Date: 2025-07-08
What is coming out? As a queer person, I am intimately familiar with it. It has become almost a sacred thing in the queer community, and has gained much notoriety from outside folks trying to understand the queer experience. In a lot of ways, the queer experience, in media, often is reduced to just the coming out experience. But despite that media and representation, when it came to my own coming out moments, I could never have anticipated how hard it would be.
It’s so easy to say “just get it over with”. But I’ve had many friends struggle with their own coming out – some even delaying it perpetually in the years I’ve known them. And it’s painful for me to see them struggle, both because I care about them and want to see them flourish as I have, but also because unlike a lot of media, I actually understand how arduous it can be. It’s not to say that all coming out has to be (or is) this way, I have friends who have had a wonderful time! But in the majority of cases I’ve been a part of or observed, it’s often difficult to get through, even when the people you’re coming out to are self-proclaimed allies.
I remember the first time I decided to come out, it was after many nights of trying to reason to myself if telling my parents would even be worth it. For a long time, I had told myself I could just never come out my whole life, and it would logically be the simplest way to live. But this wasn’t a logical matter. At the time, I didn’t know why, but I knew I needed to do it.
So one evening, I had gotten myself all psyched up, and decided that during dinner, I was going to announce to my parents that I am Bisexual. But as the conversation drew on, there never really came a perfect time, like I had pictured in my head. In fact, when I then tried to imagine what I would say when the time came, I drew a blank. How could I begin to say something so important? I couldn’t just blurt out “I’m Bisexual!”, it would sound crass and insincere. I needed to come up with a way to preface it, so I’d have the best shot of them taking me seriously and accepting me. But as things went on, I felt a sinking disappointment in myself as I realized I wasn’t actually going to be coming out that dinner, even though I had promised to myself that I would.
It wasn’t actually until the next night or two where I decided to tell my parents that I had something to announce before dinner. This gave me the runway to take off and preface what I needed to say. And as we sat down at the table, the impending conversation felt like a brick in my stomach, a physical sensation that I knew to be all in my head, but was so viscerally real it was impossible to ignore. In the state of near paralysis, the words, as if molten lava, finally poured out of my mouth. Then, even before my parents could say anything, came a rush of relief. I don’t remember the exact words I used, in fact I don’t think even I remembered them 5 seconds after I said them. I could go on about how my parents responded, what they said, what I had hoped they’d say, but honestly, it isn’t really even relevant. I realized that my fear, my anxiety, the dread, were internal in a lot of ways. While obviously the reaction I would get would affect me in a multitude of ways, in a lot of ways, once the words poured out of me, things shifted, from what I needed to do, to listening and deciding how to respond.
In that moment, I came to understand fundamental truths about coming out: while it is a proclamation, more than that, it is about vulnerability, about sharing a sensitive part of yourself with another person, and having courage to trust that they will take care of that sensitivity. Without vulnerability, “I am bisexual” is just a statement, a boring fact.
And really, while that was a first real “coming out” for me, I had experienced it in lesser ways many times before! Months prior, when I still didn’t think I could ever come out to anyone, ever, a close friend of mine James, after inviting me to lunch, came out to me as gay. It was all that I needed to immediately have the trust and opportunity to come out as well. And while it wasn’t as nerve-wracking as with my parents, it still carried many of the same themes and meanings: vulnerability (in this case on both sides), fear, and ultimately, connection.
But actually, the more I thought about it, I realized that even if that was the first time I had come out as some form of queer, coming out was a process I had encountered before, when at the age of thirteen, I came out to my (christian) parents as an atheist. And while initially it may feel like it’s not a “real” coming out, it has all the same key elements, down to the reaction from my parents, in confusion and not understanding how I could be this way, or what it means for me.
At this point in my life, I’ve now come out to various folks as (chronologically):
And even through it all, I still get a little nervous before having to come out again. I was asked not too long ago, “how do you have so much confidence in coming out?”, and like anything else in life, it comes down to practice. Not practicing by yourself in the mirror, but by the practice of doing. Even within each identity, it’s always a continuous process of coming out to all the different people in your life. Each coming out is obviously different, but by continuously coming out you gain more comfortability in it. Sometimes it can seem like in gaining comfort, you lose vulnerability, and as such you no longer need to “come out”. But, at least in my experience, it’s not that you become less vulnerable, but that vulnerability becomes easier and more comfortable.
That comfortability in being vulnerable is something that is foundational all the relationships in my life, and has helped me flourish and grow as a person in ways I never knew possible. While coming out can be scary, in the end I’m glad I’ve gone through it so much, not for other’s sake, but for my own.