I am going to be completely honest here, and say some things that I am not at all proud of, but I feel it just proves what a complete revolution happens inside people's minds when they accept their homosexuality.
This post was published on the 9th May 2012 at 21:00 (GMT +1 / Paris). This makes it exactly one year - to the hour - since I accepted the fact I'm gay.
Throughout this past year, and my coming out, I've been keeping a diary. I thought it would be a good idea so I could look back and see if my points of view have changed. They have. Radically. And some extracts are in this post.
Pictured above on the left is me holding up a sheet of paper with the word "GAY" scrawled on it. I didn't make the sign, but apart from that I'm solely responsible for everything else around this picture. The girl I'm pointing it at isn't exactly a friend of mine, in fact I don't like her and neither do my friends. So this was a "joke". A classmate of mine made the sign and started standing next to people, holding it. I decided it would be funny (don't ask me why now, I really don't know) to creep up next to this girl and point the sign at her. Not only that, but I asked one of my friends to take a picture, probably so that there would be photographic evidence to my "straightness" on Facebook. They say homophobes are gay. Well hey! Guess what I was? I didn't even have my "Interested in" status set on Facebook either. If I came across my past-self online today, I'm pretty sure I'd figure it all out in a flash. Since this photo was taken, I'm glad to say it was deleted from the internet in June 2011. I'm now ready to come out and criticize it.
So how did I come to accept my homosexuality? I'm not entirely proud of that either, but what will be will be. It happened sort of accidentally while I was
browsing YouTube on the night of May 9th. I came across a video by OnisionSpeaks. I realise now, that Onision isn't really trying to help people on this channel, he has only set it up to make more videos and gain more revenue. I think it's a bit sick, personally. This is why I'm not proud of it. In any case, I guess I clicked it out of curiosity. About 15 seconds into the video I stopped listening, took off my headphones and slumped back into my chair with shock. I still don't really know how to explain that shock.
It wasn't as if I didn't know I was gay - I've known that I fit the definition since I was 11 or 12 and I always felt a bit 'different' before that. I guess the shock was that I didn't expect it to ever happen. I didn't expect to ever think "you need to do something about this, you need to say something because it's not going away". The fact of the matter is, one night when I was 11 or 12 I realised I was gay and I contemplated two choices. Choice 1 was to commit suicide. Choice two was to go through the rest of my life denying it, I'd marry a woman, have kids, and we'd all be happy. Luckily for me, I opted for number two. There was no choice 3. Accepting myself never crossed my mind. It was impossible. Not with all the homophobic slurs at school. The only two insults at school are "fat" or "gay". My life would be a living hell. So I repressed my feelings.
For about a week after accepting myself I went through a really, really rough time. I got so angry with myself about having pretty much wasted or ruined the first 17 years of my life. That is how I felt; I felt as if I had never lived. My views had already changed a lot just 3 days after accepting myself. On Monday 12th May I wrote this:
A few days later you can see from reading my diary I'm kinda beginning to accept it a bit more. I'm cracking jokes about how the curtains in my room are rainbow-coloured and it must have been a subconscious choice of colour.
I had my first of many dreams related to my coming out the night before my birthday (18th - 19th May) so I woke up on my birthday feeling confused. I dreamed I came out to Dad and he was completely and totally accepting. He even welcomed it. Is this strangely symbolic of the truth? Or is it just an ideal that I want but may not necessarily be true? I believe in analysing significant dreams that you can remember. In this dream I don’t remember having stopped walking. We were in a building, me and Dad, and we were going to another room but I don’t know what for. I think it was to meet other people (but I never got there because I got woken up by my alarm, dammit) and we were walking up lots of stairs and through lots of halls. I was telling him about me as we were walking and he really accepted it. He was even smiling. This is strange and confusing. I mean, I’m not close to my Dad and we don’t always see eye to eye. The last dream I had that he was in, he’d locked me in a small alcove under a stone bridge just next to a village at night. This was a disturbing dream because when I managed to get out, I looked for help and got it from some people, but others chased me and hunted me to return me to the bridge. This wasn’t a recent dream though, and I hadn’t accepted myself being gay at that point, but the subconscious works overtime in dreams. Dreams are the secret desires of our hearts, both dark and pure. They are also the sum of our fears...
On the 23rd May I said "I can act straight but I’m not. Truth is I’ve spent so long acting the role of someone I’m not, that I’m now in a true identity crisis." The timing of the whole thing seemed very inconvenient. My family and my grandparents were due to go to Barcelona that summer to make up for a ruined Christmas. My grandfather was in hospital having a heart operation throughout the Christmas period and it was traumatizing for everyone involved. There were lots of complications and at one point Dad said he had had another heart attack after the operation. We all sat in the car on the way home in silence. There were tears in my eyes. I thought we were going to lose him. My diary says "Even the Christmas [in February] we had when Mum got home was depressing. Everyone was crying and upset at the table for the “Christmas meal” after Mum started crying when telling us about the traumatizing nightmares Granddad had while he was under and how he didn’t recognize his own wife or daughter straight after he came around because he’d spent so long in this surreal nightmarish world of torture where the doctors were carrying out some sort of Nazi experiments on him, while he was under aesthetic." So the trip to Barcelona meant a lot to everyone and if I were to hog the spotlight or make it complicated then I would never forgive myself. In the end we never went due to travel insurance issues seeing as we live in a different country to them.
My second dream was very symbolic. Here it is:
On the 6th June there was some major progress. I came out to Gabrielle (yes the Gabrielle on this blog). My entry that night went like this:
Right now I'm finding it extremely hard to come out to my parents even though I'm 90% sure everything will be alright. This will be the topic of my post next week. I have a story to tell that hasn't - to my knowledge - been told on the internet. It's important too. I've been feeling disappointed with myself for months, feeling as if I've been letting myself down and feeling weak. I'm not. All shall be revealed next Wednesday and I'm sure it'll help other people out there.
It wasn't as if I didn't know I was gay - I've known that I fit the definition since I was 11 or 12 and I always felt a bit 'different' before that. I guess the shock was that I didn't expect it to ever happen. I didn't expect to ever think "you need to do something about this, you need to say something because it's not going away". The fact of the matter is, one night when I was 11 or 12 I realised I was gay and I contemplated two choices. Choice 1 was to commit suicide. Choice two was to go through the rest of my life denying it, I'd marry a woman, have kids, and we'd all be happy. Luckily for me, I opted for number two. There was no choice 3. Accepting myself never crossed my mind. It was impossible. Not with all the homophobic slurs at school. The only two insults at school are "fat" or "gay". My life would be a living hell. So I repressed my feelings.
For about a week after accepting myself I went through a really, really rough time. I got so angry with myself about having pretty much wasted or ruined the first 17 years of my life. That is how I felt; I felt as if I had never lived. My views had already changed a lot just 3 days after accepting myself. On Monday 12th May I wrote this:
"The only place it can go" was suicide. That was stupid. If I were able to talk to my 16 year old self at that point I would have told him what really matters; that no matter who rejects you - family, friends, colleagues - the only thing that truly matters is that you're open and happy with who you are because if you end your life at just 16 years of age, that is the most stupid thing you could do. You have your whole life ahead of you. It's not worth it.Why am I thinking about this now? Because I’m fed up of having to act like a person that I’m not. I feel like I’m betraying and lying to all of my friends. It’s getting to the point where it can only change for better or for worse, and if it changes for the worse there’s only one place it can go. If it goes that way, then people will probably end up regretting what they say for the rest of their lives – and I don’t want that to be the case.
12th May 2011
A few days later you can see from reading my diary I'm kinda beginning to accept it a bit more. I'm cracking jokes about how the curtains in my room are rainbow-coloured and it must have been a subconscious choice of colour.
It’s terrible, and also not good, to live our lives under façades. Façades filled with lies and things that are never said in order to hide you and prevent anyone from knowing the truth.
