Share Your Coming Out Story With Us

I was raised in the United Methodist Church. I was married and had a  son. In 1984 at the age of 39, I went to college and then seminary.  While in seminary in 1993 I fell in love with a woman. In 1994 I  divorced my husband. J. and I had a long distant relationship firing my  ministry. After I retired our relationship began to come to an end. I  finally came out in 2015 at the ad of 70. On Feb. 8, 2016 I moved to St.  Petersburg, FL. On June 16 I met a lesbian who happened to live in my  building. I knew when I saw her she was the one. We talked and dated and  on Aug. 17, 2016 we were married in Cuchara, Colorado. Europe’s family  had garnered to celebrate Eunice’s 80th birthday. We even had a  honeymoons cabin behind the house where family was staying. We spent a  week there. We are very happy and very much in love. It is possible at  the age of 71 and 80 to find the love of your life?!!!

In and after high school I dated girls, and at about age 20 I entered a  strict religious community and took vows of poverty, chastity and  obedience. During those years I had doubts about my sexuality, but  honored the vows. After leaving the community, a man whom I knew asked  me if I was gay, and I responded that I was a 42-year-old virgin. He  said if I wanted to do something about that to give him a call, and I  did. Later I met and married an amazing woman, and after more than 20  years of marriage, we decided to separate, and later divorced. When the  horrible massacre of 49 gay young people at the Pulse Nightclub in  Orlando happened, I finally admitted to myself that I was gay, and came  out to my former spouse and the world.

So I randomly decided to share my still not complete coming out story.  When I was about 11 years old I was sitting next to a beautiful girl in  french class. I live in Germany so if you don’t know that we have a few  classes. I was in class 6e and that girl was in class 6b. At this point  of time french and religion (or philosophy if you’re not catholic or  evangelic) were the only combined classes at my school. Still some of us  had friends in the other classes and I really wanted to become as close  as possible with her. I started to get some kinds of romantic feelings  for her and I was kind of scared. I didn’t really know if that was  possible to feel something like this for a girl or if it is ok to feel  like this. I did some research and thought “well, since I like boys too I  must be bisexual”. I was bullied really hard at this school and didn’t  really talk to anybody there so I didn’t even feel like telling anybody  about that. I was in camps really often and there it was no secret that I  was bisexual. Because of the bullying I changed school after the first  semester of 7th grade. When I changed school and started to feel  comfortable at my new school I didn’t keep my bisexuality a secret  anymore. I never told anybody who I was in love with. In 9th grade I  started to become really proud of my sexuality. I thought I was in love  with my best friend back then (a boy). It didn’t really work out, but I  met a boy because of him. One of his best friends who I was swimming  with a few years before that. He changed a lot but in a good way. He had  a crush on me back then and I didn’t but when we started talking again  he told me one day that he had a crush on me “again”. I told him that I  need to think because I wasn’t in love with him or anything. Everyday  when we video-chatted he asked me if I already thought about all of  this. I got tired and told him that we should start a relationship. It  worked out but I still had no real feelings for him. He knew about my  bisexuality and all he said about this was “well almost every girl is  bisexual”. I didn’t really care about all of this. After a trip with his  mom he told me really disgusted that he saw some lebians kissing on the  street. We started arguing. I thought out that he was homophobic and  since that time I just thought about how to break up with him. He  started to make rude comments about my sexuality. After another fight I  broke up with him because I couldn’t take it anymore. During our  relationship I met my now best friend. When I told him about my  boyfriend being homophobic he told me to break up with him. Many may  think now “well he had a crush on you” but no. We’re still best friend  and he has a girlfriend who knows about how close we are and about the  fact that I’m a lesbian. A month after we broke up I was at the mall  with my friend. I met my best friend with two girls there. I barely  talked to him. Just said hi and went back to my table. Well to be honest  I thought he was there if a girl and a boy. Later we were talking and I  said something like “well the boy…” he told me “those were two girls,  lesbians, a couple”. I didn’t say anything about this, but I couldn’t  stop thinking about them. Two 15 year old girls and they were so open  about there relationship. I know that’s not a big thing, but for the  first time I thought something like “I want to be like them”. I found  them on social media (no I’m not a stalker my best friend just posted a  picture with one of them) A few weeks later I told him that I think that  I may be a lesbian. The more I thought about this the more sure I  became that I really was. I found out more about the community and was  really proud to be part of this. I figured that I was never really in  love with a boy. He basically said ” I knew it all the time”. I was  really happy. I told 3 other friends about this and they accepted it so  much. I told more and more people. Put it in my insta bio. Some people I  only told that I like girls more than boys and that I’m not sure if I’m  really a lesbian. One time when I was drunk I yelled that I was gay.  All the people at the party heard that and accepted it. I was so happy. I  was proud of a community that was just so amazing (I know that bisexual  people are also part of the community but back then I didn’t really  know anything about it). On a trip to China with my school my sexuality  was no secret anymore and some of my friends asked me a ton of questions  about it. They asked me if they could make jokes or comments about it  and I said yes. There are still people that don’t know about it. My  neighbor who used to be my closest friends doesn’t know YET. She would  accept it but she would make comments about it which would be really  mean at the beginning. I’m just not ready for it. My parents? Same thing  for them. They would accept it but I don’t like the comments they make  about gay people. The rest of my family is another story. I’m polish so  they are really conservative and not really educated about it. Some of  them are just homophobic. Like my grandma. I don’t hate her for this.  She just doesn’t know about it. So most of the people know about it and  all of them accept it. I never made any bad experience with that and I’  really glad about it.

I came of age and came out of the closet during the “Decade of  Decadence”. Yes, the 1980s: cocaine, credit cards, bathhouses, designer  jeans, Reagan, the gay cancer, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Act Up,  fear, persecution, death and more death followed by more death, some  more fear and countless funerals that added up so quickly that most of  the gay men I knew felt guilty to be alive. By 1988, we were so  paralyzed by fear and guilt and numbed by cocaine and alcohol that it  took us some years to realize that our communities, our country, our  government, our President and in many cases even our families had  abandoned us because they assumed we would be dead soon anyway. By the  end of the decade more of the gay men I knew were counting Christmases  than were not.
 

“Counting Christmases” was a phrase my friends and I would use to  differentiate between the people we knew that had the gay cancer and  those of us that were merely waiting to get it. You see, from what we  observed, from the time in between when someone became sick from HIV to  the time they died you could count two Christmases. It was very late in  the decade when I got the news that I had two Christmases left. I was in  the middle of graduating from college, trying to make decisions about  what I wanted to do with my life and trying to first find and then  explore every back alley gay club I heard about when i had to break the  news to my family that i was “counting Christmases” too. I thought to  myself, “I don’t have time for this!” Just locating the gay clubs was a  full time job because none of them had signs in front of them. Randomly  figuring out which unmarked, dusty, back alley, inner city door had a  fabulous Gay Emerald City behind it was no easy task and now I only had  two years left to find every one of them in the world.
 

So my coming out story never really truly happened. I am sure there was a  huge amount of screaming clues and screaming queens around me that my  parents had to suspect I was gay anyway, so I skipped talking with them  at the time about my sexuality and merely announced during a family  dinner one Friday night that I was counting Christmases. My Mother’s  first reaction is going to seem cold to you, maybe even crass and  self-centered but don’t dwell on it. Her response was fairly typical for  near the end of the 1980s, when admit it out loud or not, most of us  were more focused directly on ourselves and how and if we would survive  until the cavalry (the 1990s) arrived than we were on anything else. So,  she turned to my father and said rather indignantly and with more than a  little disgust, “I told you this was going to happen.”
 

And that was it. That was the extent of the discussion mostly. We went  back to acting like we were a family that was above having any kinds of  problems and pretended that it wasn’t happening.
 

The 1990s arrived with many a year’s long haze and the family churned  on. The people I knew were continuing to die and i was just waiting to,  but before I knew it, 1997 rolled around and something in my body that  no one could explain had kept me alive until breakthrough medicines were  discovered and dispensed that offered those of us with HIV/AIDS a new  beginning and many more Christmases.
 

Those of us who navigated this 15 years in history the best we knew how  at the time were extremely lucky, but there was a cost to us, a loss,  what feels like a great amount of wasted time. Every generation will  indeed have its plight, but i encourage the young people of today to  find a way to embrace the fact that they are living in the best time in  history to be exactly who they are openly and as early as they become  comfortable in their skin. I encourage you to take full advantage of  this, stand up, be exactly who you are and who you want to be, come out  to the world because even though the current world is not without its  problems, I promise you that there will be what feels like a huge coming  out party awaiting you and that you will feel exponentially more alive  when you live your authentic life out of the darkness and in the light  where the world can see exactly how beautiful you are.

I thought I would marry a prince, always waiting for my white knight to  show up and whisk me away. But when my boyfriends kissed me, it didn’t  feel like that moment in the movies; the ones with the fireworks and  romantic music when the guy finally kisses the girl at the end. Instead  it felt off, like when you lie to a friend about their terrible hair cut  or when a stranger is standing too close in your personal space. I  thought that was because I hadn’t found the right one yet.
 

My friend Jon called me his “Fag Hag” one day sitting on his bed in his  room. “Yeah, that’s right”, I said claiming that label as soon as it  passed from his lips. Jon was 17 but had been out for all his life and  he was my best friend ever since we were in Journalism class together. I  told Jon we should go to the teen LGBT support group meetings, to help  him to find a boyfriend. I had a car, after all, and he didn’t. I told  myself I was doing him a favor and I liked gay people anyway.
 

At the first meeting, all the other teens were going around the table  proudly announcing, “I’m gay”, “I’m a lesbian” etc and when they got to  me, all I said was “I’m Jon’s fag hag!”. It felt welcoming to be there,  even though I wasn’t truly one of them. Everyone was going around the  table describing their coming out stories and how they had told their  friends or family they were gay and this one guy said, “I feel ashamed”.  Ashamed…. That word just felt too real. I turned it around in my head  for weeks. Did I feel ashamed about myself? Did I like girls? I’d look  at myself in the mirror, turned my head to the side like a puppy who  doesn’t understand, and wonder who was looking back at me.
 

