Coming out… Sorta?
When I was in high school, it was the first time I was really around gay people. Sure, there were probably some kids in middle school who felt like they may have been gay. But at the age 12 in the year 2008, where everyone said “Omg thats so gay!” as the worst insult you can think of, no one was coming out of the closet any time soon. In high school, I saw some people I knew come out as bi or gay. I joined tumblr and there were people making coming out posts and coming out to their parents, friends and other family members. Then Youtube started to become increasingly popular and soon the coming out posts turned into coming out videos! In the age of the internet, the sky’s the limit in how you choose to come out. There’s now even a whole day dedicated to it. Which is today! Someone decided that October 11th is the day in which if you haven’t come out of the closet, now is the time you can do so! And even if you can’t, today is also a day we recognize there are people still in the closet because sometimes it’s just not safe to come out.
I sat back all these years watching everyone coming out. Seeing them get praised online for being brave and welcoming them into the community. I felt a touch of envy. Mainly because I have struggled with my sexuality for so long. I had the immense catholic guilt on my shoulders. Feeling shame for my feelings and ignoring them for as long as I could. I willed myself to have crushes on guys because that’s how I kept my mind preoccupied and tricked it into following the “status quo”. Although, I can’t blame everything on religion. It was mostly just me. I was afraid of feeling like a fraud. I never looked, dressed or even acted “gay” so how could I be gay? I was overthinking it so much I convinced myself that this was just a “phase” and something I’d grow out of. As time went on, I started to accept my attraction towards girls, but I kept my feet firmly planted inside the closet. I wanted to live a “normal” life. After all, I wanted my mom to be there at my hypothetical big traditional church wedding. I wanted to have kids and have a traditional family, the kind of family that I never got as a kid. I think I just wanted everything that was absent from my childhood. My mom would always tell me “After you’re done with your studies, I want you to find a nice man who will take care of you and treat you well!” I think she just wanted me to have what she never got to have too.
The year was 2017, and I think I finally convinced myself “Okay. So you like girls. Big deal. You just have to find a boyfriend and you’ll be satisfied.” Hindsight truly is 20/20. I spent that year with someone who was not my boyfriend but I tried so hard to make that dysfunctional relationship a functioning one. After many months of internally fighting with myself and lots of tears, it finally clicked in my head. “Holy shit. I am gay.” There was a lot more that happened, but that was the simplified version of how it went down. Suddenly the spool that I kept trying so hard from unravelling, spilled out in front of me. I cleaned up the mess that I made, which means I broke up with my not-boyfriend in the upcoming weeks and told my best friend at the time. In the beginning of 2018 and in the spirit of the saying “new year new me”, I knew that I needed to tell my mom. I was terrified but something inside me told me, I needed to do it. I think I needed it to feel real. I spent so much of my life thinking that the feelings inside of me were fake, that I needed them to be tied down to my reality somehow. I told her and well, she didn’t take it too well and by that I mean she tried repressing that information just as hard as I tried to a few years back. Sorry mom! Tried that too and it didn’t work. But I didn’t care what she did with that information, it was out there and I finally felt free. Like this giant weight I had been carrying around was lifted. So what’s next? Do I finally make my coming out debut on instagram? Do I draft a long sappy caption and post it while holding the pride flag? Well, I didn’t do any of that. I just continued to live my life except now I’d bring it up casually in conversations. For a long time I was also afraid of the word “lesbian” for its negative/over-sexaulized connotations. But I am gay, I am a lesbian. I am queer. I am all the words that felt scary just a few years ago. So even though I was out, I still struggled with being my most authentic self. It also didn’t help that my mom wants nothing to do with these “feelings” I was having.
One of the most comforting moments was coming out to my little sister. We’re always so afraid of talking to kids about sexuality and gender because we think it will confuse them. But I think we’re just giving them a better understanding of it. All kids know about gay people is what they see in the media and media representation can often cause more harm than good. She was so happy for me and was so supportive! It was the kind of reaction I’d seen in those Youtube videos as a teenager. Knowing that my (at the time) 12 year old sister loves me and accepts me for who I am gave me that boost of confidence I didn’t know I needed. I slowly started following more and more lesbians online and queer people in general. I even joined dating apps and made sure to only filter out women in my area (dating apps though, phew! what an experience). Even so, with people in my everyday life, it’s hard to not look visibility or stereotypically gay. This means, in any situation I’m in, I have to come out again and again. Even when starting my job last year, I’m not even sure how I brought it up to my coworkers but I must’ve at some point cause I’m so annoyingly vocal about it now. It comes across as a joke that they get, but it also comes from a place of seriousness. I’m vocal about it because I spent my whole life being ashamed of it. I spent my whole life wishing I wasn’t. I never felt this need to make a grand entrance into the community. This has always been my home, it just took me some time to get here. I had never felt happier in my life since “coming out”. Sure there were still regular life hiccups as they tend to happen, but the hiding part is over. The shame is gone. I can just be me.
In 2019 I got into my first serious relationship with a girl. With a year in the bag, I have learned so much about myself and who I am in a relationship. I can safely say I am in love with her and hope that we have many more years together. Can life be unpredictable? Yes. It can be messy and it can hurt. But with her by my side I feel like I have someone in my corner always rooting for me as I would do for her. Loving her not only feels good but it feels right. The feelings I swore I would never feel for another girl are suddenly right in front of me and not gonna lie, they can be overwhelming, but in the very best way. Her love makes me feel held and cared for and I just want to make sure nothing in this world ever hurts her. I can’t promise that though, I can only promise that whenever she feels like giving up or giving in, I’ll be there with a shoulder to lean on and a hand to hold. So babe, here’s to many more years of lunch dates, yearning over fictional characters together, picnics, fancy (expensive) pasta, bubbly rosé, matching shoes, sweaty clubs to dance in, dark corners to make out in, uncontrollable laughter, smooches, naps, bad movies, sharing Tiktoks, silly selfies, purple and pink flowers, handwritten letters, and choosing each other unconditionally. I love you to the moon and back and then some more just in case.
