2007-06-06: Coming out

Even though I've known that I'm gay even since the age of 6, it's not something I had ever told anybody about until this week. I was tired of feeling I needed to hide. On Sunday, in church, it became too much for me to handle and I decided to finally come out of the proverbial closet. I called my parents and my sister to say that I needed to tell them something. They didn't ask any questions, and just assumed it was important. We agreed to meet at my parents' house on Tuesday for dinner. Since I knew I wouldn't be able to talk, I wrote everything down in a letter. I must've read and tweaked that thing a thousand times between Sunday and Tuesday evening. Here's what happened on Tuesday.

When driving over to my parents' house, I had conflicting feelings. I both couldn't wait to let them know, as well as wanted to postpone it. I felt like a pathetic loser and felt even smaller than usual (at 6'1.5" I'm the shortest in my family, if you can imagine).

My mother had made tacos, as she knows it's one of my favourite foods. After about half an hour, my sister arrived as well (she had to drive 70 miles to get here -- which she did without hesitation or even asking for a reason when I called her on Sunday). After dinner, I gave the letter to my father and asked that he read it aloud in one go and that nobody else speak as he was doing so.

His voice broke up a couple of times while reading, but he didn't falter. I just sat there sobbing. Before my father had gotten half-way through the letter, my sister already had her arm around me, caressing my head. When my dad had stopped speaking, he came over to me and hugged me too, saying only "things must've been so difficult for you. I'm so sorry for that". My mother kept silent for a few minutes and then asked "why are you crying?". There was not a hint of judgement in any of them. There weren't any of the painful questions I'd expected and prepared for. They were all completely accepting and, if anything upset them, it was that I had been struggling with this for so long.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have such a loving family.