Thank you for joining our project Clayton and sharing your story.
"Growing up feeling different was no easy feat. I was suicidal, unhappy and felt I had nowhere to belong. I had no LGBT+ role models because in my mind these people were monsters or an object of ridicule and I didn’t want to be like that.
Accepting myself as a gay man was not an overnight change but an ongoing journey of unlearning what society constructed me to be and embracing my queerness. That also means moving away from the supposed standard definition of how one must look to be gay and loveable. My body is not a piece of meat and moreso I will not allow myself to be butchered to fit anyone’s definition.
In the journey of understanding myself, I felt compelled to understand other LGBT+ people. By loving myself first, I was able to seek beauty in all that is different."