16th May 2011
 |
| My lovely rainbow curtains |
On the 23rd May I said "I can act straight but I’m not. Truth is I’ve spent so long acting the role of someone I’m not, that I’m now in a true identity crisis." The timing of the whole thing seemed very inconvenient. My family and my grandparents were due to go to Barcelona that summer to make up for a ruined Christmas. My grandfather was in hospital having a heart operation throughout the Christmas period and it was traumatizing for everyone involved. There were lots of complications and at one point Dad said he had had another heart attack after the operation. We all sat in the car on the way home in silence. There were tears in my eyes. I thought we were going to lose him. My diary says "Even the Christmas [in February] we had when Mum got home was depressing. Everyone was crying and upset at the table for the “Christmas meal” after Mum started crying when telling us about the traumatizing nightmares Granddad had while he was under and how he didn’t recognize his own wife or daughter straight after he came around because he’d spent so long in this surreal nightmarish world of torture where the doctors were carrying out some sort of Nazi experiments on him, while he was under aesthetic." So the trip to Barcelona meant a lot to everyone and if I were to hog the spotlight or make it complicated then I would never forgive myself. In the end we never went due to travel insurance issues seeing as we live in a different country to them.
My second dream was very symbolic. Here it is:
Apparently water in dreams symbolizes emotions. It was also in the same diary entry that I said "I have decided that I am happy with my life" which is a sign I'm starting to change quite a bit seeing as little under a month prior to that I was quite homophobic.The sky seemed dark and rainy, ripping slightly in places to allow the remaining, thinner cloud to be illuminated by the hidden sun. The surrounding landscape was a flat, baron wilderness, in Ireland most probably. I approached the lake. It wasn’t very large, only about the size of my room, maybe bigger. There was a small beach on one side of it where everyone else was standing. I was above it, on a different side where there was a small cliff no taller than my door. I was looking into the lake. It was peculiar. The water seemed to be made up of two different layers that weren’t mixing at all, like oil and water. The deeper top layer of crystal clear water went from the surface down to near the bottom where it met thick, brown, muddy water, almost like sediment. This second layer was thinner and you could see the shapes of the rocks on the lake floor through it, almost as if it were a blanket covering them, only revealing their figures but not their colours or patterns. The other people there, I can’t remember who they were, didn’t get into the lake. Neither did I. They may have been confused, they didn’t seem comfortable. They didn’t know anything about my secret. I want them to know and I don’t want it to be a secret. I want to be happy, I want them to help me to clear the bottom of the lake – sweep aside my uncertainties. Everything is clear now in my mind save for a few things. I don’t want to keep this from them any longer. I plan to tell them. I took a step backwards from the cliff edge and fell, into empty darkness, into my bed. I opened my eyes. I was late again.
1st June 2011
On the 6th June there was some major progress. I came out to Gabrielle (yes the Gabrielle on this blog). My entry that night went like this:
On the 13th June, this blog was already in the process of being born. Here is how it happened...It was long and hard and I didn’t think I’d make it at one point, but I’m out to Gabrielle. She nearly missed her bus and she’s going home with all her homework in her locker this evening and it was really tough to say. I thought it would be easier than that but I found it quite hard. She sat there for a short while with a look on her face that might suggest that she’d just been slapped around the face with a wet tuna (probably the stress) but eventually she got up and hugged me. She cried and said that it wasn’t that serious – I told her so! Luckily, she’s fine with it... I even learnt some stuff... :P Right now, I feel so relieved that some of this weight is off my shoulders at last. I actually looked at myself in the mirror on the way back in the door when I got home and hardly recognised myself. I look so much happier, free and careless. But I’m not quite careless yet. I still have other people to tell and I need to think about my parents. Gabrielle, I’m sure, wants to kill me :) I feel guilty for putting her through all this and I didn’t mean to! I’ve been trying to avoid it by asking her questions and making sure she wasn’t worrying too much. Anyway, she said she kind of suspected it (it had crossed her mind) that I was gay because she said I’m good looking and I haven’t got a girlfriend. I'm prepared for this, of course; what am I not prepared for? I’ve done so much thinking. I get the feeling other girls might kind of fancy me and I have to take that carefully. There are also girls that I’ve asked out before (in my days of un-acceptance). I’m sure that telling them might not go down that well. But she also said that I don’t act gay when I asked her. This doesn’t make telling my parents any easier really. It’ll probably come as a big surprise unless they’re not accepting it as I was. In this case, it’ll take them longer to come around.
