My Gay Awakening

Wow. I hope that title didn’t scare you off. I thought it was funny? It’s actually a phrase I’ve used in conversation before so it seemed fitting. Welcome to my ‘coming out’ article.

I’d like to take a brief moment to say that I’m not a huge fan of the terminology here. “Coming out?” As in, I was hiding in the closet for nineteen years and so none of it counted? “Coming out?” Because I feel social pressure to write an article like this to publicly announce it? “Out,” because somehow it’s enough your business that we categorize as either “out “ or “in?” Why can’t I just casually come out to people as it becomes relevant?

Anyway, here goes. My coming out article.

I like to think that I’ve subliminally known I was gay for a while, but procrastinated dealing with it.

Like, I was in therapy super fucking young, okay? That therapist (shout out Mike, where you at?) must have suspected. And probably everyone else? My family??? Everyone saw it before me and I just put off addressing it.

The first time I came out was in my sophomore year, as bi.

Looking back, I remember knowing that I liked girls and assuming I liked boys too. Ha.

It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I said it to myself.

From there, I said it to my close friends. More casually now, say it in front of someone new. Again.

When I got my first pair of glasses, I was amazed by how blurry the world had gotten without them.

That’s what it was like to finally realize (that is to say stop procrastinating) what I’d been avoiding. The lenses of my realized identity gave way to twenty-twenty hindsight. All of a sudden, I understood so many of my failed friendships. I had honestly misunderstood the distinction between friend and girlfriend and asked way more of friends than was appropriate. Not even physically, but emotionally and behaviorally did not comprehend boundaries.

So anyway, my gay awakening. To quote John Green, I came to the realization I was gay, “the way you fall asleep, slowly, and then all at once.”

I decided that I hated when people publicly come out like this, because it feels forced and minimizing. I made a choice to come out bit by bit, person by person, as I felt comfortable. It was working exceptionally.

Until my mother did what she always does and always will continue to do and got involved.

She essentially outed me to my family after finding ‘proof’ that I was gay. By this time, I had already told my siblings so it was less traumatic that it could have been. Still, my trust was betrayed. I wasn’t ready to be out with my parents — and they didn’t care.

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Now I find myself reflecting on why I was so set against a piece like this.

My sexuality is personal, but my life is not always. If I want to be myself, I need to do so with complete honesty.

Women are art. Soft curves and serpentine lines. I can’t wait for the day I get to love someone the way I’ve always wanted to.

I want to hold hands and swing them as we walk. I want to send cute good morning text messages and cuddle until we fall asleep and wake up in a tangled mess of limbs and love. For so much of my life, I was not even remotely close to ready for a relationship and now I’m left longing for that deeper connection. I want to love her, and I want her to love me. I wish I knew who she was.

Featured photo source: vh1.com