1. Pilot - Part 1 - My Coming Out Story

Mariah, also known as Mo, introduces herself and her YouTube channel. She shares that her channel is about new perspectives, not just finding love. Mariah emphasizes the importance of self-discovery and not giving up on searching for love. She shares that she is openly gay and believes that all humans desire love and acceptance. Mariah wants to use her platform to share her own stories and hardships, with the hope of providing insight and hope for others. She then begins sharing her first story about coming out. Mariah talks about her experiences in middle school and her first boyfriend. She also discusses an incident during a softball tournament where she developed feelings for a girl on her team. The situation became confusing and rumors spread, causing her to feel judged and alone. Mariah admits to making a mistake by lying about self-harm, which further isolated her from her friends and damaged her relationships with her parents. She reflects on the challenges she faced as a young Hello and welcome to my channel. My name is Mariah. A lot of people call me Mo. Just a small introduction. I am 25. I'm currently in a happy, healthy relationship with my beautiful fiancée Jacqueline of almost 4 years. You listening might be thinking, I don't want to hear about your happiness. We get it. Well, let me just break it down for you. It took me a while to get here with a lot of patience and heartbreak, self-discovery, you name it, in various areas. This channel is not about finding love. It's about learning about new perspectives. I made this channel for people to not give up on searching for love, discovering who you are, and to keep going. Overall, finding a common ground and letting others know that you're not alone. We are all in the same boat, per se. It does take work. It does take patience, but mostly it takes getting to know yourself first. I, for one, will admit that I'm not perfect. I learned that it's completely okay. I just knew that after failing over and over again that eventually something will give and things will align and growth and success will... I'm gonna be cheesy here, but blossom in some way. A little bit about me. I'm openly gay, but I know that all humans are wired and basically the same when it comes to love. You know, we all desire love, affection, acceptance, and it all starts with ourselves. I wanted to use this platform to share some stories about who I am and some hardships I have overcame with myself and how I got to where I am today mentally. As a person, I'm still working on myself and will continue to do so. I don't think I'll ever be done with that because it is a working progress, but hopefully me sharing some failures and experiences will give some insight and hope for others. Also, if anything resonates with you, please share. Okay, let's just jump into my first story. It's the toughest one, but the most important. It's, you know, if you haven't guessed it already, it's the coming out. Before I dive into it, I want to mention that I've had made amends with everyone that I love the most and maybe having continuous battle that I continue to face, but coming to an understanding that not everyone will react the way you want and it's okay. I mean, to an extent, we can only control so much and I think that's a statement that is hard to swallow. Not everyone is going to be okay with it. Not everyone is going to have the same views. I mean, I know firsthand. People have asked me, how did you know? Or when did I know? And there wasn't ever a specific timing. I guess I've always known that I was different, that I acted like different things than most girls or all girls that I grew up with. I literally looked like a boy. If you saw my fourth grade picture, you would have to do a double take. I did boy things. I guess I had a true boy's heart. My mom told me that when she was in labor with me, that the nurse on staff even put a blue hat in my bassinet. I guess it was predetermined in a way that I was meant to be unique. I identify as a gay female. I don't use the term lesbian or bi. I'm okay with just gay, but it doesn't matter what I say I am now because then I was still figuring things out. I did have those boyfriends in grade school, I guess. Honestly, my life was consumed with trying to be perfect in every aspect. I knew I had control over. I tried to be the best athlete. I tried to get the best grades. I was a class clown, so I guess I tried to be the funniest. I wanted to be the best in different ways. Deep down, I knew I had this huge weight on my shoulders that I liked girls. I didn't just tolerate them with the normal gossip or drama. I had real feelings that I knew that would come to some sort of issue down the road. When I was in junior high, middle school, or whatever you call it, I was about 12, 13, I guess you can say. I had my first boyfriend at the time. I had a small group of friends. It was like one of those group of friends that you see in the movies. You know, a country girl who said the weirdest phrases, a smart girl who made you feel stupid no matter what you said. Another one that was the sweetest and trying to make the best out of every situation. And then a girl who didn't know what she wanted and always made stupid decisions and just felt like she never fit it. I was the one who tried to squeeze myself in the group. Looking back at it now, I didn't have to try so hard to be myself. I was just that. I was battling with so much in my mind that I always felt out of place. Around the same time, I was seeing my first boyfriend, as I mentioned. I was also heavily into playing sports, especially softball. I know it should have been a foreshadow of my future from the get-go. You know what they say, lesbians are totally athletic and play softball. Yeah, I get it. I've heard that many times. Anyways, I would always travel and stay at hotels for tournaments. There was this one trip that we were taking to play in Virginia. My parents couldn't go, but a girl on the team offered to take me. I stayed with her and her family at the hotel. And this is when shit hit the fan and things started to get really confusing for me. Let's just say I first experienced butterflies. I don't know what you call them. I used to call them tingles. I'm actually interested in what other people call it. I think butterflies would be the most common answer. Anyways, we stayed in the same bed. We didn't do anything. I don't think we even kissed, but we flirted, played footsies. You know, I tried cuddling her. I think I got first base by, you know, touching her boo, but nothing really happened. Things only got weird because she said, I promised myself I would never kiss a girl. And then after that, it just got weird. And we just stopped and I had unanswered questions after that. This was the just the beginning of the tournament. So I had like two or three more nights being there. The next day, she wouldn't look at me or talk with me and kind of just avoided each other and just acted like nothing even happened. And this continued for a while. And when we got back, I wanted to talk to someone and figure things out. And I tried to talk to my friends and I was questioning things and wondering what was going on with me. I learned very quickly that opening my mouth was going to turn into things. And not long after that, the whole school spread rumors and about me hooking up with a girl on my softball team, which is not true at all. I just, I just got rid of it. And it makes me laugh because it sounds so stupid. But anyway, it was all consensual. You know, we talked about it beforehand. And anyways, my boyfriend found out and said I was a cheater and disgusting. And yeah, it was not good. My travel team was made up of various girls in different districts. Some of us didn't even go to the same school. However, the rumors spread so much that three to four different districts knew about the so called incident with me and a girl in a hotel. This was back when being gay was not really talked about unless it was in books, or you're a celebrity. Or if, you know, gay people, you know, people automatically labeled you, isolated you or treated you different. There was this huge misconception that all girls thought that I was into them, which was not true to the slightest. Everyone just had the biggest egos at the moment. I didn't know what to think. I was not sure who I was. I didn't know what I wanted. I just remember feeling very judged and alone. I wanted to change the focus on how I denied the rumors. Well, because one, they're not exactly true. Two, I didn't want to lose my friends or anything that changed. I did something. I did something really bad, really terrible. Something I continue to regret. And that I hope that people out there you take my voice very seriously. Please never lie about anything just to get people's attention. Eventually things will get out of hand and people will find out the truth. It's best to take things straight on work through them and not to lie about something else to get out of situations or even distract yourself. It could only jeopardize not only trust from others, but also how you perceive yourself. So yeah, I lied that I did self harm, which I didn't. It was just it was just very stupid of me. I felt very desperate. And yeah, I've lost so much respect from everybody. Even yeah, this isolated me even worse than people outing me. Honestly, at this point, my friends wanted nothing to do with me. They told my parents because they were worried. No one really wanted to talk to me. I thought it was weird. They thought I was a freak, pathetic, everything, the worst of it. My parents were disappointed in me. They wanted to know why I lied about that. And what sucked is I couldn't give them a reason. And I just said, because I'm stupid. Like what else is a 12 year old gonna say? Who's terrified of them finding out who who I really was? And that's reasonable enough, right? I know. Now it's nothing to lie about. It was super manipulative and immature. But remember, I was barely a teenager. And you know what they say your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed when things without thinking and technically you can't help it. But really, it was a learning curve for me. So I lost trust for my parents. I lost close friends. It was hard. I felt really alone felt like I couldn't talk to anyone. I kind of distanced myself from almost everyone. And the funniest kick kicker was that one of my friends out of the group texted me the next couple days and goes, Can I date your can I date your ex? And she goes, he says that he was like me for a very long time. I mean, I have to give the girl credit for asking for permission. Very respectful, but it hurts so bad. And I was at a really tough spot with myself. At 13, you know, losing friends, a boyfriend trust from everyone feels like the end of the world. Especially not having anyone to talk to. I felt completely alone. The only thing I really looked forward to was softball. And oh my god, that sport saved my life. It was therapy to me, I would not think about anything and just go out and play my heart out. I mean, I was at least fortunate to have an outlet and gave me sanity. So at the next tournament I went to, this was in Oklahoma. This time I traveled with my dad and he was my coach at the time. We're by age wide, I played for two different group of girls. There was a 12U and a 14U. I was on the 14U team. And we went out a week earlier because the 12U team played before the 14. So I spent the first week with the younger girls. And I had a blast, got close with everyone. And I saw a girl that I thought looked familiar and like, yeah, we caught up and exchanged numbers. And yeah, we hang out when we get back to Pennsylvania, which