sent by carson

My dad gave me advice a while after coming out, he told me that I will face hate, and people who will see me as lower than them. This was not news to me, as I have already been on the giving side of that for many years while closeted. I’m 6’2 240 pounds so I’ve never experienced harassment from anyone in person, or at least not to me. I was at a bar one time and saw a guy who was small in stature who could not have weighed more than 150 pounds getting harassed for how he was dressed and the way he carried himself. He was being called slur after slur, and after overhearing I realized that I had an opportunity to stick up for this helpless guy just trying to enjoy himself. I walked over to the guy harassing him, and told him “So you’re twice this mans size harassing him? You want to call him a f*ggot? Call me one. C’mon tough guy” This man clearly didn’t expect to be called out for something he’d assumably been getting away with for years. He could not stop stuttering over his words to find a response to get me off his back. It is amazing how fragile hateful people are when you back them in a corner. Eventually the guy huffed away, but the damage he had done to this young man was already done, and despite me intervening, he still felt the need to leave. I told him it is not okay to let people like that dictate your life and how you want to live. He was thankful but nonetheless left after the situation had ended.

With the events that had unfolded a few days prior, and after my return to Georgia, I found myself almost numb with feelings. How could my parents give me something like that to govern me? I know they apologized but that does not really make up for the fact that they did it in the first place. Could anyone just do awful stuff and because they are misinformed that makes it forgivable? I should consider myself lucky as some parents completely disown their children at the news of them being gay, but at least they could live how they wanted. My parents may have apologized for their wording in the contract but nonetheless still felt that it was necessary for me to retain their original concepts of “boundaries” out lined in the contract. I held onto to those virtues out of nothing more than fear of what would happen if I disobeyed. I did not really see much change in them until I met my boyfriend.

            I met my boyfriend on an online dating app, which is not the story we tell people, he messaged me first and I was infatuated. I could not wait to meet him in person. He lived at a lake house on Allatoona and was a senior here at Kennesaw State University. I remember when I first arrived at his place for our first date, the first thing I ever said to him was “How you been?” You see we had been talking quite a lot and I had never met someone I clicked with and knew so well so quickly. Looking back, I know exactly why I worded it like that. It is because my whole life I knew who I was and what I wanted, and I knew there was someone out there who felt the same. Someone that had experienced homophobia in every facet of life and understood the internal battle that were forced to deal with. I asked him how he had been because I knew it was not always easy for him, much like it was for me. I just wanted him to know that someone out there had always cared, and now that person was here. It sounds corny, but I do not care, I grew up watching everyone else have the love life they always wanted and dammit we deserve ours. We have been dating nearly four years now and between him, our pet cat Foster, and the lake, we do not need anyone else.

If It Was a Choice for Me, It Was a Choice for You.

From my last post you may be thinking “Well good for you! That sounds like that went as good as it could have!” and you’d be right. Sort of. That night was great and all but the thing with my father is, he is wildly moody. Me, my friends, and a few others who I wont mention are convinced he is bipolar. It is no surprise for anyone who knows them that he can be great one day, and flat out scary the next. So, if you think about how good that moment was the night before, and if you are me, you know what to expect next. In the evening the next day, I was laying down in the living room halfway snoozing, when my parents came downstairs and asked if they could talk to me. As I followed them upstairs all I could think was “What the hell is about to happen? Is it going to be good? Is it going to be bad? I had absolutely no clue. What followed this moment is arguably the most disappointing moment in my life. My parents had constructed a contract for me to sign. This contract outlined the behaviors I must abide to, and the reasoning behind this was that my parents were trying to raise my younger brothers in a Christian household and did not want my “lifestyle choices” affecting their development. I was not allowed to post on social media with anything related to my sexuality, and I was told that if I told my brothers there would be serious consequences. These consequences they talked about were never specified but being a college student not living at home I think I knew what that meant, that I was being threatened to be financially cut off. They held out a pen for me to sign it and I looked up with the paper, held it out, and ripped it in half. I left the room furious and when they approached me later, I told them that it was not a choice. That if anything being straight was a choice that made me miserable in the long run. They replied, “It IS a choice.” To which I replied, “Well then I am glad you made the right one.”

At this point coming out to just a few people was able to alleviate the thousands of pounds that were on my back, and the happiness I felt from it gave me the momentum I needed to keep going forward. I told my uncle, and more of my close friends, and they all gave me the reciprocation I had felt that fateful night on the balcony. Only one of them I told gave me a less than desirable response, but since then has come a long way in accepting me for who I am. At this point I had told so many people and the empathy and love they had for me still made powering through that one bad interaction a breeze, nothing could bring me down, and I sure was not going back to where I was. That was, until I planned to tell my mother.

When you are in the closet, you truly convince yourself that coming out would be the worst possible thing to happen to you. You ask yourself a million questions, like will they still love me? Will I still be treated the same? But as you get older you realize the pain of wearing a mask takes its toll on you more than the reality of any of those fictional questions ever could. It is like when you were a kid, and you were nervous about going on that big roller coaster that all the big kids were raving about. You knew it was fun, and you knew you would be okay, but nonetheless you roll over horrible “what if” scenarios in your head and build it up to a point where you cannot even conceive doing it. Coming out is the exact same, you are truly your own worst enemy, and for me I had reached my breaking point of my self-inflicted torment.

