National Coming Out Day

Today is National Coming Out Day. And to commemorate today, I am publicly coming out to the Facebook world. Many of you already know this, but those of you that I grew up with may not—I am gay. And I am so glad to be.

Soap box time now. You may skip the rest of this if you’re in a tl;dr mood.

“Coming out” is not a one-time event. For me, coming out has been and continues to be a gradual process from the age of 19 to now. With each passing day, I become more comfortable and certain in my identity than I was the previous day. 18-year-old me didn’t even know I was gay. 19-year-old me didn’t know how to make sense of the idea that I might be gay. 20-year-old me had accepted that I was gay, but wasn’t comfortable fully owning that identity or being part of that community. 21-year-old me wasn’t ready to tell his parents that he was gay and seeking a relationship. Even one year ago today, I was still a long way from being confident enough to come out publicly in this manner. But over the last four years, I have found people and communities that love me for who I am and have helped me arrive to my current level of security in my identity. (I won’t do shout-outs here because the list of individuals who have supported me would be so lengthy that it would merit a separate post altogether.) These people have helped me discover a love and acceptance for myself that 19-year-old me never would have imagined. And with each passing day, I continue to smash more of the pillars that support what remains of my own internalized homophobia.

My hope is that the world can become a place where I can hold my future partner’s hand in public without having to second guess it. If at the very least for my sake, I ask you all to (continue to) fight for LGBTQ+ equality. The battle didn’t stop on June 26, 2015, the day that my future romantic love was legitimated in this country. We still need help to overcome the toxic levels of heteronormativity that plague our society. We still need help to interrupt the homophobic rhetoric present in both audible discourse and personal thoughts. We still need help to alter the one-dimensional representations of LGBTQ+ people in popular culture (Hint: “gay best friend” is incredibly demeaning). We still need help to end the internalized homophobia that both closeted and out LGBTQ+ individuals carry. We still need help to communicate to LGBTQ+ individuals, “You are normal. There is nothing wrong with you.”

Off the soap box.

Not to confirm stereotypes, but I guess the obsession with Beyoncé now makes a lot of sense, huh?