Coming Out: My Story

For me, coming out was a big deal, and possibly the biggest hurdle I’ve had to overcome in my whole life, and I’ve had to overcome some pretty big hurdles. Sure, I’d known I was gay since the tender age of thirteen, and had spent the best part of five years growing up at a boarding school away from my parents learning to be independent and growing more and more confident in my own skin, but I’d never thought about telling anyone, certainly not my parents.

It wasn’t until late 2010 - November, to be annoyingly precise - that I felt it was time to be honest with myself about my sexuality and come clean to my mum and dad. On a spur-of-the-moment night out at the local pub with my dad, and after one or two long vodka’s, I plucked up the courage to tell my dad in my own awkward, vague way. His reaction, much to my surprise, was far more sympathetic than I could have ever anticipated. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. For whatever reason, my dad decided to take it upon himself and tell my mum before me. So, after spending a day in Glasgow (I cannot for the life of me remember what I was doing there), I returned home to a very frosty reception and the realisation that my mum had, through no fault of my own, had had an entirely different reaction to the news that she had a gay son.

It was, on reflection, perhaps the trickiest night of my life. I had absolutely no idea what to do or what to say to make things easier for my mum. Her questions, unlike my dads, felt more like probes and daggers to my already fragile and uneasy heart than anything else. It was then, at eleven o’clock on a cold winter’s night, that I realised that the journey I had somehow assumed would be relatively easy, would in fact be a lot more complicated and tiring on me and those close to me.

Since then, things have become easier, a lot easier. In some ways, I don’t think my mum will ever fully accept what she discovered that night. But, in full credit to her and my dad, they’ve both been able to overcome their individual attitudes and opinions on homosexuality to a point where they treat me as they’ve always treated me, and have even begun to voluntarily open discussions about the subject. The rest of the family - my brother included - took the news much better, which helped in a massive way to convince me that there was nothing wrong about who I was or the people that I liked.

Of course, my experience with coming out is exactly that, my experience. The same thing is unlikely to happen to another person, but that’s not to say your experience will necessarily be a bad one. For those of you who are yet to come out, there’s unfortunately no way to tell what your experience will be like, but as long as you are prepared and confident, both in yourself and in your sexuality, then you’ll be able to deal with whatever repercussions your honesty brings about. 

If you feel like you need more time to process your new feelings, then that’s fine, of course it is. There’s no rulebook about coming out, nothing to say you have to do it at a specific time or in a specific way. But if there’s one thing that I learned from my experience over everything else, it’s that people’s reactions differ, and those reactions may come as a surprise to you, even if you’ve known that person all your life. But try not to take those reactions to heart, as more often than not they’ll adapt with time. 

And if they don’t. Well, that’s for them to worry about, not you. Your happiness is much more more important than the happiness of those around you, and that’s something worth remembering regardless of your sexuality of background. It’s never easy to have someone reject you, but there’s ways to cope and there’s always people out there to help you, support you and guide you in all manner of ways. Coming out and what happens directly after isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning.