Jane Lynch knows firsthand how hard it can be as a young person struggling to come to terms with your sexuality. Here, the Glee star shares how It Got Better for her.
Jane Lynch might not "give a s***" what anyone thinks about her being gay these days, but years ago, she was terrified at the thought someone might discover her secret.
"For me, to be ostracized would have been the worst thing," the nearly-54-year-old Glee star explained in a video for the new It Got Better series, which will feature LGBT celebrities' personal stories.
She added, "To be thought of as different and not accepted was a fate worse than death."
Sharing she realized she was different long ago, Lynch recalled, "I enjoyed doing boy things. The boys stopped wanting to play with me when I got to be about 10 and I had to fight to play baseball. Every day, I didn't know how I was going to be received because I would just hang out until I got to play. Deep down inside, I knew that something else was going on."
At age 14, she learned what "gay" meant when friends pointed out that sometimes they would see men walking together and holding hands who are "gay for each other." Lynch says a lightbulb went off, and she thought, "I am the girl version of that," though the realization was terribly upsetting.
"It was almost like I had a disease I had been diagnosed. I had a journal and… I remember I wrote, 'I am gay. No one can ever know this.' And I went four blocks away and threw it out in somebody else's garbage," she added. "It led to a life of secrecy that I had to unravel."