[...] As soon as I said I’m gay to someone other than my ceiling or alarm clock, it felt as if all the anxiety had been sucked from my body and a shot of warmth tore through me radiating from my chest. It was a cold day too. There were rain clouds covering the sky. I was wearing a t-shirt, shirt and a hoodie with the hood pulled up and yet I still shivered from the cold from time to time. But by the time it got to talking, I was shaking because of nerves. I wasn't upset; I was just riding the waves into the unknown. But I was no Magellan, I was Columbus - I came back from the unknown alive and glad that I’d discovered something that could be of great benefit to me. A friend I can talk to and who accepts it. It’s kind of handy that she's a girl. She can give me a girl’s point of view even though I actually kind of can see it myself.
6th June 2011
After this the coming out train lost a lot of steam and since then it has been hard to get it moving again. I watched Prayers for Bobby on the 17th June and cried like a baby, tried and failed to come out to my Mum many times, I still felt like the first 17 years of my life were wasted on the 23rd June ("All I’ve lived, for 17 years, is a lie. There was one letter missing; lie => life. I’m finding that “f” but it feels like such a waste. It’s like dying 17 years younger."), I wrote about LGBT issues, gay marriage and religion (I don't agree with half the stuff I said anymore), went through tough spots when my sister said radically homophobic things that ripped my heart out, turned all the negative energy into positive energy by founding this blog and making a collab with a bunch of crazy, lovely people, came out to more friends online because they live far away and had a bipolar period around March.19:18: “Freedom requires wings, not permission” – Craig Green
I read this quote earlier and it inspired me to talk to Tom [my next closest friend]. I knew I had to do it today. After reading it, I went downstairs – the door was open almost inviting me outside to talk to him. I smiled. Everything was telling me to, yet everything inside me wouldn’t let me. So, I wrote my speech and went to talk to Tom. It actually went really well. I was prepared for the worst but got what I hoped for. It was much easier than talking to Gabrielle. I wasn't shaking at all but hands were kinda tingly. He's fine with it and he hasn't even made a big deal of it. We went on to talk about school and revision and he even suggested hanging out on Thursday with him, and some of our friends (he wants to organize a kind of 'day off' before the maths exams). He also wants to kill me (in a friendly way) - I said "You know the other day when you said “Patrick's going to shag the French teacher”?”
"Yeah?"
"Do you remember me saying that's highly unlikely?"
He laughed and said he should have thought about it more. At least it’s a way of making sure people listen to me from now on! :P My speech went something like this:
"There's been stuff flying round my head for the last 5 weeks. It's 5 weeks today actually. And I've been meaning to talk to you for some time now.
"I've known you pretty much since the day I started school here and since then, we've trusted each other with so much stuff that's important in our lives.
"So, I think it's time we had another chat, except this time it's possibly the hardest thing I'll ever have to tell you because I can't be sure of your reaction until it's done.
"And I need to know that I can trust you with it until I sort it out at home. So you can't talk about it with anyone for a while. I've already spoken to Gabrielle, I did it almost exactly to this hour, 7 days ago but now I'm talking to you. I wanted to talk to you first but I couldn't make my mind up and eventually I just had to give in and Gabrielle was the nearest at the time. It was either her or you first.
"I’m gay."
He was fine with it and reminded me that he’s a very open minded person, which is true. I’d nearly say he’d figured it out.
13th June 2011
Right now I'm finding it extremely hard to come out to my parents even though I'm 90% sure everything will be alright. This will be the topic of my post next week. I have a story to tell that hasn't - to my knowledge - been told on the internet. It's important too. I've been feeling disappointed with myself for months, feeling as if I've been letting myself down and feeling weak. I'm not. All shall be revealed next Wednesday and I'm sure it'll help other people out there.
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