Kansas is my home. And despite the fact that I feel slightly nauseous admitting this, it isn’t completely awful. We have the world’s largest ball of twine, the world’s largest prairie dog statue, and the world’s largest Van Gogh repainting (none of which are particularly interesting, but all of which I have touched). We also have snow every Christmas, sunflowers that make me feel insecure in my height, and skies that look less like actual real atmospheric occurrences, and more like the coloring book of a very imaginative child.

I am, however, sometimes very justified in my complaints about Kansas. My hometown of Topeka, specifically, is where the Westboro Baptist Church is located. And even though they are a very extreme group, many of the people I grew up with shared their fundamental beliefs. My father used to be friends with several of their members. Sometimes, when affiliates of the church visit town, he lets them stay in our house with us.

I figured out I was gay halfway through my freshman year of high school. I had been attending the same small, private, k-12 Christian school since fourth grade. And while it wasn’t exactly the Westboro Baptist Church, it was definitely very far from perfect Christian love. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth times I heard the words “fag” and “dyke,” were from the mouth of one of my middle school teachers during our history class. In my tenth grade literature class, when we got to the inner ring of the seventh circle of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, our teacher asked us what we thought would be a fitting eternal punishment for homosexuals. One of my friends raised his hand and said, “I think they should be ripped apart, like how they ripped apart God’s plan for their life.” It’s amazing what people will say about you when they think you’re not there.

Obviously, coming out would not have been the best option for me at the time. But it would have killed me to completely play along with their hatred, so I fought back in whatever small ways I could. I refused to use traditional male pronouns when I talked about God, I tried to tie feminism into every academic paper and essay I wrote, and whenever we read Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Emily Dickinson, or William Shakespeare, I always reminded the class that these authors were very much not straight. Nothing I did or said directly challenged anyone’s core beliefs, so I felt safe, but by eleventh grade, you could see my teachers physically bracing themselves whenever I raised my hand. I loved it.

The summer before my senior year I began the very slow process of coming out. I told two of my friends from school, but it took the entire break for me to stop dropping hints and actually say it. A week before school started up again, I actually felt vaguely ready for once. While my support system was small, it was nice to have one. I had just gotten home from a sleepover when I received a call from my principal. She wanted to meet with me the next day so we could “address some issues.” I am an incredibly anxious person, so I spent the next twenty four hours wanting to throw up, wondering which of my multiple offenses and sins she wanted to discuss. But when I finally showed up in her office, I somehow wasn’t surprised at all by what she wanted to talk about. She asked me sit down, and then she sat down and folded her hands on the desk in front of her. She unfolded them a second later and started tapping her fingers against the wood like she always does when she’s uncomfortable. She sighed, and said that she heard some rumors about me over the summer.

The next fifteen minutes felt more like fifteen hours, and consisted of my principal slowly but surely forcing me to come out to her, to justify my existence to her. She rubbed the temples of her head, silently mouthed a couple words I couldn’t quite catch, and then she gave her offer. First, I would not come out to anyone else while I was still affiliated with the school. Second, I would tell the people I had already come out to (and anyone else who might ask), that I just had a brief period of confusion, and it is now behind me. And finally, third, that I would stop rocking the boat and making everyone uncomfortable. As long as I met these conditions, I would be allowed spend my senior year at the school. I agreed immediately. I didn’t even think about it. This is something I have been ashamed of ever since. I finally had the chance to stick up for myself, to stick up for something I believe in, to do something that could make actual change happen, but I was too scared. I grew up feeling the disappointment and disgust everyone felt towards people like me, and I allowed myself to internalize it, so somehow, part of me felt like it was a reasonable request. This was the point where I realize that even though it felt good to be a little subversive the last three years, it would take a lot more than that to actually make the school a safe place for me and anyone else who was in the same situation. It’s good to be brave, but you have to make sure you can be brave when it counts. I’ve tried to be braver since then. I don’t know if I can count the number of times I have used the exact words, “No, no, the Sodom and Gomorrah thing was about hospitality.”

While Kansas is not completely awful, it is mostly awful. And I just want to be the kind of person who is strong enough to make it less awful.