I'm 52 now. I'm white. I started playing in 1979, the day after my best friend's birthday. I was 12.
My dad had bought him this present. Dad tried to explain it to me, and I thought it sounded pretty dumb. I wish I could remember the exact words he used, but I came away with the idea that it was "Let's Pretend, but with rules." Which really, it was... Blue Box D&D. I remember thinking it was dumb to put rules on our games of pretend. Also, I was 12, and "Let's Pretend" was a stupid kid's game.
Day after the party, best friend says "Well, your dad bought me this. I guess we should try it."
So, that's why I started. Literally because I felt obligated. But... I was hooked. He and I stumbled our way through the rules and our first dungeon adventure. And that it. I was in it for life. It wasn't "Let's Pretend With Rules." It was "Let's Pretend With Ideas. And Rules." It captured my imagination, and my friend's. The sense of wonder, and discovery, the thrill of danger.
We did one-on-one for most of the rest of that school year, also moving to AD&D along the way. Then we added new friends from his school the next year.
All his friends were white boys. But then when I reached high school it opened up for me. I met many girls and a few people who were non-white, who all formed part of a large gaming circle in high school. There were about 20 of us, and we formed into groups based on the sort of games we liked. One group was horror, one did supers, a couple did fantasy, but we were all friends, and there was a lot of overlap.
Sometime in here Patricia Pullman's son commited suicide and it made the news and my mom got concerned. But we spoke and my mom was satisfied that I wasn't about to go mental from playing D&D. I put a copy of an Article about Pullman and BADD inside my DMG cover, so I could laugh at her. Years later, I took it out because I realized I was being... I can't say that word here, but I had been one. She was a bereaved mother, desperate to find a way to make missing the signs of her son's trouble not her fault. But still, I had to have The Talk with my mom about it. And then she would send me books to read like Mazes and Monsters and The Dungeon Master, I think trying to get me to stop, but never saying it directly.
High School was also when I started GMing. My friend and I started to have different circles. So I began DMing, and later GMing other things. Over those first years, we tried Gamma World, Top Secret, Traveller (I still LOL when I remember taking like 6 tries to roll up a character who would survive the process of being rolled up), Star Frontiers, Gangbusters. Then I found The Fantasy Trip and took my first real forays into GMing.
Then in '87, Star Wars, the only thing I loved more than RPGs... became an RPG. And the supplements West End put out... more imagination fodder than ever before!
Since then it's a blur of different games and ideas. I left AD&D behind in the early 90s, having enjoed 1st and 2nd ed. I came back in 2018 to 5th Ed. There was a period of about a year where I stopped entirely. I was working a pointless, dead-end job for very little money, and my wife and I were struggling to make ends meet, and there was a huge fight over the fact that I still devoted so much energy to RP. So I stopped. About a year later, my wife made me start again, because I was miserable and just going through the motions.
The reason I've stayed with it... I love it. Now the sense of wonder is something I try to give others. I almost exclusively GM, and I delight in making new things, new situations, new characters for my heroes to interact with, new mysteries to explore. I love taking risks with new forms of presentation. Sure, they're not all perfect, but I learn from them. Right now I'm running a three-part game, with three different groups in the same setting, each doing things which alter the world for all three groups. It's crazy fun.
I've never felt or understood the need to hide what I do. I guess, intellectually, I can understand why someone might want to hide it, but emotionally, I've never felt it. For years I would not go anywhere without some dice and at least one game book. I'd strike up conversations, make friends, occasionally have someone react negatively. I'd see the TV Preachers and the hyped up media. So I joined a group which advocated RPGs and fought the negative stereotyping, joined a local con to help run the annual event... lots of stuff which really just took away time for gaming. And for years I've gamed online, starting in the late 90s when I could not physcially go out during good gaming time, and sticking with it because of the friends I made there. A couple of them are still gaming with me. Raised a couple of gamer-kids.
So... I've stayed because I love it. Why I love it is a bunch of reasons.