Member-only story
THE NARRATIVE ARC
The Boy Who Was Different
Puberty turned me into a freak, or so I thought
Kids hate to be different. They shun anything that makes them stand out. And I stood out. Not in a good way, either. My secret devastated me, and from my early teens, I was in anguish.
Gynecomastia — a condition in which a male develops breast tissue — made my life hell. I was mortified. Why me? I was terrified that someone would discover my secret. That someone would notice that I wasn’t normal. I felt like a freak.
It started when I was going through puberty — always a tumultuous time for teens. My dad had “The Talk” with me about what was happening to my body physically and my older brothers filled in the blanks. But as my body went through its expected changes there was one thing I didn’t anticipate.
Fully clothed you’d never guess there was anything different about me, but without my shirt on anyone could see that the left side of my chest wasn’t the same as the right side. I was developing a breast.
While girls my age were going through their own changes, which meant they were developing, I was horrified to discover a small breast growing on my left side. Imagine how traumatic this would be for a boy, especially one in the midst of puberty. My hormones were…
