<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" We had a computer in our living room, an eMachine, and I spent a lot of time on it in sixth and seventh grades. My dad was usually at work, sometimes taking extra shifts on nights or weekends, and my mom was good about leaving me alone, not hovering over me. I was thankful for that, because my dad&amp;#039;s paranoia felt suffocating. When I knew I had a chunk of time to myself, I would go to the living room and hop on the computer. I still remember the password, or at least most of it: &amp;quot;Morgue&amp;quot; and then a few numbers. (My dad&amp;#039;s side of the family ran a funeral home when he was younger.) I would load the Yahoo search page, type in the words gay and lesbian, or some combination of the two, then read articles and watch documentaries for hours. Kids tossed those words around a lot at school, along with fag and dyke and other slurs, sometimes hurling them as insults at specific targets, like me, and other times casually dropping them into conversation the same way they might use the word loser \u2014 with friends saying to each other, &amp;quot;That is so gay.&amp;quot; When I was twelve, I had a vague idea of what gay and lesbian meant, but I didn&amp;#039;t have any larger context for those words. I just knew that when I heard them, I felt something inside me, a curiosity that made me want to learn more. (Luckily my dad&amp;#039;s truck was really loud, so I would hear it rumbling down the street, giving me a two-minute warning. I would immediately clear my search history and log off the computer.) I knew, from the first afternoon I spent reading about the LGBT community, I was reading about myself, that there were many other people out there like me. I was not alone, and the knowledge of that soothed some of my pain. I had never wanted to dress and act like a lot of the other girls, but I didn&amp;#039;t want to be a boy, either. I just did whatever felt natural, without giving it much thought. And when I got on that eMachine, I discovered a whole world of people who felt the same way I did, who lived somewhere in the middle. I learned there are women who identify as &amp;quot;stud&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;butch&amp;quot; lesbians, which generally means they see themselves as occupying a more traditionally masculine role, both in society and in their relationships. Much of how I was feeling internally could be displayed outwardly by my clothes, my gestures, my attitude. I remember sitting at the computer and letting out a long sigh of relief, because I knew someday I would be able to become a complete person, with who I am on the inside matching how I expressed myself on the outside. Of course, knowing I was gay wasn&amp;#039;t the same thing as telling other people I was gay. I didn&amp;#039;t feel ready to fully embrace everything I was learning. When I was in middle school, the control that my dad had over my life was ironclad. I knew there was zero chance he would accept me as gay, or let me leave the house dressed in a style that he would see as completely ridiculous. I knew he would (and he later did) say that my sexuality and appearance were a result of being influenced by others. And I wasn&amp;#039;t ready to engage in that battle with him. I was already getting picked on for being different, for looking like a boy, for having a low voice, so it was hard to imagine myself doing anything to announce that I was even more different than everyone else already thought. Also, around this time, another girl in seventh grade had come out as a lesbian, or someone had outed her, and the kids were merciless. &amp;quot;Stay away from her,&amp;quot; they&amp;#039;d say. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t watch to catch the Gay!&amp;quot; It was like she was the boogeyman, ready to pounce at any second. So I kept all this knowledge \u2014 the truth \u2014 to myself. That didn&amp;#039;t stop kids from whispering behind my back, but I was still pretending I was straight, that I was into boys. I even kissed a boy in seventh grade and acted like we were a couple; that&amp;#039;s how desperate I was to prove to everyone else, and maybe even to myself, that maybe I wasn&amp;#039;t as different as they thought. Part of why these middle-school years were so hard is because I didn&amp;#039;t even have myself to lean on. Kids at school were rejecting me, and in turn I was rejecting my true self, trying different versions of me on for size, to see what I could make fit. It was like each day was an exercise in erasing myself just a little bit more. I still remember one particular interaction like it happened yesterday, because it&amp;#039;s such a clear example of how I was acting at the time. It was the first day of volleyball tryouts in seventh grade (we were living back in Houston), and a bunch of us girls were sitting in the bleachers, waiting for the coach. I kept tugging at my outfit, trying to stretch it out. We had to wear these little form-fitting shirts, cropped in a way that they showed our stomachs if we lifted our arms in the air, which was obviously something we did a lot while playing volleyball. And the shorts were so tiny, they felt like glorified underwear. I was sitting next to my friend Ashton, who lived in the same neighborhood as me. My arms and legs were mostly bare, and I kept rearranging myself because I felt so exposed, so uncomfortable. Sitting in the row in front of us was this girl named Kim, who was part of the in-crowd. She was with her friends, and they were whispering. A minute or two later, Kim turned back to me and said, out of nowhere, &amp;quot;Brittney, you&amp;#039;re gay, right?