Hi. I just want to say thank you to everyone that posts here. Everyone's stories have really helped me through one of the most difficult parts of my life. I figured it would only be right if I then said thanks and shared my story for others.
I have been lurking around for a few months since I accepted that I was gay. I always knew deep down that, I was, but for a long time just kept telling myself "it's a phase, you'll grow out of it." I think going to a catholic all boys high school had a little to do with that too lol. I'd find guys in my classes attractive, and really wasn't very interested in girls.
In my junior year, my friends set me up with a girl that was a friend of their girlfriends since I'd always be the "solo" person whenever we all got together. It started as a favor to one of my closest friends’ girl friend since one of her friends didn’t have a date to a dance they were all going to. And then I asked her to be my date for my junior prom since I really wanted to go but didn’t have anyone to go with. I really didn't find her attractive, and we really didn't get along to well (at least that’s what I thought). On the other hand, she oddly thought everything was going great. So, we went to junior prom together, and the next day our group of friends went to an amusement park. I guess luckily for me, we were separated shortly after we got there and she got so pissed that she broke up with me on the spot. I remember wondering when it was that we ever got to the point that we could break up lol.
Anyway, by the end of senior year, I finally accepted that I was attracted to guys, but there was no way on earth that I would ever admit that or act on it. I decided I must be at worst bi and probably just had really selective traits that I found attractive and that was why I wasn’t attracted to girls. My friends all went to local colleges, but I went away to college and into an honors program, still in state but several hours away.
About halfway through my Freshmen year, I realized that I just plain wasn’t attracted to girls at all and that I was definitely gay. This sent me into a spiral of self-hatred. I became very cynical and negative towards life, hating myself for being gay and wondering why I deserved it. I even tried to convince myself, that I would just find a girl, get married, have kids, and pretend that I wasn’t. I was also already depressed most of the time due to a social anxiety disorder, and this just added fuel to the fire. I’d cry myself to sleep, stopped talking to all but a few of my friends, and really had a shitty college experience.
That is until my friends pushed me into seeing a doctor about my social anxiety. Once I started getting help with that, life became a lot better. I still wasn’t accepting myself, but being able to be in a social gathering or party was actually possible, and I stopped going into panic attacks over the stupidest of things. Like not talking to friend for a week, causing so much anxiety that I then couldn’t talk to him and etc. Then last summer, I went on an internship and lived alone for the summer. This really got me to open up to myself. I had plenty of time to think and work things out. I started exploring my sexuality since for the first time, I felt free. Before, even after I went away to college, I always had a roommate in a dorm, so I never really felt freed. Anyway, it started with porn, then playing with myself, and finally purchasing a toy. All were things that I’d never been able to do since there would always be the fear of my parents or brothers at home, or my roommate at college finding out.
After the summer ended, I went back to college for my fourth year (not final due to the program I’m completing) and moved out to an off campus apartment with three of my closest college friends. One day in the first week or two that we were back, my one friend has some of his high school friends over and I forget how, but the topic of “Did you know so and so from our high school is gay?” came up between them. I overheard one of the people they mentioned, and remembered when my friend had introduced him sophomore year when he was moving into his dorm. It was then that I started crushing on him. Moreover, that finally made me realize that I was fine being gay. That I was okay with being myself (at least to myself).
Later that night, I was talking to my current best friend. Now our relationship is a bit weird and at the least very unusual. We were each other’s best friends even though we hadn’t ever actually met in person before. We met playing an online game when I was in 8th grade and he was in 7th. Our friendship grew from casual conversation about the game to everyday topics. At some point during high school, our relationship evolved into one based on absolute honesty and absolute truth about everything to each other. There was nothing about him that I didn’t know and nothing about me that he didn’t know. I think the fact that neither of us had ever met the other in person is what really made that relationship work. Neither of us felt we had to save face in front of the other like we did to our other friends, and that allowed us to be perfectly open and honest. I know that’s not how it normally works, and that it very well may be only one of a handful of times that ever happens to anyone. (By the way, for those whose minds automatically go to online predator, we did talk through voice and video chat as well as the phone so it wasn’t a completely anonymous relationship.)
