On this Coming Out Day, this is my Coming Out story. At least the beginning of it. I shared this on Facebook earlier, and it took 10 years of courage to get to the point to share this story as detailed below.
I’ve shared bits and such of this story on the blog before. Here’s the whole thing.
There wasn’t a National Coming Out Day back when I was a teenager. After years of knowing I was different, I realized in the Spring 1985, specifically during a 4th period Ethics class in Room 113 during my junior year to be exact, that I was fooling no one, including myself.
The desks were arranged in a circle. Somehow the class discussion has circled around to homosexuality. A classmate said, “Well let’s face it, John will have a hard time being gainfully employed…His mannerisms and way of speaking are going to prevent serious employers from hiring him”. As others agreed, friends and other classmates joined the discussion. I sat there as stoic as possible. I realized it was time to admit to myself that the gay was very much fact. The class conversation continued around how hard my life would be, AIDS, and whatever other fear based dialog was being bandied about during the Reagan era. The air around me was suffocating.
After a timespan that lasted forever, the PA speaker in the ceiling chimed an A-flat after the square clock clicked to 11:04, signaling the end of fourth period. Everyone went to lunch. I didn’t move. “Do you want to go into my office for a few minutes?”, asked the teacher, a man I admired. I did and I wasn’t in his office before the tears flowed. My mind was moving at an outrageous RPM, I didn’t know what to do, and all of a sudden another teacher was in the office with me. My head was down; she looked me in the eyes, grabbed my hand and at that moment she talked me off the edge. All the conversation around disease and being destined to a life on the streets had completely derailed me. I don’t know if my thoughts in those moments ravaging my head would have come to fruition, but if they had, I would not be typing this today. That teacher, Karen O’Brien, saved my life that day. I will never forget her words. “You are an asset to this world”, “You are important”, “You need to be you” were among many things she said in those moments. She had compassion.
It would be a year before I told anyone else that I knew I was gay. But someone had just said the right things at the right time when I needed to hear it most and I started to feel the beginnings of accepting myself for me.
When it seems the world is upside down and inside out with so much hate directed at people for just being themselves, someone today is going to allow themselves to “know they’re gay” for the first time in their life. This is why we have National Coming Out day.
Be who you are, because you’re beautiful. And to quote a wise woman, “People – I find them fascinating. I haven’t found one yet that didn’t impress me.”
