Before you read this one: Reise's story includes a suicide attempt at seventeen. If that is close to where you are right now, the Trevor Project is free and confidential and answers twenty-four hours a day, by phone, text or chat. In the US and Canada you can also call or text 988. You do not have to be in crisis to use either one.
Reise B. sent us five years in one paragraph.
"When I was 16, I told my sister (15) and brother (13) I was gay & had a crush on a girl. My sister couldn't care less but my brother didn't believe me at all. When I was 17 I attempted suicide, and one of the reasons included in my letters was that I felt disgusting liking girls and knew my family would hate me. A few days later, my mum told me I was ruining my life over a phase. Well, instead of hiding, I slowly started getting gayer: splashing rainbows everywhere, listening to LGBT music, talking about girls, etc. It became the worst kept secret; nobody was acknowledging it but everybody knew. Fast forward to 21 and my mum admitted for the first time I was a lesbian. Now at 22 I openly have a girlfriend, and all my close family and anybody that I have on Facebook know. Things truly do get better."
What her mother said, and when
The hardest sentence in this story is not the one about the attempt. It is the one immediately after it.
"A few days later, my mum told me I was ruining my life over a phase."
Days after her daughter nearly died, with letters in front of her explaining exactly why, the response was that she was ruining her life over a phase. That is what it looks like when a parent is confronted with the cost of their own position and reaches for the position instead. There is no reading of that which makes it Reise's fault, and she does not offer one.
We are leaving it in because softening it would be dishonest, and because a lot of people reading this got some version of that sentence too.
Then she went the other way
Here is the part that is genuinely unusual. Most people, after that, go quieter.
"Well, instead of hiding, I slowly started getting gayer: splashing rainbows everywhere, listening to LGBT music, talking about girls, etc."
She did not make another announcement. She stopped editing. Rainbows in the house, the music she actually liked, saying the true thing when a girl came up in conversation. It took years, and it worked, and it worked without a single further conversation of the kind that had already failed twice.
"It became the worst kept secret; nobody was acknowledging it but everybody knew."
That is a real strategy, and it is available to people for whom the direct version is not safe. It moves the work off one terrifying sentence and spreads it across a hundred small ones that each cost almost nothing. Nobody can throw you out over a playlist.
Five years, and the word
At 21 her mother said the word "lesbian" out loud about her daughter, for the first time. At 22 there is a girlfriend and everybody knows.
Five years between "a phase" and the word. Reise closes with "things truly do get better," and having earned it, she gets to say it. But notice the shape of the thing she is describing: not a moment when it got better, a stretch she had to live through without any evidence it would. If you are inside that stretch now, the absence of evidence is not evidence. It is just the length of the stretch.
If you are somewhere in the middle of this
Our coming out stories page is filling up with accounts like Reise's from across the community, and it exists because reading someone else's version is the thing that makes your own feel survivable.
Please talk to somebody trained for it rather than to us. The Trevor Project is free, confidential and staffed around the clock for LGBTQ+ young people, and in the US and Canada 988 reaches a crisis counsellor by call or text.
And if you have a story of your own, we would like to read it. There is a form at the bottom of the stories page. You choose whether your name appears on it.
If a flag is not safe where you are, a pin or a ring carries the same thing more quietly, and you can read what each of the flag designs actually means on our flag meanings page. All sales benefit LGBTQ+ charities.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
