The Pandemic Made Me Queer
Finding my identity without leaving home
There was a time, maybe halfway through 2020, when it was obvious that Covid-19 wasn’t just going to vanish. Our home lives were now our everything-lives. Calendars lost all significance. Sweatpants became our go-to uniform. The outside world was tense and steeped in infection, and the only coping strategy was to brush sourdough bread crumbs off our second-day sweats and hope there was still something left unwatched on Netflix. And there, in the middle of all these good times, a few of us also found ourselves grappling with deeply-buried anguish. Our personal emotional- and sexual identities were evolving, and even sweats couldn’t comfort us.
My own discovery was like the fitting of the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle. The fragments of doubt, shame, attractions, and secrets meshed one morning in bed as I was next to my sleeping wife. They formed a complete mental picture so suddenly and sharply that I felt I had to share the news right away. “Honey,” I said, my heart thrumming from the revelation, “I think I’m bi.” I was wide awake. She was decidedly not. She might have rolled over to look at me, I don’t quite remember. But I’ll never forget her response: “well, I’m not surprised.” Perhaps my secrets weren’t buried that deeply, after all.
Honestly, I thought baring my heart and soul should have felt more momentous. Perhaps I should have waited until after we’d had our coffee. Surely the Internet would have some comfort for me. I spent the next hour in bed, Googling “how to come out” and was not, in a word, comforted. Confide first in trusted LGBT friends said many sources. Learn from their experiences. Others advised to say it out loud in private, to hear how it sounds. Particularly alarming was the cautionary if you’re partnered, always break the news slowly, ideally with a counselor present.
I read a lot of bad news in that hour. I read about biphobia and bi erasure, about how science still wasn’t positive that bisexuality even existed. I cringed at how, on coming out, many people face doubts, questions, and challenges from the persons they’ve shared with. “It’s a phase” and “pick a side” and “you’re just gay but in denial” are the wounding words that have cut so many in my situation. I immediately wondered if it was too late to take it all back and check Netflix instead.
More bad news: it was too late. There was no way I could or would ever un-say those words. They felt right, resonant. They were etched on my heart. As I sat with them, I felt a huge tightness lift from my chest, freeing me from a persistent tension that I didn’t know I’d carried. And honestly, I am skeptical of coming out “correctly” by following some guideline. It’s such a personal act, and even in normal times, there’s no one way to do it. Now here we were in a pandemic, and how often were we reminded that “these are unprecedented times?” The old rules didn’t apply. My few LGBT confidants certainly were in no situation to meet up. Saying anything out loud in our home is guaranteed to be overheard — virtual learning and Zoom meetings have proven that. “Break the news slowly” had already been obliterated. There was really nowhere to go now but forward… whatever forward looked like. The future was vague.
It was clear, though, what backward looked like. I didn’t like what I saw when I looked back. I saw a past of “wrong” same-gender attractions, a pattern of tumbling into crushes. I relived my mortification at confessing these feelings out loud, twice, and then retreating. I saw myself sabotage earnest friendships by beating myself up emotionally in embarrassment and shame. And I saw myself in a later, loving, same-gender relationship, which we ended for fear of discovery. Decades later I was still fearful that these parts of my past would be revealed and used against me. And I had a recent experience, too. A deep emotional yearning for a friend. I held feelings which I wanted to ignore and reject, and yet couldn’t. They grew more persistent for the denial. I worried that I’d slip into the same unhealthy pattern of falling too deep, confession, and then shameful retreat and hiding.
I’ve spent most of my life filling a mental vault, never ever daring to open it up. It’s strained with memories and shame, layers of internalized homophobia, all fused with fears I’m being disloyal by not being perfectly straight, outside and in. Pandemic life would not let my mind be still, though. Under the steady pressure and stress, the vault cracked. By whatever grace, it split just a little, so that I could glimpse what was inside with a new perspective. This view is what woke me on that morning.
Those feelings I ran from? They were genuine attractions, real and honest. They weren’t exclusively sexual, and no, not gender-specific. My actions may have been out of place, but the emotions were valid, and nothing to be ashamed about. What’s more, my past didn’t invalidate my present. I love my wife, dearly and deeply. And I also felt something for these others, too. I could hold both in my head and heart. The label “bisexual” summed it up so neatly and perfectly, that I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked it for so long.
This was what pandemic pressure finally did to me. It made the queerness visible. And I was ready to face it.
It’s been a year and a half since that bedroom confession and hasty Google session. I’ve had several months of therapy since, and I’m working on unpacking the vault. Holding up the memories, wondering at the pain and the shame they caused me, and then letting that blow away. And with the time since, I’ve gained perspective and wonder. I wonder how I didn’t realize one of those past crushes was also queer. I wonder when “queer” stopped sounding like a slur in my mind, and started to feel right, true, and comfortable as a label for myself.
I am finding my community, too. I’ve done a lot of connecting online since those early days. I hear my own story echoed by others: middle-aged, married, a flash of realization that makes sense of always feeling Other, of being not right in some undefinable way. So many of us are dragging our own vaults out of our own closets. We’re rummaging through, holding up what we find, sharing, laughing, and crying as we remember. As distanced as we are, we’re transforming together, and witnessing one another’s transformations. Time and pressure have fused each of us into something new and precious and shining, and hopefully, stronger. We’re confiding. We’re saying it out loud. We’re doing it in our sweatpants. Truly unprecedented times.
The pandemic made me queer? Well, I’m not surprised. And I’m not alone.
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