In the year since the video went up, there's been an overwhelmingly positive response, which has been amazing to experience both on the level of the internet and within my personal friend group. It doesn't mean that it's a perfect experience. But it's a whole experience, which means that it comes with the really wonderful moments and the painful ones, where I had people who didn't step up when I needed them to.

It made me realize that with something as big as coming out, patience is absolutely key to navigating it. I wanted everyone to immediately be on the same page with me. Some people were, but some people weren’t. My identity was shifting in their eyes, and while my coming out was not about them necessarily, it does still affect other people. I think it’s important to be aware of that. I don’t think it should stop you from pursuing your truth, but I think it’s important to understand that it takes patience and understanding on both ends.

This is something that I had been sitting with for a while. It took my entire life up to that point to come to terms with my identity, so I think that allowing people time and space to also come to terms with it is totally fair and okay.

The upside to coming out on a larger scale is that, even though I still have to come out again and again to people, I don't have to do it at the level that other people who come out on a more personal, private level do. The negative part of coming out on such a large scale is that I deal almost constantly with challenges to my identity. There's not a day that goes by that I don't get called a liar online, or have someone say that I'm doing this for attention. It's pretty much every awful thing you can imagine hitting you in your most vulnerable place.

But even though the words I read can be exceptionally hurtful some days, I've learned how to navigate things. And that's forced me to learn a lot about myself and made me more confident in my identity.