&amp;quot; She said it like she expected my answer to be yes, like she just wanted confirmation of a truth. I didn&amp;#039;t really stop to process what she was asking, and before I could, I heard myself answering, almost reflexively, &amp;quot;Yeah.&amp;quot; Kim just nodded and turned back around, kept talking with her friends. All of a sudden I realized what had happened, and I started panicking. I said, &amp;quot;Wait, wait \u2014 what? What did you ask me?&amp;quot; She turned around and asked me again, and I made my voice nice and level, like there was no way I could be lying, and told her, &amp;quot;Nah, no, I&amp;#039;m not. Hell no, I&amp;#039;m not.&amp;quot; She just kind of shrugged and said, &amp;quot;Okay.&amp;quot; I was determined to fix the situation, so I moved forward into her row, but before I could say anything else, she looked at me and said, &amp;quot;You can scoot back with your friend. We were just asking.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m good,&amp;quot; I said, trying to be smooth. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just chilling.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Whatever,&amp;quot; she said, then turned her body away from me and kept talking with her friends. A minute later, I moved back to my row. It seems like an odd thing to say, but being who you are can take practice, especially when who you are doesn&amp;#039;t fit neatly into the vision that society has for how you should act, what you should wear, who you should love. I haven&amp;#039;t always embraced the parts of me that are different, because when you&amp;#039;re young, it&amp;#039;s scary to voluntarily step away from the mainstream. But I eventually realized that faking it is draining, and that the more people who raise their hands and say, &amp;quot;This is me,&amp;quot; the more they help empower other people to do the same. I decided that at the start of my freshman year of high school, I would stop pretending. I highlighted this date the way many kids point to college as their chance to reinvent themselves. I saw high school as a step into adulthood, when my dad would have less control over me, and I wanted to take that step forward as my true, authentic self. So when ninth grade rolled around, I was ready for it in more ways than one. I started dressing and acting exactly how I wanted to \u2014 even if I cringe a little now when I think about how over the top I was in going about it. I didn&amp;#039;t actually my own style back then. I was just copying certain looks I saw on other people, clothes and images that resonated as similar to the &amp;quot;me&amp;quot; I wanted to express. Over the next several years, my style would morph from &amp;quot;rapper boy&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;athletic&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;preppy&amp;quot; to where I am now, a mesh of all those things, a combination that feels right to me. But my first step was to stop wearing ambiguous clothing, those shirts and jeans that still had even a slightly &amp;quot;girly&amp;quot; edge. I felt like an imposter in those clothes. So the first style I truly embraced was loosely defined: all that mattered was feeling comfortable. My go-to outfit was an oversized T-shirt or hoodie with a pair of baggy RocaWear jeans. Even when I went to Baylor, the first year or two, I didn&amp;#039;t know precisely what I wanted my style to be. I was all over the place. I would wear our team-issued Nike gear or a pair of Levi&amp;#039;s with a polo shirt, or something that reflected my new passion for skateboarding. The &amp;quot;California swag&amp;quot; was strong back then, the Jerky Boy look. So I wore the flannel shirts with colorful skinny jeans and a pair of Vans. I also liked to cut the sleeves off my shirts and throw on some shorts or sweats \u2014 my &amp;quot;athletic and lazy&amp;quot; look. (I must admit, I&amp;#039;ve adopted that look in Phoenix a lot of days, because it&amp;#039;s so damn hot in the summer. The less clothing, the better.) My senior year at Baylor, and especially my rookie year in the WNBA, is when I started paying closer attention to fashion and how I wanted to represent myself away from the court. After trying different styles over the years, I finally realized