I became more comfortable with navigating these intersections of being a Black queer athlete through the conversations I was able to have with my closest friends and advisors.

I’m not afraid to be who I am. I'm not just Kamal as a track and field athlete, I am Kamal, who has these identities. So being that representation, being that voice, being that model essentially, I just went out of my way to have those conversations and then people started to open up to me and I just made friends along that way.

I love talking to individuals, and communicating sometimes led to deeper conversations and those deeper conversations were very valuable and allowed for a community.

We are humans, we all have our differences and we're just here to support each other and to encourage one another to be our best versions of ourselves at all times.

That's what allowed me to like to create that comfortable space – just being able to freely talk and have someone to listen, and to connect to. I think that was very lucky for me.

Because being comfortable with just having conversations with them, meant that I could trust them and they were not gonna judge me for who I am.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued tomorrow]