Growing up in central Washington was great for about 13 years. I had best friends I had known since preschool and we could go to a restaurant and more than likely there would be someone we knew who was willing to give us a discount. I'm grateful for such a great, safe place to grow up. However, when I was a freshman in high school things started to not look so great anymore. That was the year I came to terms with the fact that I am bisexual. That's when growing up in a small, conservative town became a bad thing.

I have a friend who had come out as gay to me that summer and he had experienced a rather large amount of homophobia from others at our school. That's what lead me to my realization, and what lead to me to stay in the closet for two more years. Being in the closet was absolutely awful, but the homophobia I thought I would be subjected to was scarier than anything else. I supported my friend through his journey out of the closet, and he eventually helped me through mine.

In the spring of my junior year I had already come out to my close friends. In the car, on our way home one day, is when I told my mom. I needed a setting I couldn't back out of. She was, and still is, incredibly supportive. After that, I told them as they asked. It wasn't a secret, but I hadn't gotten on the PA system at school and announced it. It was like the opposite of Don't Ask, Don't Tell: if you ask, I guess I'll tell you.

Senior year rolled around and I became busier than I had ever been. Partly because our librarian (and my best friend/confidante/amazing person) had come to my friend, who had come out freshman year, and I to suggest an idea that would change the school and community. We had talked about starting a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) club the year before, but now was the perfect time. We went to our principal armed with arguments and counter-arguments to anything he could've said. Turns out we didn't need any of them because he was 100% on board with the idea. From there, we wrote up a constitution stating what our goals would be and set officers, my friend and I as co-presidents, an openly gay junior as the vice president, and a straight junior as our secretary. We had represented the student population as well as we could in our officers and announced our first meeting. This was the point where I tweeted something along the lines of "Guess what! I'm the co-president of the GSA club and I'm bisexual." I couldn't let myself be in the closet and run such an important club.

After our very first meeting our principal already had calls complaining about our club, which we were prepared for. We also had teachers at the school that were against our club. Teachers were harder to deal with, but we got through it. Our club was controversial all year. We had issues with our t-shirt designs, Day Of Silence assembly, and just the fact that it existed at all in the first place. We powered through it all. In June, we passed the presidency onto the junior who was VP and had complete faith that the club would do great things without us.

The point of all of this is that it takes gut and determination to change your school, community, or even the world. We had to face homophobia and backlash from our conservative community to even get something like this established. Thankfully, because our town is small, we all had people backing us up throughout the whole endeavor.

The GSA club is my proudest accomplishment from high school. I wanted to leave a lasting impact and I know that is exactly what I did. I can only hope I made a lasting impact on the community as well.