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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Watch: NYC Fire Department's It Gets Better PSA [Watch (HLS stream): Watch: NYC Fire Department's It Gets Better PSA](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/x0CLFQP1.m3u8) (7:52)  _Published 2015-10-12. Watch: NYC Fire Department's It Gets Better PSA_ --- Jul 27, 2023 6:58 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Don't Talk PSA: Coach Taylor](/video/5ecXG9om/) ### Don't Talk PSA: Coach Taylor [It's On Us- Bystander PSA](/video/aNhUjCJL/) ### It's On Us- Bystander PSA [Lt. William Ryan, NYC Fire Department Talks Through the Rescue](/video/42GFA0i9/) ### Lt. William Ryan, NYC Fire Department Talks Through the Rescue --- ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ MUSIC ] Growing up I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. I was always trying to figure out well Why me and not them? This deep secret, dark secret that I was afraid of that I didn't wanna be me. I struggled with being ****. I wanted to be just like everyone else. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be accepted, I wanted to be loved. I felt like I'm inside of a bubble and I have to like, get out. When the pain of where you're at is stronger than the fear of where you're going Then you'll move forward. When I came out to my mother, she broke down crying because she didn't realize that her child had been carrying a weight that big for that long. She was loving and understanding, but I think part of her believed that it was a phase. I said yeah, you know, she's my girlfriend. She says, are you gay? And I was like, yeah. She was like, oh oh okay. [ LAUGH ] The main thing I think that made me nervous or uneasy was the military just trying to make sure I kept those two worlds apart. It wasn't his immediate reaction but a couple of weeks later he told me. that I was lucky that I had waited until I was eighteen to come out to him because if I was younger he would have put me in a mental institution. So I sort of had both ends of the spectrum in terms of how people reacted. I never got a chance to tell him how much this meant for me but He was eating, and he literally just said, oh so you have a girlfriend, okay. And he just kept eating like it was no big deal. I grew up listening to punk rock in high school, and I was like a teenager, and I was kind of like it was my punk rock moment. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not hiding who I am and pretending to be something I'm not to make someone else happy. Coming to terms with how my parents raised me. Homosexuality is just wrong, it doesn't exist. And if you pray about it, if you think about it, you're gonna go to hell. When I decided to come out, I kind of channeled that to find that I am the other, and I'm okay with that. And like, I'd rather be the other than, you know, the cookie cutter. Being able to embrace who you are and say this is me. I'm not changing for anyone. I love who I am. Is such a powerful, empowering experience. I was so uncomfortable for my first six months on the job thinking I have to maintain this facade, and then one day someone just looked at me and just went what are you doing? The guys were worried, they didn't know what to expect. But after some time, they realized I wasn't I wasn't much different from themselves. I was fortunate enough that I was always placed around people that appreciated me and appreciated the hard work that I put in and my attitude. What people care about here is whether you can do your job and whether you can. Apply yourself and be about giving yourself to other people. The department has been really wonderful and very supportive of my transition and of who I am as a person. I think we're very lucky to work for the New York City Fire Department. I'm not your career paramedic. I'm not your tall paramedic. I'm not your female paramedic I'm your paramedic. Who I love is never gonna interfere with whether or not I can treat you. It doesn't change who I am essentially. Gay, straight, bi, trans, it shouldn't matter who you are in order to work Any filed do you want It's about whether or not do your job And I think if anything I'm a stronger person and a better firefighter. I'm more compassionate public servant because of the experiences I've gone through. My 16th birthday It's probably the closest I've ever come to suicide. And I remember very clearly not seeing a future for myself or at least not a future that involved happiness or peace. Learning to be comfortable with myself and learning to interact with the world in a way that felt right and didn't feel like Faking being normal for other people just took a lot of time. Had I ended it, I would've missed so many wonderful things in my life. So since that time, I've found a really healthy relationship with someone I truly love and I'm incredibly grateful to be married to. And we have Really delightful children, and I have a healthy relationship with my parents, and a really fulfilling career. And I never, ever, ever would have imagined it in that instance. You have people who love you. You're going to have people who love you. As much as you don't think that that's a thing, that's totally gonna be a thing. A lot of who I am now, a lot of the strong confident proud person that I am now, is not just me. I owe it to so many people who helped me along the way. Whenever I had a problem, or whenever I had a concern I just went to the people that I trusted. You kinda still go about and create your own family because you don't have the church, or the commercials on television or whatever telling you what it is to be gay. You go out and find out for yourself. Your friends are the family that you make and that you choose. And that's where I found just most of my support. A lot of my **** community I consider family More than my blood family. Community is important to, I think, all of us. We all need a place to belong. For once, I'm around people where I don't have to censor myself, where I can be myself, where I know that if I say something, it's not going to be looked at differently or it's not going to be looked at sideways. There's a comfort in that, that really can't be replaced. If I could give a message to myself when I was a teen, I would tell myself not to give up on being who you are. Don't let anyone tell you who to be or how to be. That's not true to who you are. Love and understand yourself and you'll get to everywhere you need to be. Love yourself, be okay with yourself because it is okay. And you're worthy of love. There are people who understand you and there are people who can help you. Search for the love. There's gotta be someone out there. That will hold your hands to any difficulty that you're gonna have There are going to be moments where you're going to want to cry. You're going to wanna throw things. You're gonna wanna break things. You might even want to hurt yourself. Don't do it. The world eventually opens up and you get to be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do. You get to be you at some point, and you just have to get there. So please hold on for one more day, because, I promise, it gets better. You get better. Your soul gets better. Your spirit gets better. It gets better . >> Keep moving forward. It gets better. Give it time. It gets better. It doesn't just get better. It gets amazing. It got better for me. It can get better for you. Believe that it gets better. It definitely gets better. It will absolutely get better. I promise you it gets better. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Watch: NYC Fire Department's It Gets Better PSA","description":"Watch: NYC Fire Department's It Gets Better PSA","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/x0CLFQP1/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-10-12T15:42:26.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/x0CLFQP1.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/x0CLFQP1/","duration":"PT7M52S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/x0CLFQP1/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```