Reconnecting with old friends post-closet

So it's been a little over 5 months since I came out and the thought occurred to me to look up old friends from high school on Facebook. First some background. Until now, I had not stayed in contact with anyone from high school once I moved away to college. Although in junior high and high school I had a few fairly close friends I knew through orchestra practice, I had pretty much been a loner and found a hard time connecting with others. Looking back now, I know this was mainly due to my being in the closet. I first had the epiphany that I was gay near the beginning of junior high, so it was during this period that I was struggling with my identity and building up my facade to hide what I was. My insecurities and standoffishness were likely apparent, and so my friendships were not as close as they could have been. Although sometimes my friends invited me to hang out with them, I observed that their relationships with each other were so much closer (basically I had the phrase “they’re all out without you having fun” going through my head). After I graduated high school, I went to one university while my friends went off to other ones, except the person I considered my best friend who started off at that college but dropped out mere weeks into the first semester. The pattern of friendships continued again through my undergraduate program, although halfway through I started to open up more after getting over some of my depression/anger issues (which came with more acceptance of my sexual identity). Then, going to grad school a similar pattern happened again with a new group of people I befriended. I am still in grad school now, but I have finally come out to most of the friends I see in my daily activities at school/work.

Finally starting to feel comfortable with myself and embracing the fact that I’m gay, I have recently started to analyze these experiences from my past in a new light. After watching this season’s premiere of “Dexter” that dealt with a high school reunion, I began to think about the people I knew back in high school and wondered what their lives have been like. I honestly hadn’t thought much about that period of my life since I went to college where I was able to reinvent myself and (to an extent) run from my past. So a few days ago I went on Facebook and started off a search of one friend’s name, which led me to look at other friends’ profiles whom they were friends with. Vicariously observing these people again through FB opened up the part of my brain where I had sequestered all of these memories and emotions from that period of time, especially my initial realizations of being gay and the thoughts I struggled with over this. I hadn’t realized how much I had tried to forget the past and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Among the people I looked up were also a couple of friends-of-friends who had come out of the closet back in junior high. It appears that they’re all doing well and living their lives out in the open, meeting lots of people. It was an odd emotion in viewing this, because part of me is glad to see what they’ve done with their lives but another part resents that it took me 11 years longer than them to finally find myself. Out of the friends I looked up, I have so far only sent a “friend request” on FB to one of them, the person who I had always considered my best friend during that period. She accepted the request and we just started sending messages on FB to catch up on the 6 years since we spoke to each other. I plan to come out to her the next time we chat on FB. It feels kind of weird that I’ll be coming out to someone from my high school past before I’ve even told any of my friends from my undergrad (although some of them may have seen the “interested in men” change on my FB—no one has said anything about that yet). I need to contact those friends too in the near future—it was only a month after I first came out that I finally registered on FB and contacted friends from my undergrad that I hadn’t seen for 2 years.

Even though I initially ran from my past while being closeted, I feel I’m at the point in my life where I can reconnect with old friends to try to start anew and finally show them my true self. “Another person moving on....”.

 

I just finished chatting on Facebook with this friend from high school that I re-connected with. While catching up on what's been new in each others' lives, I came out to her:

Me: "Well, there's one thing recently that I've come to terms with. This past summer I came out of the closet. Dealing with that knowledge for the last decade plus was rough and was definitely the reason I had issues back before college. Sorry if I was an ass back then!"

Her: "Don't worry about it. Sort of guessed from your profile. And that's great. Always better to live your life the way that really makes you happy."



We went on to talk about friends from high school and it turns out she hasn't kept in touch with many of them either. Apparently some of the people I had rocky friendships with were also assholes to her, so she hasn't really spoken with them since. Both of us had ended up moving a good distance from our hometowns, running from our respective pasts. I had always considered her my only true friend back during that time, so it feels so great to talk with her again.