I need your help to find the right words about how it feels to be closeted, what you fear(ed) the most about coming out. There's still way too many people who believe that there's nothing to it, but there is.. problem is, how to say exactly? Personally, it depended mostly of which closet I came out from. The weirdo closet? Easy! Went in Art school and did martial arts to meet with other weirdos. The gay closet? (yeah, went out of that one second! ) I was rather proud to show off those pretty girls around. The bisexual closet? A bit tougher since I've lost many friends in the process from the LGBT community, but then... the real friends stayed I guess. The transgender closet? Outch.:bang: My mom takes it real tough. My friends don't understand. It's like the first time I'm not acting like who I'm not; showing who I really am and it feels like that makes me very vulnerable. Like the other closets before, it wasn't really me who got out of but that puppet I'm playing... the attacks didn't reach ME. Now they do. It's also the first time I'm taking it so slow and actually fear coming out as trans to some people. After I'm done settling in my new place I intend on going to some sort of transgender people meeting in my area, since when I know I'm not alone in something it always helped in the past, hopefully it'll help this time as well.
my fear was to say it out loud to someone kinda engraves it in stone, makes it go from thought to reality, go from dirty secret to common knowledge, and potential gossip and losses. btw i keep hinting hard now, like a need to be out has come over my usual protective logical mind. last night when pm of fb by 2 deaf women they said they love me i started telling them more clues until one lol you must be bi, and i said maybe or queer or a man stuck in a female body. they saw it, don't mean they believe it, yet, but i am coming out. i never said i was lesbian...i am trying to skip that and go directly for who i really am, and change the too-much-of-a-tomboy-almost-for-any-guy-to-want-you image i was told i have into an out and proud Queer guy. baby steps, and it comes so naturally. it may seem easy retrospect cuz of the inner need, urges, being compelled to come fully out once we start the coming out process. if i had known i would be fully living out, i may have high-tailed it deeper inside! what area are you from?
DNB I'm in Québec, Canada, in the Eastern Townships area. Congrats for coming out in baby steps, I find that they're not that small..! How did I start coming out as trans too? Hum... when I was a small kid I was drawn to be a little guy but I got so pressured into being a girl that I sadly gave up and did what was expected of me. I wanted to be loved by my family and make them proud more than anything. It got worse when I became a teen though; I was expected to act like a normal straight female. I tried hard, real hard. The only way I could even bare to do this was to detach from myself; bring myself not to care and be a good actor. I dated some guys (and females, in secret) but it didn't fit because I wasn't attracted to them "that way". I guess my first steps of coming out as trans was by breaking up with them. When I let myself become more androgynous (and moved far far away) it helped a whole lot. I also started dating only women and pretended I was a butch lesbian. Still, it didn't quite fit; they weren't attracted by the guy I was. Worked best with bisexual girls... and then, I got a female friend who helped me a whole lot. She came to me asking why I was cross-dressing as a female..ahah. She told me that she sees that type of things and she always ends up dating trans-men. I guess she made me face it in her own little blunt way. Since then... my fb friends know, my family knows, my real friends know and my wife always knew. We're working on starting to talk about me as a He and not so much as a She. My work doesn't know but then, they don't know much. They'll learn it probably when my girl calls me dad in front of them and by then... I'm going to be so proud that I won't care. I remember one of my friends... we went fishing.. she had read my fb blog about it but she didn't refer to me as a guy. I told her, you know I'm a guy right? And that it's important for me that the people who are dear to me respect that. She just said ok. I think she understands.
