As a closeted gay teen, daytime soap operas helped me create myself

Emerging Queer Voices is a monthly LGBTQ arts and culture column that features different up-and-coming LGBTQ writers. You can read more about the series and find all published editions here.
"I know what I'm doing when I get home," I heard my seventh-grade locker neighbor say to one of her friends as we packed our bags to leave school. "I'm ignoring everything and watching Pretty Little Liars."
The year was 2011. Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" and the Glee original "Loser Like Me" were all the rage, and the It Gets Better campaign continued to inspire. Despite all of this messaging to teens that alternate sexualities and interests were fine, all it did was make me more anxious about my own budding queer desires.
I never watched Pretty Little Liars or The Fosters or any other 2010s cable teen drama I overheard being discussed at school. I might have liked them if I'd ever given them a try. But the bullying and subtle homophobic taunts I endured more and more in the junior-high hallways made me retreat inward.
I wanted nothing to do with what kids my own age, grouped together in my head as bullies, were interested in. They had rejected me, so I was rejecting them and, by extension, their culture. I needed something that would be just for myself and that no one could take away from me.
The previous summer, I had stumbled on a late-afternoon showing of The Young and the Restless. I'd had no idea who these characters were, but their homes and lives sure did shine bright and glamorous on our new high-definition TV.
It ultimately didn't matter to me that I'd had no idea what was going on. What was important was that these characters had grown-up lives, which looked nothing like my own, in a fictional world with a very tenuous grasp on reality.
Better yet, daytime soap operas had always been looked down upon as lesser entertainment by most of the adults in my life. "What are you watching that for?" would have been the common reaction. Watching that, albeit in secret, compelled me.
I both wanted and needed something to take me out of the world I was experiencing — the one I had no control over and which had decided who and what I was before I could figure it out for myself. I would realize I was gay during the fall of Grade 8, but the long-term implications of this stressed me out so intensely that I repressed the thought of ever making it public.
Subconsciously, I needed an outlet for those emotions, and what better place than Genoa City, WI, home to the (somehow) international conglomerate Newman Enterprises? I wanted something in my life that made me feel like that girl rushing home to watch Pretty Little Liars, even though it would be years before I could express my passion for The Young and the Restless without shame.
I managed to sneak Y&R on the family PVR every day. Since I was usually the first one home in the afternoon, I would watch it immediately — usually while chomping down on a bowl of white cheddar Cheez-Its and drinking multiple cans of Diet Pepsi (which didn't help my baby-fat phase). Then I'd delete any and all evidence.
On the off chance that my dad got home during this after-school ritual, I would make sure to have Family Channel preset on the remote so I could quickly switch back and forth whenever he happened to walk by the TV room.
Typical 14-year-old awkwardness ensued that year, coupled with the added pressure and anxiety of my own developing queerness. Every teenager experiences growing pains, but they're extra torturous for gay kids. I was bullied in gym class, called the F-word whenever a teacher was out of earshot, brutally mocked and laughed at for not knowing what "jacking off" was slang for. But none of it hurt so bad when I got to go home and escape into a world where, despite increasingly bizarre plot twists and insurmountable odds, people persevered.
Sharon was exonerated and released from prison (having previously escaped) after she'd been accused of murdering someone who had fallen into a volcano. Adam miraculously got his sight back despite being told he'd be blind for life.
And when actors on the show left to pursue other career opportunities, never fear, there would be another actor hired to carry on with their characters. No matter what was going on in the real world, there was comfort in knowing that, five days a week, I could have a one-hour reprieve in a world that really made no sense at all, but at least it wasn't this one.
Summertime was when I could really commit to living in these fictional worlds. By that time, I had also started watching General Hospital — and when school started again, I would record each episode on another television, using an old VCR, to mitigate the risk of two daytime soaps being discovered on the communal PVR.
But as long as it was summer, all bets were off. I didn't even have to leave the house if I didn't need to; all of my community engagement was at the Genoa City Athletic Club and Port Charles's General Hospital. If I did go out, and my parents happened to be home, I would tell them I was going to the library when, in fact, I would ride my bike to the local strip mall to buy Soaps in Depth and Soap Opera Digest from the pharmacy.
As much as furiously consuming soap operas during my teen years wouldn't cure the pain I continued to experience in the real world, it gave me an outlet to discover who I was going to be. Young people are often told they have to "find" themselves, when in reality, the self is something we create.
Two years into my double life as a soap opera fan, I joined Twitter as my first ever foray into social media. Before long, I discovered a passionate fan base for every daytime soap on the air. If you happened to share the same viewpoints or "ship" the same couples, you could easily follow each other and become friends. (If you disagreed, however, watch out — things could get ugly fast.) And actors from the shows would often follow you back.
What had, a year before, resulted in a friendless summer and a cabin-fever-induced bout of depression had led me to create genuine community with people online over shared interests.
"That's what you should do when you grow up," one of my aunts and a fellow General Hospital superfan told me. "You should write these shows." While TV screenwriting isn't quite on my bingo card at the moment, I'm grateful for the space daytime soaps gave me to create myself.
Expressing my opinions on Twitter (the original one, RIP) about daytime television and beyond helped me develop my voice as a writer. I couldn't have known that back in seventh grade when I was looking for mercy from my so-called life. But waiting to find myself could've taken forever. I chose to make my own luck and build everything from scratch.

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