ive been thinking a lot lately. about coming out. who i should come out to, and how, and why i would. i want to come out, because it would release me from feeling anxiety everyday. trying to hide who i really am from the world is exhausting. ive considered coming out to my friends and brother. my friends are pretty accepting of gay people. i mean, sometimes they will say mean stuff. but its high school. everybody just repeats the words they hear around them. i would feel better if i told my friends, because i wouldnt have to keep pretending i like boys. however, there is always the risk of my friends rejecting me. i understand that if they dont accept me, then i shouldnt want to be their friends anyway. but its my senior year. and i dont feel like looking for a new crowd to hang with. then there is my brother. he goes to a private christian university. hes pretty religious. so im afraid that he will think im going to hell/disgusting/fucked up if i tell him. i could try to convince him im not, buuttt hes pretty stubborn. and id be crushed if he rejected me. ive always been close to him. as a kid i looked up to him. i practically wanted to BE him. he knows im not girly. in fact hes specifically told me, "youre like a brother to me". he never asks me about liking boys (unlike my mother and sister). he understands my tomboyish style. we think a lot a like. that gives me hope. there is a part in me that wants to tell my friends and brother im a lesbian. but i just dont know how they r gunna react. im a senior in high school. shud i just wait another year? im sick of pretending. i just want to be myself. i dont know what to do. could someone please give me some advice?? anything is helpful. thank you for reading
I would find out his opinion on gay people before coming out to him. Like say something about the new gay marriage law passed in New York. See how he reacts. Just because he is religious does not mean he is against gays. I read somewhere that the same (or a similar) percentage of non religious people are against gays as religious people. People who are against gays are against gays just to be against gays. Most of the time it has nothing to do with religion. Religious people against gays just use their religion to back their opinions on gay people. People can find almost everything they want to hate on in the bible, they like to use it to back their prejudices. So I'd say just find out his views first then go from there. I know many religious people who are very supportive of gay people. Don't let the fact that he is religious discourage you. Just take it slow, coming out is a process, not an event.
I think it depends on how bad you think the consequences will be. You have only one more year of school, and if you think that coming out would ruin it , then I would wait. If you plan on going to college, then you are likely to find some pretty open minded people there. I guess my way of thinking when I was your age was that when I got out on my own and was an adult then I could do as I please and if someone did not like it then I didn't have to be around them. However, being in an environment where everyone disapproves of you would be really hard. I don't know your family or friends and I cannot say what they will do though so this is just my perspective. I'm a lot older than you and I'm staying at my grandmother's house for the summer until I can find a new job and the fall semester starts back up at my university. I'm not out to them, and I have no intentions whatsoever of telling them I'm gay until I am totally independent again, because I'm not sure what their reaction is gonna be and homelessness sucks. Again this is just my (possibly over-cautious) viewpoint. Should you wait? I dont know, you know your family and friends better than we on this forum do, but I'd think very hard about it and consider waiting if you aren't feeling up to possible negative reactions. As for pretending, well, if I'm around a group of girls who are swooning over some guy I just say something like "eh... I just don't think he is that cute" or tell them I've got other things on my mind to think about guys or some such thing. You aren't really lying that way.
Thanks for the advice. I went to a bonfire last night and a lot of friends were there that I hang out with at school. Some of them I wanted to tell. Some I didn't really care/ would rather not. I feel like only some ppl are important enuf to me to tell. Like ppl I have been friends with for years. I think ill take my time with coming out to them. Only coming out if I feel like it. One person at a time. And if they spread it, whatever. As long as my mother doesn't get word of it its fine with me. I still don't know about telling my bro. I feel like its only fair to tell him. In case my family finds out from someone that I'm a lesbian, I don't want my family to say to me, "how cud u have told everybody but us, your own family?!". U know what I mean? Besides, it would b nice to have a relative know the true me. What do u guys think?:eusa_danc
