Mey
A lot of the time I’m totally wracked by extreme anxiety, so when I knew I had to come out, I was literally shaking in my boots. Confronting people has always been something I’m terrible at, and for me, coming out seemed a lot like that. So for a lot of people, I came out without actually talking to them face-to-face. I wrote letters, I sent texts, I sent emails and Facebook messages and eventually I came out to everyone by making a Facebook post declaring that I was a big ol’ trans lesbian. By coming out like that, I was able to write out all my feelings and all the information that I wanted my friends to know without messing it up or forgetting something. I also wanted to make sure that I presented it in a way that fit in with who I am. I was able to write out a narrative of my life and show how being trans fit into that. Yeah, this was a change, but I was still the same person, and I wanted to make sure that that was still clear.
Now, I did end up talking to all these people in person eventually, but when I did, they came into the conversation knowing what to expect and knowing more about what it means to be trans. Also, there were some people I told in person, but even with them, I rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed what I was going to say. I wanted to make sure I got every word, every pause, every inflection just right. I wanted to be in control of my coming out. I also rehearsed a bunch of answers to questions I thought they might ask, just in case. Basically, I had a script of everything I wanted my friends to know and I made sure that I was able to get it all out.
I was able to write out a narrative of my life and show how being trans fit into that. Yeah, this was a change, but I was still the same person, and I wanted to make sure that that was still clear.
I was also very careful about who I came out to and when. I came out to my closest friends, the ones who I was most sure would be supportive, first. That way, with each new friend I came out to, I had another friend backing me up the next time I came out to someone. This also allowed me to build up a group of friends I could be myself around before I was out to the whole world. Eventually, I built up a whole army of people who had my back and were going to stand by me no matter what. That way, when I came out to the people in my life who I’m not as close with, I knew that even if they reacted negatively, I would still have a strong support system.
Maddie
“I’m pretty sure I’m bisexual,” I said to my two best friends on my fifteenth birthday. The statement was not related to the conversation, said well within earshot of my parents (who weren’t paying attention), and driven by the raging crushes I had on both of the friends — both girls.
I nudged my way into these girls’ friend group at the beginning of high school by chatting with one of them about the Grateful Dead pins on her bag during Spanish class and hanging out at lunch in the hall in the basement outside the girls’ locker room. In the group, a lot of them talked about being attracted to girls, but I kept my own girl-oriented attractions to myself, because I’d worried it might seem like I was just trying to copy them. Finally, as I sat with them at my kitchen table, newly fifteen, emotions running high after watching Rent and the thrill that these girls were my close friends, spending my birthday with me, I found myself laying it out there, giving myself a label in the LGBTQ alphabet soup.
They spent the rest of the night grilling me about this new development. I reveled in the attention and affirmation given to my newly vocalized identity.
It wasn’t unusual for me to be the only person in the room who openly talked about being attracted to women.
I don’t remember much else about the gory details of my high school coming out experience. I know I told my friends in clumps, some more explicitly than others. The only friend I was really scared to tell was my very conservative friend who had once said she’d disown a friend if they came out to her. But gathered in another girl’s basement in our sophomore year, I said to her, “Do you know I like girls?” She wasn’t surprised. I was a Democrat, after all.
I was lucky that my friend had moved past her middle school plan to reject her gay friends, and after that, my queerness gradually became something embedded in my everyday identity and interactions in the world. My college was a really great place to be queer, and there it wasn’t uncommon for people to learn I’m queer before or at the same time as they learned my name. It took me a long time to find other queer women friends in college, and so for a long time, my role in the friend group was to be the token lesbian amongst straight women and gay men. It wasn’t unusual for me to be the only person in the room who openly talked about being attracted to women.
I live in a new city now, and most of my new social interactions center around queerness in some way: queer activism, queer events, writing for Autostraddle, OKCupid situations — you get the idea. I don’t think I have actively Come Out to anyone in quite a while, at least not to friends. It’s an amazing feeling, and one that I’m trying not to take for granted.