I realized there was only one way to find out; I had to kiss a girl and  then I’d know for sure. Yes, this would settle everything. Then, I’d be  able to go back to my normal life. Hmmm… But there was no Tinder back  then. How would I find a girl to kiss me? I just kept going to the  support group meetings with Jon every week. After one of the meetings we  all decided to go to the gay coffee shop.
 

In walked a familiar face and sat down at the end of our table. She  watched me, she watched the group. She had short blonde hair, masculine  style clothes and I had no Idea how I knew her. Finally, she just called  my name and I turn to get a good look at her. I squint my eyes as if it  would help me remember and finally she said, ‘French class!” Like, duh,  how could I forget? I smiled and a flood of imagines ran through my  mind.
 

Three years before, I sat behind her in rows of desks. Neither of us had  an ear for languages and she made jokes to make me feel better about my  bad test scores. She joked, “Grey Poupon is the only French I can  pronounce”. I remember staring at her long blonde hair from behind as it  hung over the back of her chair during class. And I hadn’t seen her  again since that semester.
 

That night at the coffee shop, we talked for hours. She walked me to my  car and she was staring at the ground when she asked me out on a date.  The instant I agreed, I wanted to cancel. Was this going to make me gay?  Why was I even agreeing to this? The questions seared in my brain  unanswered. I had never felt so scared and nervous. I couldn’t think  about anything else in the days leading up to my first date with a girl.  I desperately wanted to see her again but was ashamed that it made me a  sick pervert to have had those feelings for another girl. I only told  Jon who, of course, wanted to dress me up pretty for my date. So, we  spent that day bleaching our hair and trying on different dresses  together.
 

We decided to meet at our old Elementary school. She pulled up in her  Ford Ranger and I climbed out of my 1982 Cougar. We walked around the  campus, sitting on the swings and talking about Elementary school. She  was a year ahead me but we were both on the volleyball team together and  had classrooms on the same floor. We talked about all the times we  should have met but didn’t and then she grabbed my hand. Sheer panic set  into my body like someone dropped an ice cube down my spine. This felt  kind of normal and it was terrifying. Her hands were soft and she  interlaced her fingers with mine like they were designed to be together.
We went to dinner, where she explained that she had never been on a date  before, never kissed anyone either and she was nervous. I thought it  was kind of cute to be her first date ever. I admitted that I was maybe  “a little bisexual” and she teased me for being so shy.
 

After dinner, she took me back to my car. As I got out, my heart was  beating so fast I thought it was going to burst right out of my chest  and run down the street naked. Oh, My God, THE KISS. The Kiss that would  determine if I was truly gay or not was about to happen. I leaned  against my car and told her I had a good time. She smiled and started to  lean toward me. It suddenly felt like my whole life was leading up to  this moment. Like fate was trying to bring us together our whole lives  and finally, it was happening. It was like time stopped and she was  coming closer and closer and then…. She hit my nose with her nose in a  kind of head bump. Then the top of her lip hit my lip, I was off balance  and had to take a step back to prevent falling. A few more nose bumps  later, she leaned back with a silly grin on her face.
 

I smiled at her and told her I’d see her later and drove off in that ’82 cougar like I was ‘born to run’.
 

In the car, I kept thinking about that kiss. It was the worst, the  absolute worst and best kiss of my life up till then. I said out loud to  myself “well, I’m a lesbian”. The words feel real on my tongue and to  my ears. My whole body just burned with relief and fear. I feared, I  would never get married or have children or have a full filling  relationship since I had no frame of reference of anyone who had done  it. I knew no older gay people and technically, sodomy was still  illegal.
 

My family is Italian and like the Mafia, they always seem to know more  than they should. It was only a few months after Ellen came out on TV  and ‘Coming out’ was all over the media and on the talk shows. I was  living with my grandparents for the summer and they kept dropping hints  they knew what was up, Grandma would comment, “Oh that Ellen, she did a  brave thing” looking at me knowingly. The girl, Jennifer, was picking me  up from the house lately, I wasn’t dating anyone else and I was  watching marathon Xena Warrior Princess on TV. Thinking back, clearly, I  was hiding it like a pro.
 

One night, my mom had called to grill me on what I was up to. She kept  asking leading questions, “So are you dating anyone new?”, “Who are you  hanging out with these days?”. I wanted to just get it over with and  stop stressing about everyone’s reaction. The words felt like they were  burning a hole in my throat and I was going to choke on them. So, I took  a deep breath and let out three hardest, heaviest words I had to say “I  am gay”. I tossed out the words like I was rolling the dice for a board  game and I was just hoping to pass GO. My mom responded, “But you like  to wear dresses”. I said, “I can still wear them.” She said, “But you  want to have kids”. I said, “I still do”. “Well, then, I’m going to be  the coolest mom about this!” As had been her style my whole life to be  supportive, this didn’t change that. But, it took her a while to truly  catch up to me. She had her own journey to acceptance that had entirely  nothing to do with me.
 

18 years later and I am married, I am a mother and yes, I still wear dresses.