Happy National Coming Out Day
I was a kid raised in a fundamentalist religion, in the midst of one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
And I am gay.
I remember when I couldn’t even say those words to myself. Tortured and bullied at school, I denied, repeatedly, that I was homosexual. It was the 90s and unlike today, being queer wasn’t ‘in’ at all. Especially in Southwest Detroit where I grew up.
I also denied it to myself. Being involved in the world of Independent Baptist fundamentalism, is tough enough. Knowing that you’re beginning to fall in love with the hunky guy who hangs out with you from time to time, is hell on earth. So, I denied myself to myself.
It wasn’t until I was sat atop a guard tower in the middle of the night, in Kuwait, during Operation Iraq Freedom in 2003, that I came out. Or, rather, I confirmed my homosexuality to my mother on a very expensive trans-Atlantic phone call via a cell phone I purchased.
See, I didn’t even get the chance to come out to my family, myself. I’d joined the Army after 9/11, feeling a sense of duty, and patriotism, in a very uncertain time for myself as well as for the country I lived in. And while in the Army, oddly enough, away from home for the first time, I actually had the space to start to explore who I was.
And it was empowering. And chaotic. And beautiful. And *I* was all these things, too.
So much of what I had been afraid of, from where I grew up to the religion I had been taught, was simply that. Fear. It was all fear. My parents took it badly, my mother asked me “How could you do that to us? Your father’s been crying for days.”
“Why’s he crying? I’m gay, not him.”
But my deployment in a war zone actually created the buffer I needed. It created this space to realize what was important and what just wasn’t important at all. I was surrounded with a platoon that loved me. My NCO’s (Non-Commissioned Officers) were like father figures. I was in the middle of a war (sorta) and being in the right frame of mind was necessary to perform my duty.
That was important.
Putting up with someone else’s bullshit, even if it was my own parents, wasn’t.
“Mom, I can’t ask the Army to halt the war so I can come home and hold your hand and explain this to you. As far as I see it, you have two choices. A) You get over it for now and we’ll talk when I get home or B) get out of my life. I don’t have time for this, right now.”
Queer people, or LGBTQI people, know that we don’t just come out one time and that’s that. It’s a process that, as far as I can tell, spans a lifetime. I’m married, seven years now, I’ve been with my fella for ten years.
But for all of you out there who’ve walked the same road I’ve walked and for those of you who are thinking about making your journey out of the closet, and out of obscurity, it does it get better. It get’s easier. And while I my prayer for you that your coming out story isn’t as bizarre as mine was, I hope that you know that love doesn’t fix shit automatically. It doesn’t.
Love makes the hard shit easier to endure.
There’s no denying that because then we’re given the space to learn and grow.
Happy National Coming Out Day.