It is amazing what some people will do to avoid their problems, and I am no exception. Being a homosexual to me at the time was the worst thing I could be. If you would ask me then I truly believed it was the lowest of the low. You see, growing in the south you always heard slander towards homosexuals, I even heard it in my own family. Above all those was in school, and it was either be the predator or the prey. If you did not partake in calling people “f*ggots” and other awful slanders, you would be suspected as one of them. This effect was only heightened among my sports teams, it was simply the norm. I hated myself so much at this time and knew I would really have to sell being a heterosexual in order to retain my good name.

The solution was simple at the time, and that was to get a girlfriend. I cringe at how hard I pretended to be interested, and willing to engage with a girl. Getting a kiss from my girlfriend was like a badge I could wear to prove to my friends I was one of them. As years passed and this behavior continued, I found myself exhausted. Going through life pretending to be something you are not absolutely takes its toll. Numbing myself with drugs gave me a false sense of security that only perpetuated my self-hate. Alongside the ridicule from my father and his abuse, I am surprised I have turned out as well as I have. My plan to keep this secret to my grave suddenly felt like rock bottom. It was not until that moment that I began to really accept that I was gay. There was no denying it anymore, and I made a promise to myself that I would come out before I turn 21. I decided that I deserve to have the life I want to live on my terms. I did not want to grow old and alone, knowing I could have probably been who I wanted too. I mean people thirty years ago would be killed if they were gay, but still lived their truth. It would be an injustice to them if I did not take advantage of the gay rights they had perpetuated with their sacrifice.

Fast forward to college and 20 years old, I continued this façade and been pushing and pushing the date I would come out. This happened in part because of my fraternity. Choosing to go to Alabama for college probably was not healthy for me in retrospect but nonetheless I eventually found my way to Kennesaw State. A place where it was not just white, heterosexuals, but a place where diversity and inclusion were celebrated.

A few months before I was going to turn 21, the pressure really began to rise. I had so many questions and needed some sound advice from someone who had been in my shoes. Eventually I talked to an older gentleman and he told me a story that changed my life, and my perspective forever. You see this man had been married to a woman for over 20 years, knowing he was gay, and he told me each year that passed it became harder and harder for him to be a genuine husband. Eventually he could not take it anymore and decided to finally be honest with his wife. Nothing could prepare him for what happened next, but the wife took her life. She had felt that 20+ years of her life had been a sham, and what worth was she for someone to do that to her?

Picking up from my last post, I wanted to continue my story.

The sad part about my early childhood days, is that I had no clue what my father was doing was wrong. I thought it was universal among all my guy friends to be terrified of your father. I simply normalized what he was doing in my head and did not really come to the reality and severity of his problem until my teenage years. In fact, the issues with my father took a back seat to what I had never expected before, and that was puberty. You see it wasn't until puberty that my difference of sexuality had come to fruition as up until now it had only been “ew girls” and “she has cuties” among my friends. That part was easy, then puberty hit, and everything changed, suddenly my friends became less interested in hanging out with me and our group of friends, but rather hang out with the popular girls from my class. I felt this in my own way but towards the same sex. It was truly baffling as an early teenager to suddenly feel like I do not belong, even though I had always been a part of numerous, clubs, and sports teams. I had always had a sense of belonging, and now suddenly it was being pulled from under my feet.

Not only did I have to face this fact myself, but I had to think of the implications it would have for the rest of my life. Would I lose my closest friends? Would my family disown me? I was so alone, and the church that I had previously been so involved with suddenly felt out to get me. That I was doomed to an eternal life in hell. This is where my question and disillusionment of religion began, but I will save that topic for a future post.

Hello! My name is Carson Ankney, welcome to my blog, and if you're reading this thank you, this is my first post of many. I came here to discuss various topics and tell my story to anyone who is willing to listen, and if anyone gets any insight or help from these postings, it would mean the world to me.

I’ll begin with some background. I grew up in Newnan, Georgia in a methodist household with two loving parents, an older sister and two younger brothers. If I could describe myself as one word growing up it would be curious. I simply had to get my hands into anything and everything. Whether it was sports or television or my friends, I was ecstatic to always be apart of something. 

I always had a smile on my face, and many regarded me as a “goofy” kid. As it should be for children. I loved everything I invested myself into and it made for a very fun childhood. It wasn’t until I was about 8 that I began to understand how ugly the world can be, and how little control I had over it. Unfortunately for me, it began in my home. My father had always been my friend, coach, and did everything he could to make me happy whether it was throwing me an awesome Rugrats themed birthday, teaching me how to ride a bike, or showing me how to swing a baseball bat. He was a phenomenal father in a million ways but it only too a few instances to make them moot.

At some point his patience wore thin, and began to physically abuse me. One of my earliest memories of this was a Saturday morning, I was probably 8 years old. He always made extravagant breakfast’s that I always enjoyed. However this Saturday he made biscuits and gravy. Today I would gladly scarf down the entire thing, but as an 8 year old boy, peppered gravy looked very similar to vomit, and I expressed that. He looked at me with fire in his eyes, knocked over the table, and drug me down the hall to my room, and through me onto my top bunk. I sat in a heap crying, looking at my leg that had been gashed open from a rogue splinter from the hardwood. I was devastated. Every instance of abuse from there on only instilled more and more fear in me. I hated my father truly, and was terrified every time he came home from work.