My [long] coming out story...

So I’m new to posting but have read pretty much every thread in the coming out section, as I’ve been giving a lot of thought about coming out to a few more people. I’ve had both really positive and really negative reactions so I’m somewhat apprehensive… Thought I would post this one. It is long but I have tried to condense my whole life into words, so I think I’ve done well :icon_wink. I hope this proves as helpful to someone as everyone else’s have been for me.



I have two older brothers: Brad is nine years older than me; Dave is three. I’ve always been closer to Dave. He wasn’t like a lot of older brothers’ who were irritated they had their little brother tag along; he looked out for me; he was always affectionate and incredibly protective of me.

My father, a huge sports fanatic enrolled all three of us at young ages in every sports club he could find. While we all had a pronounced athletic ability, both Dave and I seemed to have a natural aptitude for football. Some of my happiest childhood memories are the hours spent making imaginary plays in the backyard, all three of us trying to outdo one another.

My childhood was happy: I did well academically, very well athletically and was popular amongst other kids at school. As I grew into an adolescent and started high school, I got a girlfriend and did all the things stupid teens boys do.

But, like a lot of people, I came to the realisation that I was different early in life, and was conditioned to the notion that homosexuality is ‘wrong’ or ‘unnatural’. My first memory of feeling ashamed about my orientation occurred one evening when I was thirteen: my parents were away so my brothers decided to have mates over and watch violent martial arts movies (this was also when I realised my eldest brother had an Asian fetish but that’s another story). The striking heroine was drawing a slew of comments from the room full hormonal teen boys; I remember the dread I felt when I realised I didn’t feel the same way as these boys. Suddenly everything made sense: I was gay.

I felt overwhelmed at the disappointment that I would bring to my family, the friends I would lose and the discrimination I would face. I must have looked horrified at the thought, because someone asked if I was okay. I wasn’t; the life that I had seen, like everyone else’s, in which I would marry and have kids, and do NORMAL things, was shattered.

The level of isolation that I felt for most of my teens was sometimes crippling. I guess it could be summed up when, at the age of 18 after my rugby team won the grand final, I sat on a bench in the locker room, my back facing my team, and quietly cried at the realisation, that no matter how well I did, at anything, I was, and always would be different, and no one would accept me because of this.

However, when I was 19 I met Phil, a kid who played for the same club, in the age group below me. We began spending a lot of time together, in what started out as a social relationship; hanging out and watching TV, training together, going to the beach. But somewhere our relationship turned physical and we began ‘dating’ (even though we were both so far back in the closet we were shoe bags).

After nine months of sleeping together, I was involved in a car accident in which I was comatose for eight days (again, another story). Phil came to visit me in hospital, along with nearly all my family and my closest friends on a regular, if not daily, basis. One evening when the doctors were unsure if I would make it through the night, Phil and Dave were talking in the hospital, when Phil broke down and confessed the nature of our relationship to him.

I won’t bore you with recovery process but when it was finally time for me to leave the hospital, my brother Dave offered to drive me home. He asked me if I wanted to see the beach. I said sure, I’d settle for going anywhere as long as I wasn’t in bed.

“I need to talk to you about something” Dave said. I had no idea what about, so when he asked me “are you gay” I felt as though the wind was knocked out of me. I looked at my feet and the plaster casting on my leg - I felt as thought I couldn’t look him in the eye. I knew that answering this question had the potential to affect my relationship with every person who had thought enough of me to come and visit me: people who felt the need to scribble their name and get well messages on my broken body.

I tried to gather myself – my thoughts and emotions, but when I did go to answer his question after a silence that seemed to stretch on forever, I had tears in my eyes. I looked at him and tried to say “yes”, but I couldn’t. I put my head in my hands and waited. For what, I still don’t know.

I pulled myself together, sat up, and looked at Dave. My brother, who looked out for me for all my life; who never yelled at me, who bought me my first beer, gave me my first condom; the guy who had seen me through every single milestone in my life, who not only saw me grow up but was instrumental in the process, had just asked me if I was gay.

This was the moment that I had dreaded – the embarrassment, the pain I would cause people who loved me. My brother was emotional because of my “answer” to his question. He stood up, what I believed was him walking back to his car: to leave me on the beach, alone and helpless; the way I had felt for so many years.

Something warm and heavy was on top of me. I opened my eyes to find my brother awkwardly hugging me. When he was done, he sat back down.

I will never forget what he said to me as his voice was breaking “I love you. If I have ever done anything to make you think that I don’t, I’m more sorry than I can ever say”. And that was it. For the next two hours, we sat in silence, watching the sunset, completely at ease in one another’s company. I realised then that despite everything that might happen, there was one person I could count on.

I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive brother: he took me to a local rugby game, and the whole time the only thing he talked about was which players I thought were hot. He has already told me that if anyone gives me any grief about being gay, that he will “take care of it” (not that I need it) and he has proffered his services as wingman at a gay bar (even though I’m in a relationship!).



Basically it has been six months since I came out to my brother. I wrote this story a while back because Dave had asked me to tell him how I felt at the time, thought it might be good for me or something, but talking about it didn’t cut it for me. I gave him (a slightly) different version ages ago, and was cleaning up my desktop when I found it, changed it a bit, and now I’m posting it! Like I said, I do hope it can help someone out a bit. But I was so surprised at his reaction; after I gave him the letter I wrote, Dave called me and told me how proud he was of me, and he liked me less for being an accountant than being gay :lol:

 

Thanks everyone for your awesome responses (&&&)

Haha yeah all better now thanks :icon_bigg if the only positive that came out of the whole process was my brother knowing, I think it's worth it!

Yeah I know the funny thing is, in my opinion anyway, is that you need to have the sort of support people like my brother has offered to know that you are normal, but to get that support you have to tell people that you "aren't". (better analogy is you have to have money to know it cannot buy happiness)...that's my take.

But my brother and I have been talking about it a lot, I'm thinking of coming out to my best mate, he's offered some pretty solid advice but I think I just need it from someone who is/has been in a similar situation :help: