year of high school. She said she felt the need after someone in her friend circle began saying offensive remarks about homosexuals.

“This person was supposed to be semi-my friend and he doesn’t know it, but he’s saying these things about me,” she said. “I sort of had this realization that I need to tell someone.”

Kayla knew that her mother would be supportive, but it was still hard for her to come out, she said.

“It’s going to be hard no matter who you’re telling,” she said. “Even if you know in your heart they’re going be fine with it, it’s still hard and it’s still scary, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, ever.”

Kayla said those who are looking to come out should do it on their own terms.

“Don’t let anyone else take it away from you and make it about them. Do it when you feel the time is right,” she said. “And if you have to wait a month or years, then do that because it’s no one’s business but your own.”

Kayla met her current girlfriend after they mutually came out to each other and experienced support from her friends and family, she said.

“I’ve have a lot of positivity in my life since coming out,” McCay said. “For me, it’s been 100 percent better than hiding myself.”

“It is not a process you have to go through by yourself”

Around the 6th grade, Chase Braun could tell something was different.

The Jasper, Indiana native waited until he was 19 before openly admitting to being gay.

He first told some of his close friends, then finally, his parents.

Braun said that his friends had already suspected it and his parents took the news well. He said he remembers his mom saying, “We will always love you no matter what.”

Coming out was a relief, he said, but he worried how people would view his brother and parents. Many members of his “very conservative and close-minded community” did not take kindly to Braun’s revelation.

During his junior year of high school, Braun joined the color guard. He said students would sometimes yell hateful things at him during halftime performances. Also, students often teased him as he walked down hallways at school.

“I went through a lot of [bullying],” Braun said.“And not just from students.”

Braun said teachers looked at him differently and staff members of the marching band talked badly of him when he joined the color guard.

Mostly he just brushed off the remarks, he said.

“We were all kids in high school,” he said. “I kind of expected it.”

Braun said other LGBT students shouldn’t feel alone because there is always someone to talk to or places to go.

“It is not a process you have to go through by yourself,” Braun said.

“I’ve been in situations where I’ve had friends come out to their parents and they haven’t had the same luxuries as me, and I’ve been there to help them and support them,” Braun said. “Whether it’s a good or bad situation, there is always somebody that can be there.”

Braun said nowadays it is a lot easier to come out, especially in a university setting.

“I think that the generation ahead of us—our parents, are more okay with it than the parents were in the past,” he said.