The unseen struggle: Going back to school as an LGBT+ pupil

My time at school was something like a flooded kitchen: I was grasping at the pots and pans floating away all the while more and more water was being poured in.

It was a chaotic blur of trying to balance so many uncertainties, navigating figuring who I was and trying to do well in my school work. However, one of the biggest struggles I faced during this time was coming to terms with my LGBT+ identity.

These days, I am a bright and blooming lesbian with a support network of friends and family that are always there for me. It feels surreal being able to say this publicly with conviction because, as an awkward and timid teenager, my journey to get to this point was anything but smooth.

When I was thirteen, I realised I had an attraction to femininity but I wasn't sure what this meant. The only way I knew to describe it was the word "bisexual" because, as a victim of heteronormativity, I thought as a woman I must be attracted to men as a default.

I told my best friend at the time, thinking I was confiding in someone that had my back. Instead, she went behind it and told other people. By the end of the week, my entire year was throwing jokes and insults at me whilst calling me a lesbian. It turns out they were right with the label, but at the time, it was devastating.

What should have been a time to feel validated and supported ended up being the beginning of almost a decade of repressing myself. Up until my second year of university, the teasing and name calling continued and, truth be told, it made me feel hopeless.

I felt isolated and abandoned, and my school never intervened. What should have been a time for me to explore my identity and find myself, turned into a dark cloud, as I was constantly in fear of another student singling me out again or turning me into a homophobic punchline.

In hindsight, I now realise that my peers were uneducated on LGBT+ issues, and had been conditioned to believe that anything different to the norm is wrong. This doesn't excuse their behaviour, but knowing this helps me to know it wasn't really personal. I was just the first to be different.

Finally, during my time at university, I decided I was tired of living in the aftermath of what happened to me.

At a pace that was comfortable to me (and after years of therapy), I began to feel confident in who I was; a lesbian filled with and deserving of love. I made a new network of friends, found my beautiful girlfriend, came out to my parents and became a Just Like Us ambassador. As a volunteer with Just Like Us, I'm able to go into schools and speak to students at the age I was when I was struggling. I'm able to show them that life as an LGBT+ person is lovely, freeing and nothing to be ashamed of.

I'm sure that many teachers and parents think homophobia is a thing of the past, that doesn't affect the younger generation. Sadly, it is still very much present in school corridors and classrooms; I experienced it first hand.

My school never reached out to me or provided any support, even after teachers heard and responded to comments aimed at me in lessons. If only we had been taught that being LGBT+ was normal and valid, then maybe I wouldn't have felt so afraid to be myself. Maybe my peers wouldn't have seen my identity as something to make fun of, and I wouldn't have felt so alone.

As young people head back for the new academic year, I can only hope that schools and teachers remain vigilant, and reach out to students who may be struggling. That they focus on making sure all pupils are included, and that their classrooms are places where LGBT+ people are celebrated. That, as generations pass, being LGBT+ no longer places a target on any young person's back, allowing all pupils to come to school feeling safe and secure in who they are.

Jenna is ambassador for Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people's charity.