Yet when I am about to post my pictures on social media, I examine them through the searching eyes of my staunchly evangelical Christian parents, through the prying eyes of my childhood friends who still remember me as the boy who would recite chapters of the Bible. I swipe through my pictures. “This is very gay!” “This is super gay!” “This is quite gay!” I judge my own images and delete the pictures. I am my own censor.

A few days after the exchange with my brother, a cousin sent me a message: “Jesus loves you, bro! Come back to him. He is ready to forgive you and take you back as his lovely child.”

I climbed back in bed and rolled myself into a ball as my heart sank into the hollow of my gut. My stomach gave a loud, nervous growl. I longed for death. These messages pull me back to the existential orbit I am always trying to escape. I ask myself, “Is this really worth losing loved ones over? ”

I should relish the freedom America offers me, but it feels like I am running in the middle of a busy highway or breathing under water. Hiding in the closet is all I have known.

Some days ago, I was at a pride event for gay Africans in Washington, in a West African basement restaurant. I was chatting with a few Nigerians when a charming photographer raised his camera toward us. They instinctively ducked as if dodging a bullet. “You can never tell where those pictures will end up,” someone said. I nodded in agreement.

We are gay men ostensibly living openly gay lives in the United States. But we live with the fear of our families back in Nigeria ever knowing that we are gay or, in my case, that I find even the slightest peace or comfort in it. I declined invitations to the D.C. Black Pride events for fear of being photographed.

I fail to live fully for the fear of getting into yet another fight with my parents. I dread the phone calls where they tell me how utterly ashamed and disappointed they are. After calls like that, I hang up. I hate myself and wish that I didn’t have to be gay, that it didn’t hurt so much.