Just a week after former Teen Wolf star Colton Haynes maybe came out as gay, another alum from the hit MTV show, Charlie Carver, has officially come out via a series of Instagram posts.

The actor posted an image to the photo-sharing site today (January 11) showing the inspirational quote “be you who needed when you were younger,” along with a lengthy caption explaining how he came to terms with his sexuality at a young age and his newfound decision to come out as gay to the rest of the world.

He wrote: "As a young boy, I knew I wanted to be an actor. I knew I wanted to be a lot of things!... But the acting thing stuck. It was around that age that I also knew, however abstractly, that I was different from some of the other boys in my grade. Over time, this abstract 'knowing' grew and articulated itself through a painful gestation marked by feelings of despair and alienation, ending in a climax of saying three words out loud: 'I am gay'. I said them to myself at first, to see how they felt. They rang true, and I hated myself for them. I was twelve. It would take me a few years before I could repeat them to anyone else, in the meantime turning the phrase over and over in my mouth until I felt comfortable and sure enough to let the words pour out again, this time to my family…”

He continued, explaining his initial decision as a burgeoning actor not to address his sexuality was intertwined with his perception of roles he'd be offered were he to come out as gay. Carter wrote, "I did not want to be defined by my sexuality. Sure, I am a proud gay man, but I don’t identify as a Gay man, or a GAY man, or just gay. I identify as a lot of things, these various identifications and identities taking up equal space and making up an ever-fluid sense of Self. Furthermore, as an actor, I believed that my responsibility to the craft and the business was to remain benevolently neutral – I was a canvas, a chameleon, the next character.”

Carter continued, "If I Came Out, I feared I would be limiting myself to a type, to a perception with limits that I was not professionally comfortable with.”

He also makes the point that he “hadn’t really ever been ‘in’” saying, "I tried to live as authentically as I’ve known how to, as a gay guy, since that concept became available to me, only once or twice intentionally dodging the ever ill-timed question with the subtext that might have as well read 'ARE YOU GAY???' I’ve lived ‘out,' not feeling the need to announce so. I was comfortably out in my private life. And for a time, that was enough.”

But Carter eventually realized he couldn't stay silent forever: "I now believe that by omitting this part of myself from the record, I am complicit in perpetuating the suffering, fear, and shame cast upon so many in the world. In my silence, I’ve helped decide for to you too that to be gay is to be, as a young man (or young woman, young anyone), inappropriate for a professional career in the Arts (WHAAA???) So now, let the record show this- I self-identify as gay...I owe it to myself, more than anything, to be who I needed when I was younger. ”

Read Carter's eloquent statement in its entirety over on Instagram.

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