is where I'm from at the time. And then yeah, after the younger girls left and the older girls came and when the older girls came, it just got weird. It felt like I honestly didn't exist. I remember some of the girls were from my school and some were not and I could tell that they were talking to each other. And so I already had a feeling that my team was aware of the rumors and the things that happened. Also, the girl from the hotel from that situation was still on the team. And but I tried to clear the air. But anyways, I know this sounds like a whole heap of drama, but this was a huge ordeal of kind of sort of everything. But the one night, I noticed that there, we noticed that there was a boys basketball team that was around the same age. They asked if we wanted to hang out that night. So later, both of our teams got together, we hung out in the lobby. It's like a rec room. And it was just like a clump of us in there just talking, carrying on getting to know each other. And they're from out of state. So where are we? And it felt really awkward for me. Like I wasn't really conversating. It was kind of boring, too. So and so I headed to the elevator to go back to the room and I ran into one of the soft player softball players moms and she asked me why I wasn't hanging out with the girls with the basketball team. And I said, guys don't really like me. I said, I'm not really interested in hanging out. Anyways, I said, I'm really tired. I'm gonna go hang out in my room, kind of rest up for the next day. She looked confused and said, okay, and she said, all right, I'll see you tomorrow. And then the rest of the trip got worse after that. It was, it felt like pure isolation. The rest of the trip, I got it got so bad that I pulled my eyes out in the room. My dad felt bad seeing me hurt. He wanted to go to the bottom of things like he wants to get some answers like why are these girls ignoring you? It shouldn't be like this. He wanted to bring out to the head coach, but I told him please don't wait until after the tournament at least. And the coach had three daughters that all played with me and the oldest especially was, I knew she was well aware of what's going on. And I just asked them to please wait. So after the tournament, I reached out to this girl who I exchanged numbers with. She only lived a town over for me. We talked nonstop since she left from the tournament. I didn't bring up my issues until we were in person. She told me that she was aware of the rumors. I asked her if she thought different around me or still wanted to be associated with me. I was like, are you sure? And she's like, honestly, I feel so sorry what happened and what you're going through. And, and she admitted, you know, I've had a crush on you since I met you and I didn't want to say anything. But once I heard the rumors, I thought this was my opportunity. And I was really shocked, yet very relieved. I ended up staying at her house that night. That was the first time I ever kissed a girl. She became my first girlfriend. We made it official. And at the time, I felt super alone. I felt it led me to her and her comfort at the time. Shortly after that, I came into realization that I'm, I'm into girls, that my feelings were real. Only girls gave me those nervous, exciting, but yet comfort feelings. But it wasn't about the comfort. It was just I felt like my true genuine self, like things started to make sense. But a week or so went by and my dad sat me down to ask me questions about the tournament. He wanted to make sure I was okay. I told him that nothing has changed with the girls and you know what's going on. And he said that he took the initiative of himself and spoke with the coach and different parents and apparently the girls felt uncomfortable by me and because everyone believed I was, I was gay and it became such an issue that there was even discussion that I might, it might be best if I wasn't on the team anymore. And when he said that, I felt colored in the flesh and my body just drained through me. I felt so sick and scared. I didn't know what to say except like, who told you that? And that's not true. And he said, well, I told so and so's mom, you're not into guys. I said, what? First of all, that's not true. I said, I'm guys don't like me, not I don't like guys. But anyways, in the back of my head, I was like, oh my gosh. But it was, it was true in a way, but not true. But in the back of my mind, I thought I was stupid for not taking a chance to be open and tell the truth. But I didn't want to lose the opportunity to play on such a talented team and something that I loved so much. You know, despite all the hostile and turmoil that was going on, like I really did enjoy playing with them. But instead, I ran with it, I committed it to being a lie. I even blamed it on my ex boyfriend said he, he said it because I broke up with him and he was mad at me. But anyways, even though that's not true, but however, they bought it and I was able to stay on the team. And yeah, that was the beginning of me living my secret double life, you know. But this is only the first part of me, you know, coming out, there's so much that happened. And, and that was me telling lies and pretending to be something I was not. There's so much, so much else. You know, there, this was only the beginning. There was so many ups, so many downs, and just a lot of me pushing through and figuring things out. But if you like hearing me spill the tea a little bit, I never told anyone my story. So this is exposing a lot about my past. But I know this will help so many who feel like nothing is going your way. Things will get better and that you're not alone. And yeah, I will share part two on the next episode. But yeah, please share and stay tuned for the next part of my journey. And if you can be anything, please be kind, spread it like butter. And yeah, this is my story.