By

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My name is K, I am asexual and panromantic and I found this out about myself pretty early on in middle school. I first came out to a close friend at the end of eighth grade and now I have come out to most everyone besides my family out of fear of rejection. When I entered high school I joined my high school gymnastics team. At first I was very scared they would be judging me. On the team there was this girl and for some reason I had this little feeling about her like I may have known her for something. She ended up not showing for part of the season but I did have a private message conversation with her about editing music, because part of gymnastics is the music. I forgot whatever strange idea I had about this girl and as the season went on I came out to my four closest teammates. The season lasted about 3 months and those could be the best 3 months of my life. Our team was such a family and I loved them as if they were my family. So if you're unfamiliar with the way high school sports work, there's a "conference" meet which determines if your varsity team moves to regionals and so on. The week of conference was quite possibly the most important week of my life. The week was important because it was the end of the season, and we had 3 meets in a week which was an unusual occurrence. I also went to a concert that week. Most importantly I came out that week. I consulted my close friend, who we can call R for this story. I asked R if she thought I should come out to the team and if she thought they would accept me, I always think negatively so it's good for me to get a second opinion. R not only told me that she thought everyone would accept but she told me I should come out as soon as possible, and she meant right that second in the group chat. I typed up my long paragraph about my sexuality and romantic orientation and sent it. This was during the school day during my lunch to be particular. I was shivering and crying a bit, terrified of responses. R replied first just in case others were afraid to reply. Soon replies started rolling in. The girl I had some idea of how I could have possibly seen before replied. She ended up coming out too. The next period I saw a teammate who was injured and she ran on her crutches to give me a huge hug and on the bus on the way to our last practice another sitting behind me tapped me on the head and said "you know, telling us is so brave and we all accept you, glad you can trust us". Lastly another teammate of mine actually showed interest and asked some questions which is important to me because I love when people ask questions because it shows they care. That's the story of how I came out to my gymnastics team, or my second family.