So I went to an early showing of “Love, Simon” with my friends unfortunately forgetting waterproof mascara. Trust me, don’t leave home without it if you go and see this movie.

Going in to this movie, I knew Simon was gay and it would somehow be spread throughout his high school’s secrets website. On this website, a boy who uses a pseudonym, writes a letter about how he is closeted, scared and wants to find love. Simon responds and they start falling in love with each other while having no idea who the other person is.

Simon spends a good chunk of the movie looking for this mystery man, while Martin, another character, screenshots Simon’s emails and blackmails him. Martin wanted to get with Simon’s friend, Abby, otherwise he would leak that Simon was gay.

Abby denied Martin at the homecoming rally in front of everyone, so he leaked Simon’s sexuality on the secrets website which of course everyone read. Simon is pissed off and angry. There is only one other gay person who is out at his school. Then his friends got mad at Simon because they were pawns in his game, and he was trying to set them up with people to protect himself.

This is where I got upset. Simon has less to lose in my opinion than if I came out. He has a comfortable liberal household with pretty accepting friends. I come from a very white, conservative town, and I am bisexual which often confuses people and is a lot harder to explain. Coming out can be dangerous in certain situations. Parents have kicked out kids for being gay so they had to live on the street.

Simon eventually came out to his family on Christmas morning, the day after the emails are published. His mom, played by Jennifer Garner, is a therapist and through her therapist ways she knew something was off with him. She said it felt like he was holding his breath, which is where I proceeded to ball my eyes out because that is me currently.

This movie proceeded to make me think about myself in ways I attempted to avoid. I would bury myself in my work and classes so I would not have to come to terms with who I am and attempt to figure myself out. I did not realize I was consciously doing that until I saw this movie. It definitely helped me a lot to come to terms with things but also made me want to talk about this with my parents. However, then I managed to get myself into anxiety attack mode.

I have a few arguments though. As mentioned before, I did not like how they put him in a comfortable liberal family. As much as I love the actor, he is not actually gay in real life. Secondly, I would like a story like this where the protagonist is a person of color. I am glad there was more variety especially since the love interest was a gay person of color.

Also, I might be wrong but have there been movies where its a gay female coming out? I feel like I was not able to see myself in a gay female in TV shows especially not Emily from “Pretty Little Liars.” It seems to always be gay men.

Overall “Love, Simon” was a great movie, but I wish the situation was different.