How late is "late?"

I've been out for three years and I'm happy, my partner and I are very much in love and holding hands at family gatherings and planting tomatoes in the garden and life is good.

I'm here because I had an awful coming out experience and I'm having a hard time getting past it.

I realized I was gay when I was 24. I hadn't been hiding it or in denial about it, I just didn't know. I realize that 24 is a lot younger than most of the people who post here, but I feel like I have more in common with people who came out in their 40s than I do with people who came out in high school.

I had been in a serious relationship with a man for four years and people were starting to ask us when we were going to get married. We had a good, stable relationship, but I dreaded marrying him. I had never been in love with anyone, and I was afraid that I never would. I had stopped growing as a person, I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with my life, I was unhappy, bored, and drinking a lot.

So when I fell in love with a close friend, it came as a relief to me. I was like, "Oh! There's nothing wrong with me, I'm just gay. Whew!"

I'm proud of the way I handled it. I was honest with my boyfriend as soon as I figured it out. I didn't cheat. I read the right books and reached out to my queer friends, and it was astonishing how quickly everyone turned on me.

I had lesbian friends and I had always thought they were cool. I was really excited about the possibility of becoming more like them. So I was really hurt when they told me, "That's just embarrassing. Anyone who comes out after they're 18 has been living in serious denial, or else they're just fucking retarded."

A few of them blew up at me and wrote me off. Most of them sided with my boyfriend.

The betrayal from my queer friends was heartbreaking. I really needed their support. I had nowhere to go; I couldn't afford to move out after I broke up with my boyfriend, so I kept living with him while I saved up for a new place and he kept having sex with me, even though I didn't want him to. I would go rigid and cry, and he would just pretend not to notice.

When we told our mutual friends why we were breaking up, they would say, "Aw, man, your girlfriend's leaving you to be with chicks, that's the worst thing ever, what a bitch." They would say this right in front of me. I lost most of my straight friends, too.

I moved to a big city and split an apartment with my sister. She had always wanted me to break up with my boyfriend-- "You're such a passionless couple," she said-- so I expected her to be supportive. But she reacted very poorly. She said things like, "Why did you cut your hair off? You look like an ugly man. You are psychologically sick." I would say, "That hurts, why would you say that?" and she would say, "I'm being supportive. Stop projecting your insecurities onto me."

I started going out to lesbian reading groups, knitting circles, and parties. I got romantically involved with an older woman, but it never became sexual, and she also became abusive. She was very good at manipulating the other group members, and I had to leave the group to get away from her.

Around this time I started up a long-distance relationship with the same girl I had fallen in love with in my old town. She had been away while I was going through my breakup. I hadn't told her that I had fallen in love with her or that I was gay; she had to find out through the gossip mill. She called me up and said, "I knew it! I've had a crush on you since forever ago. Let's hook up!"

I'm surprised she put up with me. I was a wreck. I had learned to distrust people, and especially other gay people, and sometimes I would freak out and start yelling at her. She called it "fear biting." She would say, "I love you and I know this is hard for you, so I'm going to be patient. But, oh my god! Fix your shit! I can't be patient forever."

Slowly, I started to fix my shit. It was hard. I was really messed up. I had dealt with the stress of coming out by blocking everything out and just focusing on the road ahead, so a lot things came to the surface that surprised me.

Like, the first time we tried strap-on sex I went rigid and started crying. She held me and stroked my hair while I told her about how my boyfriend treated me after I came out to him, and then she said, "Um, that's called rape."

I said, "I didn't tell him to stop. I felt like I deserved it. He was giving me a place to live. I couldn't say no. I was worried he would kick me out. I felt so guilty," and she was like, "Yeah, that's what rape victims say."

Another thing I've had to deal with is my very repressed upbringing. I grew up under the backlash against the gay rights movement. My parents were very religious: they made me read a lot of James Dobson books, kept me away from television and movies, isolated me from my friends, and even homeschooled me for a little while. In public school, I got the standard abstinence-only speech instead of sex ed. Our teacher told us, "Love isn't real, it's just a choice you make."

This is the first time I've been able to fully own my sexuality-- to ask for sex when I want it, to say no when I don't want it, to take my time and enjoy myself instead of closing my eyes and letting it happen. I'm still working on that.

There were no other out lesbians in my high school. There was one out gay boy. When he tried to start a gay-straight alliance, the principal tore down his posters and threatened him with suspension. That was 1999.

I did the math and realized that if lesbians make up 2% of the population (as conservative estimates say), there must have been 25 other lesbians in my high school-- 6 in my graduating class alone. I've used facebook to try and identify them. I've found 2 so far. They both came out after high school. An old friend of mine told me that, according to local gossip, a boy I went on a date with once is having closeted relationships with other men.

So compared to the other queer kids I went to high school with, I guess I actually came out early.

--

I was going to ask what's the "normal" age for people to come out, but now that I've told the whole story, I don't think it matters.

I've been reading a book about gays who grow up in the Bible Belt, and there's this part where the author says something like, "Bible Belt gays get punished for coming out, for not coming out, for coming out too early, for coming out too late... they are oppressed and then they are forced to bear responsibility for the consequences of their own oppression."

I put the book down and started crying. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone say, "The way you were treated was messed up, and you didn't deserve it."



I went on a lot longer than I meant to. I've never told the whole story before. Thanks for listening.

 

Aww, thanks guys. ^^

I've come to realize that the queer people who treated me badly had been hurt very badly themselves. One of the worst offenders also came out after high school. Figures.

I think I was in danger of becoming like them at one point, but it doesn't seem to have happened.

Oh yeah, and my sister apologized to me recently. She's an elementary school teacher, and when someone from an anti-bullying program came to talk to her class she was like, "Oh wow. I've been a jerk." So, that's better now.

The rest of my family has become generally supportive, too. My partner really came through for us during a family emergency and they were like, "She's awesome. You're very lucky."

They're right, I am lucky. And I'm quite happy nowadays, too. I never knew it was possible to be this happy. Life is good!

 

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I've been reading them on my phone at work and it made my day.

Today my partner (I'll call her Sam) was telling me about some of the messed up things people said to her when she came out at 16.

"I got it from both ends," she said. "Half of people said I had come out too late and that if I were really gay I would have figured it out even earlier, and the other half said I was too young to know and how could I be sure, anyway, if I'd never had a successful relationship with a man before."

I said, "That's obnoxious. If you'd had a successful relationship with a man and then told them you were gay they'd say--"

"--'But you can't really be gay now that you've had a successful relationship with someone of the opposite sex'--"

"--right? Which is exactly what everyone told me. It's like a horrible little game you can't win."

Then a lightbulb went off in my head.

They didn't say that stuff because we had actually done something wrong, they said it because they were homophobic and didn't want us to be gay.

It's like how people tell me, "You're not a real lesbian, you're just too mannish and ugly to get a man," but according to a friend of mine who's femme, the same people will tell her, "You're too pretty to be a real lesbian."

Who do these people think the Real Gays are?

 

Yep! It's a good book, I totally recommend it.