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I thought it was about time I post this, a copy of my "Coming Out" letter I sent to everyone.

A few people know, it's about time everyone did. I'm gay. Judge me, hate me, ignore me, whatever. There comes a point when you have to stop worrying about other people’s judgmental nature and start living your life.

To risk a cliché, life is not always a bed of roses: it frequently brings unusual risks to make itself more challenging. In my life, I have taken an invaluable risk that has eventually revealed a variety of strengths within me that I had no idea where there.

Living in a closed society where people fail to tolerate diversity, I cannot enjoy an uneventful life because of being gay. I am not after universal recognition: what I just need is absolute understanding from the people I love, who mean the world to me. Desperately wanting their approval.

The moment I first told someone- only a few seconds- seemed like forever to me. I was expecting some kind of reaction, but in fact they were left with nothing but confusing thoughts. I had to face that hard time of inconvenience and loneliness for several months and needed to seek solace to relieve that unbearable pain. Amazingly, I found some remarkable personality strengths within myself.

According to Martha Washington, “the greater part of one’s happiness and misery depends on one’s dispositions and not one circumstances” After a lot of soul-searching, I know that I never want to try to be something I am not happy to be. The best I can do is to keep strong within myself, safe in the knowledge that I have done nothing wrong. However, we live in a world of bigotry and through no fault of our own, we gay people, like any minority, are often targets of intolerance and hatred. Life is never fair and that is something we must accept.

To be positive about this, I always tell myself that the trying circumstances of being gay are nothing but a metamorphosis. Moreover, I know that nothing is permanent. This period of discomfort will pass and acceptance will come about. All I need is to give people some time to come to terms with me being gay, because I personally have successfully taken the greatest risk of my life and transformed this obstacle into an opportunity to paint the true portrait of myself.

I can some this up in the following: from my optimistic viewpoint, I see that life favours me because the vicissitudes of being gay have definitely strengthened my personality and one day I will look back and see how much I have gained from this first great and irreversible risk that I am ever proud to have boldly taken.