October 11th is a pivotal day for the LGBT community, as it is officially National Coming Out Day. No matter what your age is or when you did it, we all remember when we came out and the story behind one of the hardest decisions of our life.
Regardless of the path that you have taken to come out and be your authentic self, know that no matter what, there are people around you that will love you for who you are. That tends to be the point of this day, that we aren't alone in our journey of self discovery and we should find others that won't judge us for who we are and simply see us as ourselves.
I was outed 17 years ago during my freshman year of high school. I told the wrong person who I thought was a friend, and they told the whole school. Instead of doing damage control, I embraced who I was and came out of the closet. I was never called any derogatory names and had it pretty easy throughout high school, yet I know that is not the case for many of us in this community. I was quite lucky.
If you know someone who is struggling to come out, be a friend to them. Show them that you care and that they have someone they can confide in. The more we act as a community to each other, the easier coming out will be as time goes by. The millennial generation seems to be doing this pretty well as coming out is getting progressively easier thanks to them, but we still have big steps to take along the way.
Here are some fantastic tweets that illustrate what makes today so great. Happy National Coming Out Day everyone!