I've been wearing a mask for 25 years– today it comes off

I believe the moment someone chooses to share their story, another person breaks free. It is through these stories that we find our healing, our power, and our community. This is mine.

I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC surrounded by more love than I knew what to do with. We weren't an affluent family, but my parents devoted themselves to me and my brother and we were wealthy in happiness. It wasn't until years later that I'd learn the lengths my mother would go through to take us to Chuck E. Cheese each weekend; or the many Christmas Eve mornings my father would wait outside of Toys "R" Us to make sure that we had the newest video game system waiting for us under the tree. My family taught me that love is unconditional and that greatness is found in the service of others.

My family taught me how beautiful it is to be Black. How much history is tied within the kinks of my hair and how much strength is rooted in the mahogany of my skin.

They taught me that to be Black is to work twice as hard for half as much. To speak softly and politely if ever stopped by a police officer and to always be respectful. I didn't realize it at the time, but my parents were teaching me how to survive in a world that often neglects to see me in my full humanity.

School is where I learned to exist in brokenness. Where I learned that to be different is to be a mistake in need of correction. I was bullied relentlessly. I learned to fold and contort my body to be whoever I needed to fit in, forcing myself to deny what classmates were pushing me to confront. Each morning before class, through gritted teeth, I'd beg that no one would ask me the one question I dreaded most: "Orlando, are you gay?" No four words cut me deeper. Made me feel more ashamed or more unworthy. I learned to hate myself before I turned 18. My grades suffered and I finished high school with a transcript riddled with Ds and Fs.

My shame rendered me invisible. I did what my world told me I must: I buried my truth. I hid in the darkness. I lost myself behind the mask. I often dreamt of running away; breaking free of my body in search of a place that made room for all of me. Shoulders hunched in shame of my shadow, I carried the burden that so many have carried before and so many will carry after. The burden of hating my truth.

Howard University is where I learned that the possibilities for my life were limitless not in spite of my history, but because of it. Until that point, all of my teachers from elementary school to high school, with the exception of one, had been white. At Howard, every class – from Organic Chemistry and Calculus to Shakespearean Literature and Spanish – was either taught or taken by someone that looked like me. Howard University is where I learned about the power of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the resilience of Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin; and the strength of Audre Lorde and Harriet Tubman. For a young man that grew up believing that parts of myself had to be hidden beneath a mask, Howard is where I could celebrate the brilliance of my culture and the beauty of my history.

I was a student at Howard when I was stopped and frisked by a police officer for the first time. He called me boy, put me in handcuffs, and searched my body. His eyes were cold, and I knew that he could only see what he believed to be true about me: it didn't matter who I was, who I had been, or who I might become.

My heart raced with terror as I tried to balance my anger and fear while also remembering to speak softly and politely. I looked at the gun staring menacingly at me from his holster and could feel, in that moment, that it didn't matter that I was an A student or that I had accepted an offer to intern at the Brookings Institution the following spring.

After 45 minutes, he released me from the handcuffs with no apology. I went back home and sat in silence, shattered from the pain of being violated and profiled. A month after this incident, Trayvon Martin was killed. Followed by Eric Garner. And Michael Brown. To be unseen is to be unloved, and it was at Howard where I was surrounded by people who saw and validated my humanity. There is magic in having a collective of people supporting and loving each other in a world that often meets your existence with questioning and scrutiny.

I was recruited to work at LinkedIn after college and moved to San Francisco shortly after graduation. For the first time in my life, I built the courage to share my full truth and humanity with others. I became friends with people that are gay and straight; Black and white; queer and trans; and every race and identity in between. These beautiful friends showed me that every human being is in search of the same thing: to be seen for who we really are, worthy of love and acceptance. I felt the loneliness and isolation of years behind the mask begin to lift.

Then, a gunman shot his way into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL and killed 49 Brown and Black queer people. 49 heartbeats were stopped in less than a couple hours.

The day after the shooting, my friends and I went to the Castro, a neighborhood in San Francisco with a rich history, to find community in the midst of our grief. That night, we danced despite our fear and our pain, and it was there, surrounded by a community of love, that I felt safe.

I took the mask off for the first time and felt the sun smile against my face; I felt the sun on the face of that little boy who learned to hate himself before he turned 18. I freed him. And I freed myself.

I can feel my soul breaking open and in that opening, a flower blooms and I find love for all of me.

I am Black. I am queer. I am enough.