First and forth most - Just wanted to quickly say hi! I'm new here and although I feel kind of bad about dumping my issues here on my first post, I kind of feel that this is what this forum is here for. It's a long post, so sorry in advance for that too! Basically a long story short, I'm 25 and whilst I have known I was interested in men for many years now, it is only really within the last 12 months I have fully accepted that theres no if, buts or maybes about it, I am gay. I have spent pretty much my whole late teens/early twenties suffering depression, trying to be straight, praying to god that I'll wake up straight etc and just hiding me and have finally come to a point where I'm sick of hiding. I want to come out, yet everytime I seem to make progress with it, I panic and run the other direction. Some people do know...I have a gay friend who I actually met when of one of my "drink my pain away" binges which I used to do frequently when I was younger, ended in a one night stand (I'm not proud of it.) Basically he told his best straight friend he had been with me, who unfortunately at the time told everybody. I told everybody it was just a drunken mistake and over the years everyone seems to have forgot. When the love of my life got a serious girlfriend, I again drank myself stupid and told my brother, who was accepting, but we have never mentioned it since and as now he asks me about when I'm going to get a girlfriend, I can only assume he thought it was alcohol talking or over the years has forgot himself. As I know he is an accepting person, I want to just come out properly with him and I always plan to do it and say "right I'm gonna do it" but as soon as I see him I chicken out. God knows why, I told him once and he was fine with it so I do not know why I'm scared. The other day I decided I'd be 'brave' and join an online gay dating site, to meet like minded people, but as soon as I saw somebody had viewed my profile, it hit home that 'somebody knew' and I just panicked and deleted my account. The other day I tried joking about my sexuality to my recently married best friend (who was one of the people who knew about my past night with my gay friend) but it didn't go well and again I froze up, basically her husband joked when talking about why I havent got a gf and said "it's coz we know you like to pick up men" to which I replied jokingly "well I try..." My best friend snapped "yes, we know you used too, I dont want to be reminded" and then physically shuddered..This boke my confidence in telling my friends.. It just seems like I'm ready to come out, but everytime I get to the point of confession, either something is said (like above) or I just go into sheer panic mode for no reason and shut down. Does this fear ever go away? Does this sheer panic happen to anyonelse? I just want to stop living a lie but just can't get past this fear at crunch time. If anyonelse has gone through this, advice would be greatly appreciated =)
Well, welcome to EC! I've seen one or two similar posts to this. Every time I have, people have responded with something along the lines of "The fear goes away when you fully accept yourself". I'm sorry, but I don't have much to add, except if your friends won't accept you for being gay, they don't deserve to be friends with you.
If it's the confession stage that you're having the biggest problem with, you might try a different tactic altogether. Act like everybody already knows. After all, you've technically told them. And one of the biggest confirmations that somebody is gay isn't that they're always ogling the same sex - it's that they're disinterested in the opposite sex. So as long as you haven't been trying to hide behind a series of fake girlfriends, I'd say let your drunken confessions and lack of interest in girls be your coming out. You've told them. Consider yourself out. Now just go be gay. Because life kicks ass on this side of the closet door. Lex
