Coming out
Might as well jump on the bandwagon with all of these other coming out postings showing up today (it is NCOD, after all).
Went all through high school and college and just stayed in denial forever. Even had a crush on one of my friends in the fraternity and never really understood how or why. Could not understand what all of my friends were so excited about women. It just didn't click.
After college I worked long hours and that kept me out of the social scene. Finally in 1994 (26 y/o) the Internet was getting mighty popular and used Usenet (as so many other people did) to fetch porn. Kept noticing it was only the men I wanted to see and wanted nothing to do with the women and was slowly putting it together. I watched a particular newsgroup of youth that were coming to terms being gay, getting very bad reactions from the friends and family with many of those ready to commit suicide because of the social pressure they were under. I decided at that point that was not going to be me.
Told Mom and Dad and everything was fine there, but Mom was sad thinking I would never really be happy because it would be difficult to find people to love me. A week later Mom called back and talked about how cool it was to talk to her friends about her wonderful gay son. Uhhh, OK, Mom. :p
At my new job at UNC-CH met lots of gay people and many of them out and being treated normally like any other person. Met ncflyguy at my apartment in Carrboro and we went to dinner to just hang out. He kept talking about this mysterious girlfriend, so I finally got to the point to ask where the hell is this girlfriend and he pointed out she was a he at which point I pointed out we were in the same family. We laughed all the way home from dinner after we found each other out and have been best friends ever since.
My brothers family knows, aunt, uncle, cousins, grandparents (they actually figured it out on their own) and all are open and accepting about it. It's not casually talked about around my grandparents in their 90's, but that's fine.
Went all through high school and college and just stayed in denial forever. Even had a crush on one of my friends in the fraternity and never really understood how or why. Could not understand what all of my friends were so excited about women. It just didn't click.
After college I worked long hours and that kept me out of the social scene. Finally in 1994 (26 y/o) the Internet was getting mighty popular and used Usenet (as so many other people did) to fetch porn. Kept noticing it was only the men I wanted to see and wanted nothing to do with the women and was slowly putting it together. I watched a particular newsgroup of youth that were coming to terms being gay, getting very bad reactions from the friends and family with many of those ready to commit suicide because of the social pressure they were under. I decided at that point that was not going to be me.
Told Mom and Dad and everything was fine there, but Mom was sad thinking I would never really be happy because it would be difficult to find people to love me. A week later Mom called back and talked about how cool it was to talk to her friends about her wonderful gay son. Uhhh, OK, Mom. :p
At my new job at UNC-CH met lots of gay people and many of them out and being treated normally like any other person. Met ncflyguy at my apartment in Carrboro and we went to dinner to just hang out. He kept talking about this mysterious girlfriend, so I finally got to the point to ask where the hell is this girlfriend and he pointed out she was a he at which point I pointed out we were in the same family. We laughed all the way home from dinner after we found each other out and have been best friends ever since.
My brothers family knows, aunt, uncle, cousins, grandparents (they actually figured it out on their own) and all are open and accepting about it. It's not casually talked about around my grandparents in their 90's, but that's fine.