lifeonq.com

Coming Out is a Personal Decision with Public Consequences

It’s National Coming Out Day—a time when closet doors swing open to shed light on the obstacles and opportunities that come with being honest with yourself, your friends and family about who you are. Coming out can be dangerous. Empowering. Life-changing. Relationship-altering. And incredibly freeing. Sometimes, it’s a political statement. Often, it simply results from fatigue. The energy it takes to censor your pronouns and obscure the details of your social life is exhausting. Occasionally it’s accidental. An e-mail is read, or a phone call is overheard. Usually, coming out is not a single event. There’s no press conference, no formal statement. It’s a process that may start with a mother, and then repeat with a co-worker, or a childhood friend. At least that’s what it was for me.

A gay man once shared with me a great analogy for the coming out process. At first, the closet door cracks open. In the light that streams in, you start to look at the queer world, and think about what it might be like, or how you feel. Soon, you open the door to the closet and enter the bedroom. It’s your first homosexual experience. It might be with a friend for whom your feelings became overwhelming. Or it might be a trip to a gay bar or festival, where you actively seek an outlet for the desires that are becoming more powerful, and less and less deniable. Soon, you realize that there are many others like you, and you seek out support and friendship with people who will not judge you. Moving out of the bedroom into the living room, you begin to build a social circle full of those who share your secret.

Some people choose to stay inside. They’re out of the closet, out of the bedroom, but not comfortable going outside. Others feel so locked in by the secret that eventually, they come out into the world. For some, it destroys family relationships or threatens a career. For others, it brings a sense of freedom that is hard to describe. Taking off that heavy, oppressive cloak of denial, fear and lies is exhilarating. The load is lighter. Self-respect and confidence grows. When you are true to yourself, even in the face of fear and prejudice, you are truly free. This must be what if feels like to be heterosexual. There’s nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide. At least, that’s what my personal coming out experience was like.  Would you like to hear it?  Read on.

I first found a label for my feelings when I left the small town where I grew up to go to college. In the dorm my freshman year, I made four close friends right away—all living right there on the same hall. Oddly, within three months, I realized that they were all lesbians. How odd is that, ending up on the same floor, the same hall, with all those dykes? Why did I choose to befriend them, rather than the sorority girls down the hall in the other direction? There had to be a reason. I thought about my best friend growing up, remembering how we used to hold hands, and how upset I was when she got her first boyfriend. Maybe the feelings I had for her and other girls growing up were something more than the intense need for companionship of an only child.

At home over Christmas break, I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time, remembering my relationships with other girls, my crushes on female celebrities, and my devotion to mentors and teachers, all women. I said to myself out loud, “This must be me. I think I’m gay.” Back at school for the new year, I decided to go out with my freshman dorm friends to a local bar, catering to gay people one night a week. I decided I wanted to be close to another woman, with a new perspective as my starting point. Dancing with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl named Denise, I sang along to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” with a whole new set of symptoms. A few weeks later, Denise was there for my first experience. I was overwhelmed and excited. I felt as if I wanted to tell everyone. But a need for secrecy seemed to come along with the experience, an almost automatic reaction.

I lived a different life for the rest of my college career. At school, I was a dyke. Back home, I was increasingly secretive. I talked less and less about college life, making only safe references to classes and professors. I existed as two people quite easily for the next 3 ½ years. Moving back home briefly after graduation, I connected with friends from school who lived near my hometown, and met locals living a life I never knew existed.

One day, after a disappointing date with a local girl I had met, I was talking to an ex on the phone, telling her that the date was okay, but I wasn’t ready to marry the girl or anything. In my parents’ farmhouse, my room and my parents’ room were side by side, connected by a door. The door was open, and I turned, twisting the phone cord around my body as I talked, to see my mother lying on her side in bed. She was looking at me with eyes as big as saucers, as if she were seeing someone she didn’t know. I had just come out. I got off the phone quickly, and paced nervously. Nothing was said until the next day, when my mom asked me what my phone call was about. “Nothing,” was my only reply, right before I fled the room. For the rest of the week, I denied being gay forcefully. The following week, after several days of awkward silence, my mom said that if I was gay, she would love me anyway. I denied it again. At 21, in the 1980’s, in the rural south, I just wasn’t ready.

I moved to the city a few months later, and lived my real life again. Over the years, I became more and more open with my parents, slowly bringing my two lives together. I brought girlfriends home for the holidays. I lived with lovers. I introduced my parents to many decidedly butch friends. I came out to straight friends along the way, but only when I had reached a deep level of trust, or my lies or generic pronouns became so inauthentic that it was impossible to continue the charade. I worried about my career and hid my life from my coworkers. I didn’t want to be known as a gay person. I wanted to be a person who just happened to be gay.

I never talked directly with my parents about my sexuality again. It was unspoken, and became clearly understood over time, but it was never again the topic of conversation. I like to think that I was opening gay by living my life, not by talking about my life. My family was never big on talking anyway. When I hit puberty, my mom had given me “the talk” by handing me a set of books and suggesting I read it, then turning on her heels to walk away.

A couple of years after my parents both passed away, I was invited to a company-paid retreat as a reward. Top salespeople and their spouses were to be flown to the Caribbean, and I was to join them, along with a guest of my choosing. I invited my partner at the time, and it was instantly clear to the entire company that I am a lesbian. I began to talk about it openly. To my relief, there was no significant backlash. I was accepted, and felt freer and more whole than I had in my entire life. It was the best decision I ever made. There were no more confused looks when I told stilted stories about my personal life. No more inquisitive stares when I went the company Christmas party alone, again.

I had always carefully separated my career from my sexual orientation. It is still legal to fire someone for no other reason. And I didn’t want to be known as the gay writer. I wanted to be known as a good writer. I do feel that there were some subtle consequences to being out professionally, but I was successful. I left corporate life to start my own business in my own time, on my own terms.

Coming out is an intensely personal decision that creates a cumulative change in community. Participating in politics over the last several years as an openly gay woman, I have come to believe that coming out is the only way to overcome homophobia and discrimination. In my home state, I fought against the anti-gay marriage amendment, and was profoundly disappointed in my fellow Georgians when the amendment passed. I believed at the time, and still believe, that if everyone who voted for that amendment knew who they were voting against—the sons and daughters, the sisters and brothers, the co-workers and friends who were in the closet—it would have been much harder to vote against them.

Coming out has consequences, some good and others not. Ultimately, each of us must decide whether we want to be true to ourselves. Life in the closet is safe, but it’s awfully dark and cramped in there.

What’s your coming out story? Or if you’re not out, what’s life like in your closet? Feel free to post a comment and chronicle your own journey. If you’re in the process of coming out, the Human Rights Campaign has a resource guide to help you.