May 27, 2016
In Emotional Vid, UK YouTuber Talks About Coming Out to Parents
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
A popular YouTuber from the U.K., known for lighthearted and silly videos, got serious this week, posting an emotional clip discussing coming out with his parents.
Riyadh Khalaf, 25, has over 150,000 YouTube subscribers and racked up mover 12.8 million views. Though he mostly posts fun clips on his channel, Khalfa's latest video has a much different tone. In it, the e-star talks about the struggles of coming out to his somewhat conservative family and their initial reaction.
He explains that he was terrified of coming out to his Catholic mother, Lorraine, and his Iraqi father, Sam.
"It was just supposed to be a normal 'coming out story video', which many of my YouTube friends have done, but very quickly it turned into more than that," Khalaf, who hails from Dublin but now lives in London, told the Daily Mail in a recent interview. "My dad is one of the most loving, caring and understandable fathers I know but he was in a seriously dark place. He was worried about what his friends and family would think."
The 12-minute clip starts with Khalaf explaining he first realized he was gay when he was 13 or 14, saying he first noticed himself "looking at the other boys in my class and thought 'I'm not meant to feel this way about other guys."
"Over time you eventually come out to yourself, and after four years of battling with that, it came the time to tell these two," he adds.
The YouTube star said he came out to his mom first, but she said she found out he was gay before he told her.
"I always kind of had a feeling but didn't want to put a label on Riyadh," Lorraine says in the clip. "One night I was on the computer and I pressed a button, it must have been the history button, and I saw a gay website. It was a confirmation of this little thing in my head."
She said she called her own mother in tears about her discovery. But Khalaf's grandmother told Lorraine she knew for years her grandson was gay.
It took another nine months before Khalaf told his father he's gay. After an argument, he gave Sam a note that read, "I am gay." His reaction was completely different from Lorraine, however.
In the vid, Sam said he didn't know how to react at the time.
"We all went to sleep, but at about three or four in the morning I got up and went to sit on the deck, and I was looking for tablets for suicide," he confessed, breaking down in tears.
After the emotional moment, the family talks about how far they've come since Khalaf's coming out.
Watch the video, which has earned nearly 80,000 views since being posted Monday, below.
