Hello, friends! For our first official post, we have an "invitation story" submitted by a member of Unity. All invitation stories will be anonymous in order to preserve a safe environment for our contributors who may not wish their identities exposed to those they haven't invited in yet. (Any other optional pieces may be attributed to their authors.) Nevertheless, we hope you find these stories of courage and constructing confidence in identity encouraging and inspiring. Enjoy!
My coming out story is one that is very complicated. It took me years to finally tell my family that I was in fact gay. Part of it was out of fear since I am the type of person who over-analyzes everything, and I fear how people perceive me. Although I will tell someone if they ask and I generally am open about it among friends, to this day I am still cautious about revealing my sexuality to others. My sexuality is not something that I am ashamed of by any means, but it is something that I want people to learn about me after they have met and interacted with me. But this is not the only thing that inhibited me from coming out when I first recognized it in myself. My family is full of people that have varying views on this kind of issue: my mother’s side is fine with and highly supportive of homosexuality but my father’s side is not as open. Even now, my father still is unaware of my sexual orientation to the point where every time that I see him, he asks if I am seeing any girls. It is not just him though, that entire side of the family makes horrible remarks about homosexuality any time the topic is approached. I always remained quiet and externally void of emotion while on the inside I was a raging tempest of resentment, mortification and desolation. I remain in between these two worlds, but going away to college has alleviated the stress of this situation. It also gave me the courage to formally come out to the world.
It all started in seventh grade with the mix of hormones. My parents had gone through a rough patch for the past two years at this point and divorced in the middle of the year. This hit me particularly hard since it was the time in my life where I was beginning to find who I was. This turmoil coupled with my emerging attractions for some of the guys around me caused me to retract myself even more. I was internalizing anything and everything so my friends pretty much had no idea what was going on and thought I was still the same happy person. It was at that point that a childhood friend of mine was also struggling with his identity. His name was Aaron and was my first boyfriend. We both were very secretive about our relationship to the extreme that no one knew but the two of us. We helped each other with our issues as the time went on, but his family moved away not long after we got together. We both panicked and ended our relationship; we saw each other occasionally but we grew apart from each other fairly quickly. At this point, I had admitted my sexual orientation to myself, but the thought of other people knowing terrified me.
High school had come along at this point and I remained secretive about everything. I had a fair amount of friends, the majority of which were girls. Some even tried to date me, but instead of telling them, I just went along with everything till they realized that nothing was going to happen between us. The school years were busy and the summers were scattered with volunteer trips and vacations. A few in particular were eventful, I met my second “boyfriend” in New Orleans after Katrina hit, but he never wanted to admit his sexuality to himself. I never heard from him again after that week; I still think he convinces himself that nothing was present between us. Two summers after that I went to Europe for three weeks and met my third “boyfriend” which resulted in a similar story. No one on the outside knew about my relationships or interactions with guys at this point. At this point, senior year of high school rolled around. My friend Andy (he was still unaware of my sexuality) had met this guy named Alexx and wanted to introduce us since we had similar tastes in pretty much everything. We hit it off really well, for the first few weeks of our friendship, we stayed up till all hours of the night talking about lives and school and pretty much everything. He was the first one to ask me about my sexual orientation, and I was not sure how to respond. I had admitted it to myself at this point, but I was not sure how he would take it since I had never mentioned it to anyone outside of a relationship. Truth was, he was perfectly fine with it since he was gay too. I had begun my relationship with my fourth boyfriend. The problem was he lived in Toronto, Canada and I had never had a long distance relationship before. For the rest of senior year, we talked and played games together over the Internet. He would show me his art through Skype and I loved every piece he created since all of it was in an art style that I loved. He would help me with problems that stemmed from my father since he was about to get remarried, but that is a totally different and very long story. He was super excited when he found out I had gotten into Hendrix and was all for me going to the school. Over the summer, he ran into a rough part of his life where he would be gone for weeks, needless to say it tore me apart. However, it gave me time to find myself and realize who I wanted to be before I got to college. Alexx recovered from everything and was around all the time again before I moved to Hendrix. After I moved in, he was so excited to hear about everything like my roommate, where I lived and what kinds of people lived around me. Andre (my roommate and best friend) and Emily (My best friend who I had known since elementary school) became really close to me the first few weeks of college. Since I had been talking about how they were great friends, Alexx had added them on Facebook to get to know them too, but I was still sure to keep the fact that he was my boyfriend hidden since I did not want to destroy the friendships that I had made.
I had joined the gay-straight alliance on campus to see what it was like to be out in society partially because Alexx had hinted that it was about time that I come out to everyone. The meetings were great and I had a lot of fun. Before I knew it, it was time for the annual coming out week on campus. Something about that week spoke to me. So the Saturday before the week began, I had asked Alexx his opinion on how I should come out. He was ecstatic that I was finally going to do it and said that I should do it soon. I then took the weekend to think about it and finally on that Monday, I saw Emily on campus and told her that I needed to talk to her later. A few hours later in my room, I came out to her to which she responded, “I thought so.” I was surprised by her response since I did not think it was that obvious. Later on, I told Andre and he was very supportive of everything. So, throughout the week I walked around campus with the “hello my name is…” stickers on with varying degrees of being displayed since I was still concerned with other people’s perceptions of me. Emily and I had already decided that we were going back home for the weekend to go to a festival in our hometown. I had talked to my mother throughout the week to plan this and the conversation had gone back to coming out week multiple times. She asked periodically if I had something that I needed to tell her, which I responded, “I don’t think so.” Finally on that Thursday she openly said to me that it was ok to be gay. I was taken off guard and decided still to wait. Finally one that Sunday a few hours before I left to go back to Hendrix, I came out to both my mother and my brother. My brother said that he had known all along and my mother was slightly shaken, but she recovered and is still very supportive. Alexx was so happy for me since I had finally admitted it to the people around me. A lot of my high school friends found out over time and were totally ok with everything; they all told me how much they supported me.
Things with Alexx went downhill a few months after that till the point where we mutually ended everything. These things happen though and life moves on. I have felt more confident than ever now that I do not have to guard this secret with my life. I have been openly gay now for a year and a half and I have never felt better. I am still surrounded by people who support me and care for me every day. All along I had nothing to worry about since pretty much everyone I have mentioned my sexuality to has been completely fine with it. It just goes to show that the mind can make things a lot worse than they actually are, but it is there for a reason. I guess my story shows that everything does get better. I had my share of hard times, some worse than others, but I pulled though to the point where I am happy with myself and with the choices that I have made. I may still have my share of roadblocks in the future, but that is part of life. It would not be worth living if you could get anything and everything that you wanted. The challenge to live drives us on, for some of us it is inherently harder than for others, but we must persevere until the end!
