Well! Mike here, i’ll go first! :3Coming out was pretty hard for me. I grew up in a Mormon home and was even home schooled from 7th to 12th grade. My interaction with the outside world was slim to none, so I turned to the internet for any of my social interactions. My mother was very strict (as you’d expect) and was always trying to control what I did and how long I did it for. She would even go as far as to unplug the router after 10pm to limit my exposure to the outside world. I always found ways around her caveats of the internet. I managed to save up enough money to buy an original iPod Touch when I was 12 and told her it had no access to the internet. It was an easy way to hide things that I did. I always found myself looking at chubby guys but I never really considered the fact that I might of been gay. For the longest time I grew up just thinking that I just had no sexual preference. I was never interested in girls and to this day have never dated one and the fact that any time my family would see a gay scene on television, they would make gross sounds and so it reinforced in my head that “oh, I can’t be gay.”I was 20 years old when I met my first crush that I ever had. It was a guy who I had met playing video games online through a game called RuneScape. We talked for a couple years and my feelings grew more and more for him and eventually when I was 22 I built up the courage to ask if he would be interested in dating me. He had dropped little hints in the couple of years that we had talked but he told me that he didn’t want to date me. I was very heartbroken and kept trying to pursue the matter but just ended up pushing him farther and farther. There were times where he was okay with me liking him but then after about 6 months he refused to talk with me any longer. This was the first kind of “relationship” that I had ever had. During this time my mom had started to pick up on the fact that I had been talking with a guy and eventually just straight up asked me if I was dating someone. To which I said “Yes” she then proceeded to ask me if it was a male or female. At this point I was tired of trying to evade and just immediately told her that it was a guy. Shortly after I had told her that I was gay, the guy I was talking to quit communicating with me. My mom went crazy though, she ended up putting me in therapy to try and “cure the gay,” but I still managed to find a gay dating site called BiggerCity where I finally met Chad. We talked for months before we decided to meet up. This was the first date I had ever had at the age of 23 on June 13th 2015. We met in a best buy parking lot and then went on our first date, I couldn’t have been happier. We were so happy together and compared to the prior debacle this was the happiest that I had ever been.We dated for a couple of years before I finally decided to make it public, where I posted on Facebook that I was gay.The message was as follows
To this day Chad is the only person that I have ever dated! So that’s my coming out story! Here’s chad’s!
So, my coming out story isn’t the worst I’ve heard, but it definitely wasn’t the smoothest experience. To give some background, I grew up with two older siblings raised by our mother.
My older brother was also gay, and basically “out” to my sister, mother, and I by the time he turned 14 years old(he was 5 years older than me). I mention his story as a preface to my own because it played a big part in how I perceived the gay community before I came out, and why I was so hesitant to acknowledge the truth of myself.
Growing up in a relatively small-town area in the south in the 90’s wasn’t exactly the most accepting experience for him. While we as a family were accepting, others were not. My brother was pretty much the stereotypical feminine type of gay(valley girl accent, dyed blonde hair, puka shell necklace, and an obsession with anything that had a brand name on it), which didn’t go down well for him in the local school system here in Arkansas. By the time he was in 8th grade, the bullying had gotten so bad for him that he begged my mom to be homeschooled just so he could get away from it.
My brother was a well intentioned guy, but had no follow through and honesty wasn’t exactly his strong suit. He’d always wanted to be accepted, but had a hard time making and keeping friends because he was a classic gossiper who would make you regret ever telling him something in confidence. He had been kicked out of the house at around 18 after my mom had remarried(which is a long series of events) but it was brought on by poor decisions he’d made, lies told just to create drama for entertainment, his unadmitted kleptomania, and disregard for the consequences of how his actions affected others. For all of his faults though, my brother was fun to be around, could brighten up a room, and wasn’t ashamed of who he was and would never back down when confronted by someone with ignorance or bigotry.
I’d known that I was gay since I was twelve, but it was something that I couldn’t fully acknowledge. As much as you’d think that having a gay sibling come out would make things easier for me, it made it twice as difficult. Because of how my brother was as a person, and how poorly he’d treated others around him, it made this association for me and other family member’s that his negative character traits were almost a “side effect” or part of him being gay. So in my mind as a kid, I’d thought that I can’t be gay because then I’m going to become like my brother. So I suppressed that side of myself, thinking that if I didn’t acknowledge it or say it out loud that it just wouldn’t be the case.
Fast forward to when I turned 18. My brother had been living out at my father’s old house far out of town for several years at this point, but I’d kept in touch with him although visiting infrequently. He’d seemed to be making progress in his life by finally getting a job, and I’d started to try and have a closer relationship with him where we’d talked more and spent some time together. In April of that year we’d taken some day trips together in the old camaro that my grandfather had bought for him, since he was making more of an effort to “get his stuff together”. We had some real conversations, became closer than when I was younger, and I’d started to open up to him about who I was and that I was gay as well. He’d taken my coming out with much surprise, since he never imagined that I was gay too. I’d always been the quiet and nerdy kid, focusing on school studiously, trying to do things right, and seemingly “uninterested in dating” because I was so motivated.
It was nice to be able to open up to him and be able to explain who I actually was, let that weight off of my shoulders just a bit, and finally say the words out loud to another person that I’d held in for so long.
If you haven’t noticed at this point, when I refer to my brother it’s in the past tense, and that’s for a reason. A few months after I’d started to have a closer relationship with my brother and had came out to him, he died in a car accident. I remember getting that call in the morning from my Dad, and having to tell my mom and sister about what happened. The week following that was a blur, and full of blank spots in my memory. While my family was having a breakdown and wondering how it could’ve happened, I was stoically trying to hold everyone together. It wasn’t actually until many months later that I could finally process it, after everyone else was done, and be able to take the time to just cry and let reality set it.
I remember the day after the funeral, talking to my mom in the kitchen and out of nowhere she asked me if I was gay. It caught me off guard, and I simply said, “yes” followed by an awkward silence. Apparently my sister had gotten into an argument with my mother the day prior, and ended the conversation with a loud and completely unrelated, “Oh yeah, well Chad is gay!”. Apparently my brother had spilled the beans to my sister, months prior after we had our conversation. My mom had seen my sister’s confidence in that statement and stubbornly not wanting to lose the argument said, “He’d told me a long time ago, I’m surprised it took him this long to tell you!”. Of course no one in my family knew for certain that I was gay, especially compared to the standard of what being gay was that my brother had set.
My mom was surprised and also uncertain of that fact, approaching the conversation with a little bit of disbelief. I’d talked to her about it, and explained how I’d always been gay but didn’t feel the confidence in coming out because I didn’t want to be perceived or treated like my brother had been, not just from being an out and proud gay male but from the “wake of destruction” he left behind him with his choices.
That point was one of the most difficult ones in my life, not only losing a brother I’d started to reconnect with, but being outed by him in the process before I was comfortable enough to tell the rest of my family. Naturally my family was accepting, but the surrounding events didn’t make it any easier. Although my situation wasn’t exactly ideal, I’m fortunate that I had a loving and accepting family to support me after the fact. And despite any disagreements I had with my brother, I love him for who he was and also who he wasn’t. He may not have been the best role model in areas of his life, but he had a strength of character when it came to being unashamed of who he was.There were times where I wish I’d had the courage he did. The courage to come out at such a young age of 14 in rural Arkansas in the 90’s, and despite being bullied hold strong to his identity and not put up a front or back down. My brother wasn’t perfect, but no one is, and I’m glad for the time I’d had with him and how he’d showed me that I didn’t need to be afraid of who I was. Thank ya all for reading and sorry for the long post! Love ya guys! ~Bearing-tons
Tl;dr version: We’re very gay, and now people know. :)
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