Essay prompt: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Three years ago, I stood on a street corner with my best friend wearing a (hideous) bright orange vest while directing cyclists in a race, and found myself putting my soul on display – much like those vests put us on display for everyone within a two-mile radius. However, the vest was the least of my worries at that moment. Sickening fear, adrenaline, and uncertainty coursed through me, but as I do with anything unpleasant, I channeled them into something positive. Using that nervous energy, I forced my mouth to open and form two words that were the start down a long road of self-discovery: “I’m gay.”

High school was when I began taking long, hard looks in the metaphorical mirror at who I was and who I wanted to be, rather than how society wanted me to be. What I found in that mirror was frightening. I kept wondering why I wasn’t finding guys attractive like my friends did, and why instead, for as long as I could remember, I thought that girls were beautiful. I prayed for months that something would change, but at some point, it finally hit me that this wasn’t going to go away.

My initial misery didn’t originate in homophobia; I grew up in an accepting family, knowing and respecting gay church members, next-door neighbors, and friends. It originated in having to come to grips with the fact that the story I had heard all my life and expected for myself – girl meets guy, falls in love, and they grow old together – would only ever be fiction for me. It originated in feeling that my sexual orientation would be like that ugly, bright orange vest: something that people would fixate on, dislike, or – worst of all – use to define me. I felt as though my entire perspective was crumbling like so many bricks in an earthquake, yet I was overcome by a panic of losing myself, of being consumed by this one characteristic, because I believed others wouldn’t be able to see beyond that part of me. However, my base values of balance, adaptability, logic, and empathy allowed me to take in these emotions and all that I learned about myself in order to grow instead of fall.

I know that my life will never be what I expected it to be, and I know that there are people in the world who would assault and even kill me given the chance based on this one characteristic, but I also recognize that this is an extreme on a broad scale. My sexuality is merely one characteristic of many, only one article of clothing in an outfit – just an orange vest accenting a volunteer getup. As long as I know that, I cannot and will not be defined by it – not by others and, more importantly, not by myself. Now, as the co-president of my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, I have the chance to help those who are experiencing what I went through and to make the future a place where others won’t have to feel the way I did. I am extremely grateful to be able to show them how to recognize their worth beyond any single characteristic – as a student, athlete, friend, musician, and artist, but above all, as a person.

That bright orange vest is no longer frightening or overwhelming. Instead, it’s just a part of the bigger picture of who I am.