I just came across the video of you coming out to your cat from two years ago, and I was wondering how you are doing now? Are you happy?
This feels like an important question so I wanted to answer publicly.
Yesterday was my 2nd birthday. Marking two years since I started hormones. And a little more than two years since I came out.
After coming out, and being greeted with an incredible degree of support and love from family, friends, and most importantly my cat, I was flooded with relief. It was the blissfully ignorant belief that everything would be better, that I was finally home.
I was so incredibly wrong.
That doesn’t mean I am unhappy, I am far from it. But it has been a fight.
Maybe this isn’t the best analogy but I just got done binging Stranger Things 2 so this is just where my head is at…
You know in a horror movie when you haven’t seen the monster yet and it’s miserable, anxiety-riddled agony imagining what’s going to come and when it’s coming? But then later, you finally see what’s been lurking just out of frame and the fear is still there but it’s different somehow? There’s some sort of relief in that visibility, but you’re still left looking at this beast wondering if you’ll get out alive.
That’s where I’m at. Finally looking in the eyes of those scary things from the shadows, fighting to be the one standing at the end.
Coming out is just the beginning. There is so much work that comes after. I had no idea I would be battling these monsters, or even that these monsters existed.
I am fighting. I am exhausted. And yes, even still, I am happy.
I say this not to scare anyone, but because there is a lot of romanticizing that happens around the coming-out narrative. As if that’s the hard part–and don’t get me wrong, it is hard. But the reason it’s hard doesn’t magically disappear once you’ve done it. The world we live in does so much damage beyond simply silencing you, and that world doesn’t magically change once you find your voice.
I say this because if you don’t feel sunshine-and-daisies feelings after you come out, you should know you’re not alone.
If you find monsters when you open that closet door, I want you to know there are many others fighting at your side.