No Secrets: A Paperless Journal

“Hell, but cold,” “The Most Depressing City in America,” and simply “Binghamton :(“ are all ways I have heard the town in which I grew up being described. Most people, especially young people, who live here, claim they can’t wait to leave. Binghamton is often pointed to as a boring city with humdrum towns, subpar suburbs and nothing to do. A friend from downstate recently told me that “If you're from Binghamton, you lie, and if you say you’re from Binghamton, you're lying.” Honestly, I get it. We don’t get a lot of sun and it’s raining probably half of the time, so it’s easy to look at life through dreary glasses. But still, I wonder how many of these claims actually hold water, and if Binghamton is so bad in the first place. So, this is me, trying to make myself like this place a little bit more: An Ariel View of Downtown from the Susquehanna River. By Rick DeGraw. 1. We’re Not That Depressed There is this myth that Binghamton is the saddest town in the US o...

June is LGBT Pride Month, so I figured it would be more than apropos to share my own "coming out" story as a gay individual. Now, I say "coming out" in quotations because it was more of a slow, wistful slither for me. I didn't want to be gay. I even didn't know that people could be gay until I started hearing it as an insult. Needless to say, for me, coming out to myself was enormously more difficult than to others. A lot of us feel this way.  Growing up, I had this complex that most gay guys do; You convince yourself you are attracted to girls because you think they're pretty, you like their fashion sense and honestly that's all you've ever been taught. Your friends talk about all the girls they like so you assume you're having the same feelings. But the truth is, you don't like girls, you want to be their best friend. I had this mindset well into middle school and was brainwashed to think that one day, I would grow up and marry a gi...