Watch: YouTube Celeb Ricky Dillon No Longer Asexual: 'I Am Gay!'

YouTube celeb and singer-songwriter Ricky Dillon was prompted by his unsatisfying attempts at heterosexual relationships to announce to his followers four years ago that he was "asexual."

While asexuality is a real orientation, more recently Dillon has come to understand that it does not describe him after all. In a Feb. 26 video, Dillon revealed what he know knows to be true: "I am 1000 percent sure I'm gay."

Yahoo News reported that after "a long journey to get here," Dillon told his followers that he had "started to slowly realize that I'm gay a couple of years ago – I would say 2017 – and ever since I've slowly realized it more."

Faced with stigma and social pressure that prevents them from going through the ordinary processes of sexual and romantic exploration that heterosexual youths don't question, young gay men often mistake their lack of attraction for members of the female gender for asexuality.

But if mistaking one's same-sex romantic and sexual orientation for asexuality because it does not fit into the expected – and heavily promoted, by the wider world – heterosexual box is all too common, so too is the underlying reason for Dillon's self-described "anxiety" and "awkwardness" around love and romance: A vitriolically anti-LGBTQ religious upbringing.

"It was drilled into my brain from an early age that being gay is one of the worst things that could happen," Dillon told his followers, reported Yahoo News. "I am so terrified they're not going to accept me for being gay because I know their beliefs."

Added the singer-songwriter – newly empowered by authenticity – "I love my family so much, but I don't agree with what they believe in in this scenario."

Even if his biological kin turn their backs on him, though, the singer has already found support and acceptance among his followers and fans. Responses to the video ranged from the congratulatory and loving to comments that suggested people had long known, or at least suspected, that Dillon was gay, and they didn't care.

Following his coming out, Dillon took to Twitter, where he described being "overwhelmed" by "relief" at having finally come out.

i've been sobbing uncontrollably for the past hour. i'm overwhelmed with relief and emotion. i've never felt like this before ever. i can't believe it– Ricky Dillon (@RickyPDillon) February 26, 2020

"i've never felt like this before ever," the celeb disclosed. "I can't believe it," he added.

Watch Dillon's emotional coming out video below.