I could blend them together to create a look unique to me, putting my own spin on the trends. And a key part of my style now has nothing to do with clothes. Since my senior year of high school, I&amp;#039;ve added one or two tattoos a year. I&amp;#039;m working toward full sleeves on both arms, and I&amp;#039;ll probably get more ink on my back. I understand there are people out there who are put off by tattoos. Ink isn&amp;#039;t for everyone. There are many different ways to express yourself; it just so happens a lot of people enjoy doing that with tats. We see it as a kind of art, and I don&amp;#039;t think we should be judged for it, as if we&amp;#039;re doing something rebellious and don&amp;#039;t want to follow the rules. My first week of ninth grade, I saw that girl Kim in the hallway, the one who had asked me if I was gay when we were in seventh grade. She looked me up and down \u2014 I was wearing a big hoodie, sagging my jeans \u2014 and said, &amp;quot;Oh, okay.&amp;quot; She wasn&amp;#039;t mean about it; her tone was more like, &amp;quot;I knew it.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m pretty sure she was thinking back to that moment at volleyball tryouts two years earlier, when I went out of my way to deny who I was. So standing there in the hallway, I just looked her in the eyes and said, &amp;quot;Yeah, you know, shit happens.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s exactly what I said. Then I shrugged and kept walking. I laugh when I think about it now, because &amp;quot;shit happens&amp;quot; sounds like a terrible way to acknowledge your sexual identity. But I was actually feeling pretty good about myself. It was obvious by the way I was dressing that I was trying to make a statement. And when kids asked me if I was gay, I would say, &amp;quot;Yup.&amp;quot; Word spread pretty quickly in high school, so I didn&amp;#039;t really have to tell a lot of people myself. It just became common knowledge. The fact that I was six feet tall by then and playing volleyball helped me avoid some of the name-calling I had endured in middle school. Not all of it \u2014 sometimes when I walked into the gym, guys would say stuff like, &amp;quot;Yo, you can untuck now!&amp;quot; \u2014 but as I would quickly discover, being an athlete carried some status with the cool crowd. And the more my self-confidence grew, the less I worried about what other people were saying. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong: it&amp;#039;s not like all the lights switched on for me at once, magically, with a choir singing in the background and everyone in my life embracing me for who I was trying to become. It was a big, long process, and I had my share of missteps and detours. Telling my father I was gay just wasn&amp;#039;t an option at that point. But telling my mother felt like a necessity, an instinctive urge to share my truth, because I trusted her so much, and I think I knew, deep down, I would need her love and support for the journey ahead. So one afternoon during my freshman year, I came right out and told her. I was leaning against the wall in our kitchen, and I just said the words, &amp;quot;Mom, I&amp;#039;m gay.&amp;quot; I hadn&amp;#039;t even planned the moment; it just felt right. She smiled, hugged me, and told me she loved me. That was it. I know now that a lot of kids aren&amp;#039;t as fortunate as I was, to have a moment like that, to have at least one parent they can confide in and lean on when they&amp;#039;re trying to figure out who they are. And believe me, I still had a lot to figure out. When I look back at my fifteen-year-old self, I can&amp;#039;t help but shake my head. I remember walking down the hallways at school, with my jeans sagging, my boxer shorts showing, using really hard-core hand gestures, my voice all rough and edgy. I was going overboard with my new look, which tends to happen when you&amp;#039;ve felt restrained for so long: you end up snapping to the other end of the spectrum, like an elastic being released. But when I came home from school, and I was walking those final steps before I got to the back door of our house, I would yank up my jeans and tighten my belt, reminding myself to tone down my mannerisms. Being true to myself has often been at odds with my desire to please others. I&amp;#039;ve spent years trying so hard to be the version of myself that would make the most people happy. Over time, though, I&amp;#039;ve come to realize that no matter how much I compromise, some people will never understand me. And accepting this truth has given me a new level of comfort and freedom. Excerpted from Brittney Griner&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court.&amp;quot;  RELATED:  How Gender-Bending WNBA Rookie Brittney Griner Is Changing the World of Sports Openly Gay Female Baller Gets Nike Endorsement Deal Follow Brittney on Twitter. Photo credit: AP "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a6157/brittney-griner-in-my-skin/?click=cos_new>