The door’s open…
It’s Pride Month and I’ve got something to say.
Around this time, a little more than a year ago, I was going through a really rough patch in life. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping (even less so than usual), and I had a growing sense of apathy about everything I was involved in. I knew the reason for feeling all of that, and had known for quite some time. But as with most things in my life, I decided to internalize it, to continue to lie to others and myself about it. On May 1, 2016 at 3:20 AM, the pressure mounted, then exploded, and I authored a text (more of a short story — longer than this entire post, actually) to a small group of close friends, revealing for the first time to anyone other than myself that I am gay.
I am gay.
It’s still a little liberating to type that, even after having told a slightly wider group of friends, coworkers, and family members over the course of the past year. So, I guess the title of this post is a little clickbait-y — the door to my closet has, at the very least, been cracked for a while now. The thing that most people might not realize is — and something I certainly didn’t think about — coming out isn’t this grand event that you do once and then put behind you. It’s something that I’ll have to do again and again, for the rest of my life. It’s what I’m doing here. The hope being, that this is the widest net yet for letting people know. So welcome to the club.
I’ve been blessed, so far, in that everyone I’ve opened up to has been incredibly understanding and loving. I’ll never be able to repay them for that immediate acceptance and love at a time when I felt so dejected and downtrodden. 💕
I’ve spent a majority of my life holding myself back, keeping a part of me hidden. It’s as exhausting as it sounds. In the past year though, I’ve grown immeasurably more confident and more comfortable with myself and who I truly am. It’s pretty incredible what you can do, once you’re not devoting most of your energy to keeping a guard up. That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges, and I know there will be more on the horizon — not only personally, but as a community as well. It’ll be tough, but I’ll just keep in mind a little lyric from one of my favorite characters on TV:
You might be wondering why I chose to write a long-form post about all this. The answer is twofold: 1) I’m wordy AF and 2) the entire impetus behind my initial coming out on that fateful May morning was a direct result of seeing someone I respect come out a few weeks earlier. You might not think so, but hearing about the journeys of others makes a massive difference. I don’t necessarily believe that I can have the same impact, but if for some reason, somewhere, somehow, someone reads this and feels a little safer, then this will have been well worth it.
Thank you so much for reading.
Tl;dr — I’m gay. I’m strong. I’m proud.
