It's amazing that my parents were shocked at all when I told them I was gay. I spent most of my free time in middle school reading about interior design, and I even shared with them my steps to transform our living room from drab to fab. My favorite TV shows were Trading Spaces and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

While cleaning out my room today, I found a binder in the back of the closet. Inside were paint samples, room measurements, and sketches of wainscoting and coffee tables. It was my interior design HQ, circa 2003. It was worth a chuckle.

Behind the pictures and diagrams was a clump of notebook paper. Only the first line of the first page was used. It was some sort of diary that never made it past the first entry. It began with a date, July 1, 2003. Scrawled in pencil, it succinctly stated that was the day that a friend from 6th grade drowned while swimming.

I heard the news two days later, on the morning of July 3rd. My mother was looking through the paper, saw an article about my friend, and asked if I knew her. I said yes. Then she asked me if my luggage was packed. We were leaving for vacation in Branson, Missouri the same day.

It was a terrible vacation.

I don't know why I wrote what I did on that piece of notebook paper. As if I would forget. I haven't thought about my friend in years, so I guess for all extents and purposes, I more or less had. Maybe it was a good idea, after all.

I had forgotten how much I used to love interior design, too. Now that I think of it, I've forgotten a lot of things.

I've forgotten how when I was young I used to dance with my dad by standing on his toes when he came home from work, when he came home sober, when he came home early enough for anyone in the house to still be awake.

I've forgotten how guys accused me of being gay in 6th grade, but I denied it. I lied so many times I had convinced even myself it was true. I peeked at guys in the locker room while wondering if I should ask a girl out.

I've forgotten how I once told my mom things that I didn't even tell my friends. Now that she treats me like the Invisible Man after I came out to her three years ago, I won't even tell her things that I say to strangers.

Memories. Changes. Transformations. It's so much easier to forget than to remember. It's so much more convenient to look at our feet as we walk than to look back and see how far we've come, or how little.

When I move to LA this August, I plan on forgetting a lot of things. I want to forget the omnipresent, suffocating conservatism of Midwest suburbia; the feeling of worthlessness I get whenever I'm at home; and the familiar sensation of looking about me at everyone I know and seeing only straight people.

But there are some things that I will cling to forever, even though it'd be so much easier to forget them, as if they never happened. I'm never going to forget the silence of family dinners; the sight of ants scurrying over my dad's vomit on the driveway beside his car; and the sound of the word fag as it flies down the hallway, its consonants snapping like a brittle twig.

No, I don't think I will ever forget - I've been through a lot of shit that has made me a stronger and better person, and my friend drowned while swimming on July 1, 2003.