In the beginning...

Before I talk about the actual coming out, a little background first. Starting off in elementary school, I was one of those kids who never really fit in and, by default, got picked on. It was always verbal bullying and luckily I never got beat up or in physical altercations with any of my tormentors. Being an only child and my parents not being that social either, I didn't really start off with a good background in social interactions. I was naive about most things (think Butters from South Park) and got deceived easily by peers. Already an outsider, when I began to go through puberty and start realizing I might be gay, I was already starting to build up defenses. I had always had a knack for acting/mimicking, so as the ridicule from peers continued I basically replicated the "masculine" behaviors that other boys displayed in the attempt to at least blend in. It worked well enough that I have maintained this facade until now, almost 25 years of age now and finishing up grad school.

I first had the epiphany that I was gay when I was about 14 while on a summer vacation to visit relatives in Texas for the first time (going to Galveston and South Padre Island, let's just say there was a lot of eye candy hanging out on the beach). Beginning to bear this knowledge of my sexuality through junior high and high school, I went through the various stages of denial and self-hatred. In the hopes that I might be bisexual or at least able to pull off being viewed as straight, I dated a few girls during that time. While in a couple of instances I felt romantic attraction to a couple of them, I never really felt any spark. Once I almost had sex with one of those girlfriends, but was not able to "get it up" for the life of me and just made up a bullshit excuse to get out of that situation. This was junior or senior year of high school and I decided at that point to stop dating girls, realizing it was a hopeless cause and not fair to myself as well as the girls who might be fooled. Entering my freshman year in college, I was in a very dark place in my head and was a very angry person. By then I had accepted I was gay, but frustrated that even in the more liberal atmosphere of college I still didn't feel I would be accepted by any of my friends (especially the couple that were vocally homophobic). However, as I made more strong friendships with some of them I started opening up and letting go of some of my anger, bringing out the more outgoing kid I used to be before the hell of adolescence. Just before graduation, one of my friends in particular mentioned to me how astonished she was at the change she had seen in my during those four years of college, which was another epiphany for me.

Going into grad school immediately after graduating, I had the added pressures of a field project (I doing my Master's in Biology studying birds), courses to take, and a thesis to develop. Still a virgin and in the closet, the aggregation of the personal baggage prior to grad school kept on accumulating. Concentration on my thesis gradually began to wane, my thoughts usually revolving around my sexual/personal problems. When working on your thesis, it's expected that grad students should basically live and breathe their research project, and not have a personal life. Having been deprived of much of a personal life until this point, I really started to not care about the expectations involving my performance. And this reached a head during my last committee meeting back in April when my committee members reamed my ass for not being further along in the program (although there were several other factors in this as well, not all the faults being mine...). Well, at this point it dawned on me how much of an effect me being in the closet was having on other aspects of my life. I knew it was time for a change.

I had already decided that the first person I would come out to was my close friend/co-worker, Theresa. I knew she was accepting of gay culture, she having been involved in a relationship with an openly bisexual guy at that time. She is also one of the most genuine people I have ever met and is not afraid to speak her mind in the least (also cusses like a sailor, which both of us have in common). We are basically a support system for each other, giving advice on school-work to relationships. I would have told her much sooner, but she was finishing up her thesis and preparing to give her defense this past spring, so I didn't want to bother her with my problems at that time. So, I waited until after she graduated and both of us were teaching one of the biology labs on campus during the summer semester. One night (June 1st to be exact) she invited me over for dinner and after having talked with here about the stressful break-up she had been dealing with, she gave the perfect segue in the conversation, asking about my dating experiences and if I was seeing any girls. Well, at this moment I explained how I had wanted to tell her for a while and how hard it was for me, and then announced "I'm gay". What I felt at that moment was a mix of profound relief and fear rolled up together. I couldn't believe I was actually speaking those two words. She was initially surprised since I am more of "masculine" guy, but as I started unleashing all of my bottled-up thoughts upon her about my experience in the closet, she said that my reveal actually made sense to her in explaining my mannerisms (although she couldn't articulate on what it was exactly about me that made sense with being gay). She then got up and gave me a big hug and we talked for another few hours. That night whenever I went to the bathroom I kept staring at myself in the mirror with a goofy grin on my face, in disbelief of what I had finally accomplished after a fucking decade of hiding who I was to everyone I had known. I was embarking into the big unknown...