KaeLyn
I had a false start in 8th grade, when I told my friends at a sleepover that I thought maybe I was a lesbian because I was attracted to girls. Soon after, I realized I was attracted to boys, still, because I developed a crush on this skinny kid with Eminem hair who wore circus-tent-baggy pants because it was the 90’s. So I recanted my former statement immediately. Those confusing feels for girls didn’t go away, though. I think I knew I was bisexual pretty much since I learned there was a word for such an identity. I became good friends with the couple gay guys who were out at our school, and was a known “fag hag,” but I didn’t come out until senior year — December 3, 2000, to be exact.
Partly because, even though my family was not very supportive, I felt good about finally saying the words. Partly because I really craved validation and hoped my closest friends would be cool.
I came out to my parents that day, which is a whole other story with a rough beginning and a happy ending. However, coming out to my parents emboldened me to come out to my two best friends. Partly because, even though my family was not very supportive, I felt good about finally saying the words. Partly because I really craved validation and hoped my closest friends would be cool. In the back of my friend’s mom’s minivan, staring intently at my lap, I told my two best friends I was bi. There was no pause or awkward moment. They were immediately super supportive. I can’t thank them enough for being so great. It changed everything for me. I swore them to secrecy and only told a few other people in high school, but their reaction helped me make the decision to be out at college, unapologetically.
From undergrad freshman orientation on, I have been out 100%. Once I made the decision to be out, it was surprisingly simple. I’m out at work, to friends, colleagues, publicly on the web, and to all my family that I’m in touch with. I’m really active in LGBTQ communities, politics, etc. I still have to come out fairly regularly, because I don’t “look queer” to most folks, but it’s not a big production anymore, just a subtle correction or dropping an obvious reference. Honestly, these days, I feel like I come out just as much as bi to LGBTQ people who think I’m a lesbian.
Fikri
The first time I said the words “I’m gay” to a real life human in my very own real human life — not in pseudonyms on fringe online forums, or lurking in the comments section of AfterEllen — I was 14 and still hiding behind a computer screen. MSN Messenger: I probably said it in 9pt Trebuchet MS in some shade of seafoam. She was my best friend then, one out of many Special Friendships I’d develop over the course of my teenage years (and coincidentally the last one that wouldn’t turn into a More Than Friendship), and I believe her response was along the lines of “oh k, cool.”
There were some exclamations of disbelief. Some questions. …Then we just stopped talking about it.
I wrote lengthy letters to 6 of my closest friends. These were people I’d known since 10 but weren’t necessarily the kind of friends I had heart-to-heart talks with (g-d I love teenage awkwardness) so I’m not quite sure what compelled it — the discovery of Ellen and her coming out story? — but I found myself in one of their living rooms nonetheless, trying not to squirm as they went through rows of my very, very tiny handwriting in front of me. There were some exclamations of disbelief. Some questions. And that awkward moment when we realised our friend’s parents had been at home the whole time, and might have heard everything we’d said.
Then we just stopped talking about it.
My semi-secret queer life exploded from that year on: I explored girls and words and myself, but I stopped telling people. (I wouldn’t have denied it if they’d asked, but they didn’t.) I’d developed an online community on LJ and DW that made me feel like I could be myself, I was dating deeply closeted straight girls, and I later grew increasingly skeptical of “coming out” altogether. But most of all, I guess, I was scared.
This had to change when at 21 I ran for LGBT Officer at my undergraduate university, which meant two surprising things to my friends: 1. I was back on Facebook, 2. I was posting photos (selfies, even) of myself. In light of this, I thought 3. “surprise I’m gay!” would be less of a big deal. Jk! Of course not. It was fucking awful. So I did what all the young people do now: I poured my heart out on the internet (and clearly, haven’t stopped since).
Coming out in this public, spectacular way was one of the lowest points of my life. It was exhausting, demoralising and broke my brain and my heart and my body. But it also gave me the opportunity to rebuild all those things: friendships that lasted got stronger, I met so many new wonderful people, my social circles changed radically and the communities I now belong to have proven to be invaluable through other crises — and celebrations! — that followed. I live in a happy queer bubble in NYC, have found people who’ve (re)made Singapore home for me, and am surrounded by weirdos who energise, inspire and make bad sex jokes with me every day.
I’ve moved forward. And it’s fucking awesome.