I’ve gone through that whole setup so that when I say I told him that night that I was gay, it wasn’t really like I was coming out of the closet. It was just one additional step of self-acceptance. We had already extensively talked about me being attracted to guys and hating myself and everything so it wasn’t a surprise and didn’t have any build up or any of the other things normally part of coming out of the closet. Well, a little over two weeks ago, he died in a car accident. A Hummer (H1, the original) hit ice going into an intersection, couldn’t stop at the red light, and smashed into my friend’s car as he was going through the intersection. He survived the crash but later died on the operating room table from punctures to his spleen, kidney, and liver.
This devastated me, but death doesn’t cause me too much grief. I get to acceptance quickly even after something as traumatic as that. But this got me thinking about friendship and how there wasn’t anyone else in my life that I really trusted or even had half the relationship with as I did with my best friend. I started thinking about why this is and came to the conclusion that it was because I lived each day in constant lies. I couldn’t fully trust anyone else because I couldn’t be open with anyone as long as I remained closeted.
So I started reading the coming out posts and stories on the forum here for advice and guidance. While I was 90% sure my friends wouldn’t have any problem what so ever, there was that little voice in the back of my head generating every possible worst-case scenario it could conceive. My mind just started nagging me and nagging me to come out and that voice just put me into a state of terror each time I thought about doing it. I felt like I was going to go insane if I didn’t tell someone and couldn’t tell someone because of the fear of what might happen.
So this weekend, I decided to do it and start with my roommates. Then I found out two would be going home for the weekend. This was just perfect timing (sarcasm). While having only one friend there might sound like the perfect opportunity, he is the friend I’m least close with out of the three, and really felt I owed it to my closet friend to be told first. So I decided that if the opportunity arose over the weekend, I’d tell him. Well that didn’t work well as he had his girlfriend over and then a friend from another college, and then club activities all weekend. So all my roommates came back and by Monday night, I’m just exhausted from all the anxiety and can’t do it.
So tonight (Tuesday), I sit myself down, work up some courage again, and go over to my closest friend’s room. He’s working on homework and research and I know it’s important that he complete it tonight so I decide now’s not the best time. Right before I leave, I get the nerve back up and ask him if I could talk to him later after he’s finished his work. The next 3 hours drug on like they were the longest three hours in the history of time. Finally, at about 2am, I go over and see how he’s progressing, and he’s just about done so I sit and wait for him. Well, as long as those 3 hours were, these 15 minutes felt even longer lol. So he finishes up on his computer and start going around his room getting things ready for tomorrow and asks what I wanted to talk about. At this point, my heart is racing, I feel like a deer in the headlights, I just want to run away and say it was nothing. Then I just blurt it out, “I’m gay.”
I had never said that out loud before and startled even myself. He just stops what he’s doing and kind of stutters for a second processing what I said and just says “Oh…. Ok” and that is that. Neither of us really what to say next until he finally says “Well…. any reason you decided to tell me or why now?” in a nonchalant manner. And the weight of the world suddenly lifts from my shoulders. The elephant that has been crushing my chest for the past 5 days finally gets up and leaves, and I just sigh in relief. It’s exactly the scenario I was hoping for. And then I realize that I’m caught off guard as this was never one of the questions my mind thought of or thought up an answer for. So we talk about it for a little, and then we just shift back into normal conversation. Right before I leave, he says one last time that he’s really fine with it, it’s not for him, but I’m exactly the same person now as I was when I walked in, yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.
Later, while writing this, I realized the answer to his question, “Why did you decide to tell me?”. I realized that it’s not that he needed to know, should know, or had a right to know, and that it’s not that I feel I need to cry out to the world “HEY! I’m GAY!!”, it’s that I needed to do this to finally 100% accept it myself. That I need to do this for me so that I could stop lying, stop spending so much energy worrying that someone might find out, and just live my life how I want to, with whomever I want to, and not be worried, ashamed, or afraid of it.
This has been one of the most difficult things to do in my entire life. I can think of only two others that fall in this category and one I mentioned earlier (admitting I needed help with social anxiety disorder), and the other being conquering my worst fear (at least at that time, it was rollercoasters and I was 10). I know this post is extremely long and applaud those daring enough to read it all. But I felt that after reading so many storied of other people and taking so much from those, that I should give something back, tell my story for others to read and find help.
Once again, I just want to say thank you to everyone here. I never would have been able to do it without you.
Now for tomorrow when I tell my other roommates.
