I was a really dumb kid, like really, really dumb.

Me and my cousin one time 'experimented' sexually. We were like 10-11, and we just sort of tried out stuff we saw on the internet. We're both guys.

I found out what being gay meant months after, and I was told it was a bad thing, but I didn't really understand the context of it. I thought that because he was the one doing the 'stuff' to me, not the other way around, it meant he was gay.

Me and my cousin got into an argument over something stupid, literally related to a video game we were playing. I got super mad at him, and said "Im gonna tell your mom you like to do gay stuff!" and went upstairs to her and literally told her that her son was gay, and that we had done gay stuff together (not going into details for obvious reasons). I also said that he was looking at images of naked men on the computer a lot. I couldn't even describe the look on her face. Just absolute horror. I just remember she SNAPPED suddenly and said "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW SERIOUS THIS IS?" and then had to call my mom and tell her to pick me up as soon as possible. I remember her just crying and saying "what the fuck am i going to do, what the fuck am I going to do".

2 months later, she moved away from our city 3 states away. Her and my mom got into a big fight (or rather, multiple fights) apparently and now they don't speak to each other. I presume it was over this issue. I never spoke to him after that incident except when I saw him at a family members wedding when we were both 15. She also told my mom I was gay too, but I explained to my mom that I didn't like it, and that it was he who initiated it. I think she had suspicions I was gay for a while too, but she never expressed them much.

Anyways, at 15, after I saw him at that wedding, we added each other on facebook. I read his statuses and it was just horrible. Long stories about how his mom was hitting him and screaming at him because she knew he was gay, even though he tried to deny it. His facebook had tons of statuses about the depression and abuse he was going through because of his mother hating him. He had one status in particular about how he will likely never recover from the stuff his mom did to him which makes me feel especially horrible. It hurt to read these things, not only anger at the mom, but also at myself for telling the mother over a REALLY stupid thing.

I am now 18 and every time I think about this situation, or read his statuses (he is now far, far away from his mom, in college, and openly bisexual), it just makes me feel such a wave of awful guilt. I apologized last year to him, and he never responded (I apologized through facebook messenger).

Even though he came out as bisexual, I absolutely know he wouldn't have come out while under his moms house. He wrote about how he told his mom he wasn't gay a lot, but that she knew regardless.

I know I was only 11 years old, but that seemingly stupid mistake lead to this guys life being ruined basically for the next 7 years.