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Not sure it did. The only thing that affected where I am in life now is probably my financial background. I came from a poor neighborhood and I was raised by a single mother. Everything I have I had to work for. It's the reason I started going to college so late in life. I wasn't able to get any financial aid until I was 25, so that's when I started college.

As far as being gay or Hispanic, I can say if either has had an impact on my life either which way. I mean I did have to go to Canada to get married, but that's where my husband lives anyways. I've never been targeted outright in a racist manner, except from people of my own race (for not speaking Spanish). If anything, my weight has been what's affected my life the most. Due to medical issues I've been overweight since I hit puberty. Most people either treat me like s**t or at best, ignore me outright. I'm not in the minority, but it's still had a significant impact on my life. It's the reason I'm so withdrawn, why I feel like I'm not worthy of being loved, and why I struggle with my self-esteem.

All in all I wish people could just let each other be. Instead of focusing on what each other looks like or who we love we should be focusing on supporting one another. Life is hard enough without making it harder for someone.

Oh gosh, this is a bit of a complicated subject for me. My family is devoutly Catholic, as well as having social views dating back to about 1870. As a first-born son, there was a very narrow path of acceptable behaviour I was expected to walk, which mostly consisted of getting a good education, going into a field that was respectable, like law or medicine, marrying a nice Catholic girl with no professional ambitions of her own (so she can stay home with the many, many children), and going on to raise a bunch of little Catholic babies to love Jesus and the Church and live in a big house and host extravagant Christmas parties every year. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that. In my parents' eyes, that was a nice life, so naturally that's what they wanted for me.

I've always been a people-pleaser, and growing up, I always had a great deal of love and respect for my parents, and also a great fear of letting them down. I had a rebellious teenage phase, but I was always very careful to keep it hidden from my parents, partly because I didn't want to get in trouble, but mostly I didn't want to hurt them or disappoint them. Eventually I reached a point where I couldn't keep up with having duel identities any longer; I had to face the fact that I simply wasn't the person they thought I was, and I didn't want the life they wanted for me, so I told my parents I was going to music school in London and that I'd been involved with a man nearly twice my age for the past couple years.

They threw me out and cut off all contact and monetary support, which, hard as it was for me emotionally, ended up being a sort of blessing in disguise. When I got to music school, for the first time in my life, I was free to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be without having to worry about the affect it might have on my family, which was extremely healthy, I think. Putting myself through school was a little rough sometimes (I'd snagged a scholarship for my school expenses, but I had to cover my own living expenses), but I think having to muddle through all that was ultimately good for me, too. (As a musician, it's advantageous if you know how to be poor.)

For four years, the only contact I had from my family was through my oldest sister, very intermittently. Unfortunately, my father died during that time, though he apparently let it be known that he was no longer angry with me, and regretted the way we parted. My mother, apparently, holds onto grudges much longer, though I was eventually able to re-establish contact with her and my other siblings, and now I think we have a pretty typical adult child-parent relationship. She drives me bonkers sometimes, and still thinks she knows what's best for me better than I do, but we've (mostly) managed to move past hurt feelings and bruised egos and be part of each other's lives again. My mother is still deeply disapproving of my choice in life partner (and the fact that he's a he is only the beginning of her list of grievances against him), but she's given up trying to break us up (for the most part), so that's something. I've been able to be around to see my younger siblings do things like finish university and get married and start families of their own. It's taken a while, but I feel like I finally have a normal, reasonably healthy relationship with my family, which I'm very thankful for. And given how good things are now, it's hard for me to harbour ill feelings about the past.

My partner thinks I forgive too easily, but I figure that he resents my mother enough for both of us, and I'd rather enjoy the present and look forward to the future than be bitter about the past. smile

Being a poor black kid living in the inner city within a single parent home affected my life far more than my sexual preferences. My mom actually identifies as gender neutral and has been bending pronouns since I was but a calf, so the sexuality part was actually the easiest. I never really even came out to my mom. rofl Pretty sure my mom knew I was different from most boys (preferred long hair, favorite toy was a barbie convertible, etc) when I was young.

I'm not very close with my dad's side, and I play sports and dated girls so I don't think it was ever really a concern of theirs. Don't think I'd go out of my way to tell anyone on that side, but I wouldn't lie. Same for all of my friends and acquaintances.

College was actually the most difficult adjustment for me, in contrast to some of the other experiences in this thread. I went from one of the most diverse high schools in my state to a private catholic university where the Caucasian population was in the 90% range. It didn't help that I was a year younger than everyone (started uni at 17) so it was just another layer of separation. I told a few people at school and had a couple flings, but that environment wasn't exactly the friendliest to the "queer adgenda." Had fun, though. It was a very odd 4 years. 3nodding