Calum Scott is among the prominent LGBTQ artists who have issued a video message in honor of National Coming Out Day.
The Britain’s Got Talent finalist unveiled a short clip about his coming out experience on Thursday (Oct. 11), in which he reveals the trauma that came with being socially isolated at an early age after coming out.
The visual takes an up-close look at Scott’s life, filling in images of Scott walking through an empty home with found home-movie footage and childhood pictures. Despite his mother’s unwavering support of his queer identity, Scott came out to his best friend only to be ostracized from his schoolmates.
“I watched him tell everybody else in the group, one by one, and I felt my heart break because I knew none of them would ever speak to me again,” he shares. “To me, it felt like punishment for something I couldn’t control and something I didn’t quite understand myself.”
Scott admits that he was terrified of coming out after making it through to the final rounds of Britain’s Got Talent, anxious that he would have to endure the same loneliness that he did in his youth.
“I know that there are people, young and old, still struggling with the same questions and living with the relentless fear, the trauma, the heartbreak,” he says. “I make the music that I do because I want to desperately inspire the right kind of conversations. That’s what we’re missing.”
Watch the powerful clip below: