[and our laughter will echo off of the stars so bright]
My new year's resolution this year is "be better at being out."
It's now been about five years since I really started acknowledging, to myself and to other people, that I was into girls. A great deal has happened in that time. My first coming out experience, to my parents, was in the top five shittiest experiences of my entire life, but it has since become something about which we can talk, and in which they support me as fully as I think they are ever going to, and it is good. My first year in college, I came out to a large group of people in a coffeehouse on a day designated for that purpose, and the love given to me by complete strangers for that act was what gave me the fortitude to get slowly into on-campus activism. I started practicing, slowly, making coming out like talking about the color of my shirt - letting it come into a conversation without setting off alarms, and moving past it easily. It's never been easy for me, but it was helping.
I have a girlfriend now, for the first time in three years, and it is fantastic! I am disgustingly happy about it pretty much all the time. I love her beyond the point of salvageable dignity, and I want her in my life, and I want everyone to know that she is in my life, and I want mentions of her to be something the world gets damn well used to, because for the first time in my life I'm not terrified; for the first time in five years, what I have is more important than fear, and I want to be better at being out, because something this good should not be a secret, and I don't want it to be.
That first coming out, though - the one to my parents - that's not something it's possible just to forget. It's-- I mean, it's in the past now, and it's gotten better, and something that terrible is not going to happen with my parents again. There are five years between me and that time, three years between me and the peace we made, and it hasn't kept me up at night for a very long time. But I lived two solid years terrified of everything and everyone around me, and that's not something I can just forget. My mother told me once that she could not look at me like a human being so long as she knew I liked women. The only time either of my parents ever hit me in anger, it was because I wasn't straight. My mother found out when I was sixteen that a friend of mine knew, and told me if I was really going to continue like this, absolutely no one else in the world could ever know. I was forbidden to tell my sister, or my extended family (because if they cut ties with all of us, it would be entirely my fault, and I would never be forgiven for that). I was told that if I wanted to see women, they didn't want to hear a thing about it, ever.
Things have improved, of course. My mother was the first one to know about my new relationship when it happened, and when we talk, she asks me how my girlfriend is doing and is actively interested in the answer. I'm not out to my extended family yet, but my parents have told me that if and when I am, they will side with me over anyone who tries to give me shit for it. They still don't really understand, and I don't think they ever will completely, but they have chosen to accept it despite that, and they tell me that they love me and miss me and trust me and it's true, and after those two years I'm still moved to tears by gratefulness every time they say it.
That's the thing, though - things get so much better, but that shit doesn't just... go away. I was expecting support from my parents when I first came out to them, and instead I was almost disowned - and so I no longer assume anything about anyone's reaction when I come out to them. Something in me will never trust anyone whose theoretical support of queer people has not been visibly proven to me. I spent two years depressed and terrified and dully, furiously angry, and I never in my life want to feel like that again. Good things and great things happened in those two years, of course, but that's what I remember them by - every good memory has an anger behind it that I never want to experience again, and the strongest emotions I felt in that time were guilt, and despair, and that awful helpless fury.
THE POINT OF ALL THIS: I got a skype message from an old friend last night, just as I was about to call my girlfriend. She was my best friend growing up, when I lived in Georgia; she moved to South Africa when we were in middle school because her parents were missionaries. We've kept in touch a little. She'd love to talk again, she says; she'd love to know how my life is going.
Being out and coming out is pretty easy here, where most people don't give a shit, and where talking about your private life is kind of frowned upon anyway. Being out among the international students isn't that hard, because a lot of them are queer, and many of them I don't know well enough to think their opinion worth anything. But next week I'm going to skype my old friend, and it might be the first time in five years I come out to someone I know very well might stop talking to me over it.
Part of "being better at being out," I think, is the simple act of not hiding. It's not using "well, who really needs to know?" as an excuse for fear. It means I've decided not to lie to make other people comfortable anymore. It means I don't want to switch out pronouns anymore, or simply decide not to talk about it when the topic comes up. It means that my sexuality and my relationships are a part of my life, and a very important part, and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't make me happy because someone else doesn't approve. But it's one thing to raise a rainbow banner and cry, "fuck the haters!" when it's some near-stranger, and quite another thing when it's one of your oldest friends, and a family that has loved and helped you since you were nine years old, and a person it would really, truly hurt to lose.
Of course my relationship is more important than her opinion. Of course it is. My happiness, the slow course out of fear I have taken in the past few years, the beautiful people I have known and loved and the absolutely stunning individual across the ocean with the biggest part of my conception of "home" tangled up in the space she occupies, are more important than someone who would decide not to involve themselves in my life anymore because I date women. I know this. I know this full well, with every mature and rational part of my brain. This does not change the fact that that rejection, if and when it comes, is really, really going to hurt.
Real honesty fucking hurts, is the truth of it. I truly believe that it is the best option, in nearly every case - if I had not been honest with my parents, as shitty as our relationship was for a while, it would not have turned, slowly, back into real trust. People who do not like queers exist, but lying to them about the existence of queers, especially when one is queer oneself, is stupid and counterproductive. But coming out to this woman, if and when I do it, is going to be frightening, and most probably very sad. Just because it is other people's choice how they respond to being come out to, does not mean that losing them is not something to mourn.
It makes me think of all the people I have not yet come out to, the very important people. My grandmother, whose only topic of conversation this Christmas, the first time we'd talked in six months, was about when I planned to get married. My aunt and uncle, with two beautiful kids in Catholic school, a cat and a white picket fence and a cookie-cutter house, who will not even let their twelve-year-old son watch movies marketed to girls. It is frightening, and it hurts. But part of being better at being out, I think, is not letting that hurt be a reason not to be honest.
Real honesty fucking hurts, but it is important. The years I hid were the most miserable of my life; being out is frightening, and the honesty of it is hard, but my happiness and contentedness with myself have been an upward-sloping curve in the years since then. I'm going to be brave next week, and probably sad. But I am not going to hide.
It's now been about five years since I really started acknowledging, to myself and to other people, that I was into girls. A great deal has happened in that time. My first coming out experience, to my parents, was in the top five shittiest experiences of my entire life, but it has since become something about which we can talk, and in which they support me as fully as I think they are ever going to, and it is good. My first year in college, I came out to a large group of people in a coffeehouse on a day designated for that purpose, and the love given to me by complete strangers for that act was what gave me the fortitude to get slowly into on-campus activism. I started practicing, slowly, making coming out like talking about the color of my shirt - letting it come into a conversation without setting off alarms, and moving past it easily. It's never been easy for me, but it was helping.
I have a girlfriend now, for the first time in three years, and it is fantastic! I am disgustingly happy about it pretty much all the time. I love her beyond the point of salvageable dignity, and I want her in my life, and I want everyone to know that she is in my life, and I want mentions of her to be something the world gets damn well used to, because for the first time in my life I'm not terrified; for the first time in five years, what I have is more important than fear, and I want to be better at being out, because something this good should not be a secret, and I don't want it to be.
That first coming out, though - the one to my parents - that's not something it's possible just to forget. It's-- I mean, it's in the past now, and it's gotten better, and something that terrible is not going to happen with my parents again. There are five years between me and that time, three years between me and the peace we made, and it hasn't kept me up at night for a very long time. But I lived two solid years terrified of everything and everyone around me, and that's not something I can just forget. My mother told me once that she could not look at me like a human being so long as she knew I liked women. The only time either of my parents ever hit me in anger, it was because I wasn't straight. My mother found out when I was sixteen that a friend of mine knew, and told me if I was really going to continue like this, absolutely no one else in the world could ever know. I was forbidden to tell my sister, or my extended family (because if they cut ties with all of us, it would be entirely my fault, and I would never be forgiven for that). I was told that if I wanted to see women, they didn't want to hear a thing about it, ever.
Things have improved, of course. My mother was the first one to know about my new relationship when it happened, and when we talk, she asks me how my girlfriend is doing and is actively interested in the answer. I'm not out to my extended family yet, but my parents have told me that if and when I am, they will side with me over anyone who tries to give me shit for it. They still don't really understand, and I don't think they ever will completely, but they have chosen to accept it despite that, and they tell me that they love me and miss me and trust me and it's true, and after those two years I'm still moved to tears by gratefulness every time they say it.
That's the thing, though - things get so much better, but that shit doesn't just... go away. I was expecting support from my parents when I first came out to them, and instead I was almost disowned - and so I no longer assume anything about anyone's reaction when I come out to them. Something in me will never trust anyone whose theoretical support of queer people has not been visibly proven to me. I spent two years depressed and terrified and dully, furiously angry, and I never in my life want to feel like that again. Good things and great things happened in those two years, of course, but that's what I remember them by - every good memory has an anger behind it that I never want to experience again, and the strongest emotions I felt in that time were guilt, and despair, and that awful helpless fury.
THE POINT OF ALL THIS: I got a skype message from an old friend last night, just as I was about to call my girlfriend. She was my best friend growing up, when I lived in Georgia; she moved to South Africa when we were in middle school because her parents were missionaries. We've kept in touch a little. She'd love to talk again, she says; she'd love to know how my life is going.
Being out and coming out is pretty easy here, where most people don't give a shit, and where talking about your private life is kind of frowned upon anyway. Being out among the international students isn't that hard, because a lot of them are queer, and many of them I don't know well enough to think their opinion worth anything. But next week I'm going to skype my old friend, and it might be the first time in five years I come out to someone I know very well might stop talking to me over it.
Part of "being better at being out," I think, is the simple act of not hiding. It's not using "well, who really needs to know?" as an excuse for fear. It means I've decided not to lie to make other people comfortable anymore. It means I don't want to switch out pronouns anymore, or simply decide not to talk about it when the topic comes up. It means that my sexuality and my relationships are a part of my life, and a very important part, and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't make me happy because someone else doesn't approve. But it's one thing to raise a rainbow banner and cry, "fuck the haters!" when it's some near-stranger, and quite another thing when it's one of your oldest friends, and a family that has loved and helped you since you were nine years old, and a person it would really, truly hurt to lose.
Of course my relationship is more important than her opinion. Of course it is. My happiness, the slow course out of fear I have taken in the past few years, the beautiful people I have known and loved and the absolutely stunning individual across the ocean with the biggest part of my conception of "home" tangled up in the space she occupies, are more important than someone who would decide not to involve themselves in my life anymore because I date women. I know this. I know this full well, with every mature and rational part of my brain. This does not change the fact that that rejection, if and when it comes, is really, really going to hurt.
Real honesty fucking hurts, is the truth of it. I truly believe that it is the best option, in nearly every case - if I had not been honest with my parents, as shitty as our relationship was for a while, it would not have turned, slowly, back into real trust. People who do not like queers exist, but lying to them about the existence of queers, especially when one is queer oneself, is stupid and counterproductive. But coming out to this woman, if and when I do it, is going to be frightening, and most probably very sad. Just because it is other people's choice how they respond to being come out to, does not mean that losing them is not something to mourn.
It makes me think of all the people I have not yet come out to, the very important people. My grandmother, whose only topic of conversation this Christmas, the first time we'd talked in six months, was about when I planned to get married. My aunt and uncle, with two beautiful kids in Catholic school, a cat and a white picket fence and a cookie-cutter house, who will not even let their twelve-year-old son watch movies marketed to girls. It is frightening, and it hurts. But part of being better at being out, I think, is not letting that hurt be a reason not to be honest.
Real honesty fucking hurts, but it is important. The years I hid were the most miserable of my life; being out is frightening, and the honesty of it is hard, but my happiness and contentedness with myself have been an upward-sloping curve in the years since then. I'm going to be brave next week, and probably sad. But I am not going to hide.