I have been lurking around for a few months since I accepted that I was gay. I always knew deep down that, I was, but for a long time just kept telling myself "it's a phase, you'll grow out of it." I think going to a catholic all boys high school had a little to do with that too lol. I'd find guys in my classes attractive, and really wasn't very interested in girls.
In my junior year, my friends set me up with a girl that was a friend of their girlfriends since I'd always be the "solo" person whenever we all got together. It started as a favor to one of my closest friends’ girl friend since one of her friends didn’t have a date to a dance they were all going to. And then I asked her to be my date for my junior prom since I really wanted to go but didn’t have anyone to go with. I really didn't find her attractive, and we really didn't get along to well (at least that’s what I thought). On the other hand, she oddly thought everything was going great. So, we went to junior prom together, and the next day our group of friends went to an amusement park. I guess luckily for me, we were separated shortly after we got there and she got so pissed that she broke up with me on the spot. I remember wondering when it was that we ever got to the point that we could break up lol.
Anyway, by the end of senior year, I finally accepted that I was attracted to guys, but there was no way on earth that I would ever admit that or act on it. I decided I must be at worst bi and probably just had really selective traits that I found attractive and that was why I wasn’t attracted to girls. My friends all went to local colleges, but I went away to college and into an honors program, still in state but several hours away.
About halfway through my Freshmen year, I realized that I just plain wasn’t attracted to girls at all and that I was definitely gay. This sent me into a spiral of self-hatred. I became very cynical and negative towards life, hating myself for being gay and wondering why I deserved it. I even tried to convince myself, that I would just find a girl, get married, have kids, and pretend that I wasn’t. I was also already depressed most of the time due to a social anxiety disorder, and this just added fuel to the fire. I’d cry myself to sleep, stopped talking to all but a few of my friends, and really had a shitty college experience.
That is until my friends pushed me into seeing a doctor about my social anxiety. Once I started getting help with that, life became a lot better. I still wasn’t accepting myself, but being able to be in a social gathering or party was actually possible, and I stopped going into panic attacks over the stupidest of things. Like not talking to friend for a week, causing so much anxiety that I then couldn’t talk to him and etc. Then last summer, I went on an internship and lived alone for the summer. This really got me to open up to myself. I had plenty of time to think and work things out. I started exploring my sexuality since for the first time, I felt free. Before, even after I went away to college, I always had a roommate in a dorm, so I never really felt freed. Anyway, it started with porn, then playing with myself, and finally purchasing a toy. All were things that I’d never been able to do since there would always be the fear of my parents or brothers at home, or my roommate at college finding out.
After the summer ended, I went back to college for my fourth year (not final due to the program I’m completing) and moved out to an off campus apartment with three of my closest college friends. One day in the first week or two that we were back, my one friend has some of his high school friends over and I forget how, but the topic of “Did you know so and so from our high school is gay?” came up between them. I overheard one of the people they mentioned, and remembered when my friend had introduced him sophomore year when he was moving into his dorm. It was then that I started crushing on him. Moreover, that finally made me realize that I was fine being gay. That I was okay with being myself (at least to myself).
Later that night, I was talking to my current best friend. Now our relationship is a bit weird and at the least very unusual. We were each other’s best friends even though we hadn’t ever actually met in person before. We met playing an online game when I was in 8th grade and he was in 7th. Our friendship grew from casual conversation about the game to everyday topics. At some point during high school, our relationship evolved into one based on absolute honesty and absolute truth about everything to each other. There was nothing about him that I didn’t know and nothing about me that he didn’t know. I think the fact that neither of us had ever met the other in person is what really made that relationship work. Neither of us felt we had to save face in front of the other like we did to our other friends, and that allowed us to be perfectly open and honest. I know that’s not how it normally works, and that it very well may be only one of a handful of times that ever happens to anyone. (By the way, for those whose minds automatically go to online predator, we did talk through voice and video chat as well as the phone so it wasn’t a completely anonymous relationship.)
I’ve gone through that whole setup so that when I say I told him that night that I was gay, it wasn’t really like I was coming out of the closet. It was just one additional step of self-acceptance. We had already extensively talked about me being attracted to guys and hating myself and everything so it wasn’t a surprise and didn’t have any build up or any of the other things normally part of coming out of the closet. Well, a little over two weeks ago, he died in a car accident. A Hummer (H1, the original) hit ice going into an intersection, couldn’t stop at the red light, and smashed into my friend’s car as he was going through the intersection. He survived the crash but later died on the operating room table from punctures to his spleen, kidney, and liver.
