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THE PENNY PUB
This One Sentence Changed My Life
Our words have the power to unlock hidden truths
It was 1992, and I read this line in an essay for my Introduction to Women’s Studies class:
Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.
As I reached the end, a thought flashed like a bolt of lightning: I am gay.
It was the first time I had uttered those words to myself, not as a question but as a declaration. At that moment, as a 19-year-old sophomore in college, I claimed a new identity for myself.
A single sentence saved me from years of self-loathing. Audre Lorde’s brief yet powerful essay, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” cracked my inner defenses, spilling open a truth about myself I could no longer deny.
Within three weeks, I came out of the closet in a blazing spectacle of love and acceptance to my friends and family.