When I was eleven years old, I told my mom I was gay. I didn’t really understand the weight of what I was saying—I just knew that I had feelings for boys and thought I should be honest about it. I expected questions. Maybe even some awkward silence. What I got was a phone call—to our church.
Within days, I was enrolled in what they called a biblical healing program. At first, I thought it might be something like youth group or Bible study, but it wasn’t. It was something entirely different. Four appointments a month, every month, for four years. One with the head pastor. One with a masculinity coach. Two with an “ex-gay” man from the congregation who said he had overcome same-sex attraction through prayer and now lived a “blessed heterosexual life.”
The pastor’s sessions were the worst. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream. He just talked at me. Verse after verse about how people like me were an abomination, how God gave us over to our sinful desires, how there was still time to repent. I sat there quietly, nodding when appropriate, feeling smaller and smaller. I was a child, being told I was going to hell before I had even had my first kiss.
The masculinity coach was a different kind of punishment. He wasn’t there to save my soul—he was there to “toughen me up.” He was a retired cop who made me do what he called “manly things.” We painted walls, moved storage boxes, learned how to throw a football. He corrected my posture, my walk, the way I spoke. I remember having to redo handshakes over and over again until they were firm and “manly” enough for his standards. I squeezed his hand with everything I had just to get it over with. He policed my body language like it was a battleground for my salvation.
Then there was the ex-gay man. He told me about how he had once been like me—confused, tempted, lost. He said he’d slept with a man once, prayed for forgiveness, and God had cured him. Now he had a wife and two kids and wanted the same for me. I remember thinking: one experience doesn’t make you gay, and one prayer doesn’t make you straight. But I didn’t say that out loud. I just smiled and nodded and tried to believe him, even though I didn’t.
At first, I wanted it to work. I prayed every night, desperate to change. I didn’t want to be gay—I wanted to be loved by my mother, accepted by my church, safe from the fire-and-brimstone horror stories they laid at my feet. I tried so hard to be good. But no matter how hard I prayed, nothing changed. I still had crushes on boys. I still felt like myself, no matter how many Bible verses I memorized or how many footballs I threw.
By the time I was fifteen, I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like a shell of myself. I started fantasizing about running away, or worse. One day I looked in the mirror and thought: it’s either lie or die. So I lied. I told them I had started liking girls. I even made up a story about how their perfume turned me on. They were overjoyed. They believed I had been cured. The prayers had worked. They let me graduate.
I kept the lie going through the rest of high school, but inside, I was numb. I went through the motions. I stayed quiet. I counted the days until college, where I could finally breathe.
I came out again when I was 22. This time over the phone. I told my mom I had lied. That I was still gay. That I had never stopped being gay. She cried. She didn’t apologize. She said, “I was just doing what I thought was best for you.” We’ve never talked about it since.
She still reads the Bible when I visit. She never asks about my life. Never wants to meet anyone I date. When I bring up anything personal, she changes the subject or reads a verse out loud to fill the space. I’ve stopped trying to make her see me.
It’s been over a decade since I left that program. I’ve been in real therapy. I’ve made friends who love and accept me. I’ve laughed until I cried at gay bars and cried until I laughed in therapy. I’ve built a life that feels honest. That feels mine.
But there’s still damage. Sometimes I flinch when I say “I’m gay,” like it’s a confession. I still get nervous holding hands in public. Certain songs, certain church smells, certain phrases—they send me back to that cold chair under fluorescent lights. Sometimes I still wonder what my childhood would’ve looked like if I hadn’t spent it being told to erase myself.
Conversion therapy didn’t make me straight. It made me quiet. It made me anxious. It made me think love was a reward you had to earn by pretending to be someone else. It took years to unlearn that.
But I did. I’m still here.
I wear what I want. I talk how I want. I date who I want. I live. I laugh. I exist without asking for permission. I’m not the boy they tried to fix—I’m the man they couldn’t break.
And if you’re going through something similar, if someone’s trying to make you feel like who you are is wrong, I want you to hear this loud and clear: You are not broken. You are not a mistake. You do not need to be fixed.
You just need to be free.