This devastated me, but death doesn’t cause me too much grief. I get to acceptance quickly even after something as traumatic as that. But this got me thinking about friendship and how there wasn’t anyone else in my life that I really trusted or even had half the relationship with as I did with my best friend. I started thinking about why this is and came to the conclusion that it was because I lived each day in constant lies. I couldn’t fully trust anyone else because I couldn’t be open with anyone as long as I remained closeted.
So I started reading the coming out posts and stories on the forum here for advice and guidance. While I was 90% sure my friends wouldn’t have any problem what so ever, there was that little voice in the back of my head generating every possible worst-case scenario it could conceive. My mind just started nagging me and nagging me to come out and that voice just put me into a state of terror each time I thought about doing it. I felt like I was going to go insane if I didn’t tell someone and couldn’t tell someone because of the fear of what might happen.
So this weekend, I decided to do it and start with my roommates. Then I found out two would be going home for the weekend. This was just perfect timing (sarcasm). While having only one friend there might sound like the perfect opportunity, he is the friend I’m least close with out of the three, and really felt I owed it to my closet friend to be told first. So I decided that if the opportunity arose over the weekend, I’d tell him. Well that didn’t work well as he had his girlfriend over and then a friend from another college, and then club activities all weekend. So all my roommates came back and by Monday night, I’m just exhausted from all the anxiety and can’t do it.
So tonight (Tuesday), I sit myself down, work up some courage again, and go over to my closest friend’s room. He’s working on homework and research and I know it’s important that he complete it tonight so I decide now’s not the best time. Right before I leave, I get the nerve back up and ask him if I could talk to him later after he’s finished his work. The next 3 hours drug on like they were the longest three hours in the history of time. Finally, at about 2am, I go over and see how he’s progressing, and he’s just about done so I sit and wait for him. Well, as long as those 3 hours were, these 15 minutes felt even longer lol. So he finishes up on his computer and start going around his room getting things ready for tomorrow and asks what I wanted to talk about. At this point, my heart is racing, I feel like a deer in the headlights, I just want to run away and say it was nothing. Then I just blurt it out, “I’m gay.”
I had never said that out loud before and startled even myself. He just stops what he’s doing and kind of stutters for a second processing what I said and just says “Oh…. Ok” and that is that. Neither of us really what to say next until he finally says “Well…. any reason you decided to tell me or why now?” in a nonchalant manner. And the weight of the world suddenly lifts from my shoulders. The elephant that has been crushing my chest for the past 5 days finally gets up and leaves, and I just sigh in relief. It’s exactly the scenario I was hoping for. And then I realize that I’m caught off guard as this was never one of the questions my mind thought of or thought up an answer for. So we talk about it for a little, and then we just shift back into normal conversation. Right before I leave, he says one last time that he’s really fine with it, it’s not for him, but I’m exactly the same person now as I was when I walked in, yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.
Later, while writing this, I realized the answer to his question, “Why did you decide to tell me?”. I realized that it’s not that he needed to know, should know, or had a right to know, and that it’s not that I feel I need to cry out to the world “HEY! I’m GAY!!”, it’s that I needed to do this to finally 100% accept it myself. That I need to do this for me so that I could stop lying, stop spending so much energy worrying that someone might find out, and just live my life how I want to, with whomever I want to, and not be worried, ashamed, or afraid of it.
This has been one of the most difficult things to do in my entire life. I can think of only two others that fall in this category and one I mentioned earlier (admitting I needed help with social anxiety disorder), and the other being conquering my worst fear (at least at that time, it was rollercoasters and I was 10). I know this post is extremely long and applaud those daring enough to read it all. But I felt that after reading so many storied of other people and taking so much from those, that I should give something back, tell my story for others to read and find help.
Once again, I just want to say thank you to everyone here. I never would have been able to do it without you.
Now for tomorrow when I tell my other roommates.
I'm no role model, I'm afraid, having lived a closeted life for all of my 53 years, but I applaud and admire you for having the courage to come out. Your story was inspiring and very moving .... thank you sincerely for sharing it. 
Good luck!
