I Was a Gay Teen in a Traveling Gospel Band When My World Exploded

On my life in a gospel-music family, a devastating crash, and the masks we wear to hide ourselves from the world.

Keyboard and mask images licensed from Adobe Stock

I was supposed to tell her that night.

My mother gripped the wheel, guiding our tiny car through the endless dark, my father and younger twin brothers asleep in the back. I had rehearsed the words for days, the ones I knew would probably change everything. Mama, I think I might be…

But then, before I could force the words out, the world shattered around me.

The pickup truck came out of nowhere, headlights off, barreling toward us like a monster in the night. In an instant — a sickening crunch of metal, a blinding explosion of glass and force — everything I had ever known was gone.

I remember the impact. The weightlessness of being thrown forward. The taste of blood in my mouth. I remember the silence after — the kind that only comes when something irreparable has just happened.

Long before that night, I had become an expert at masking.

I spent years hiding parts of myself — my love of the piano, my queerness, my struggles to fit into a world that demanded…