New York Times: Coming Out
Reader-Submitted Story
“I was bound to get caught.”
Many teens I’ve encountered fear coming out to their peers more so than their family. I, however, was the complete opposite. I started coming out to my friends in eighth grade, but I had made myself believe that my family would never find out. I believed this to be a simple goal. My parents were divorced and I lived with my mother. I should have known better, for my mother was a very nosy person and had to have her nose in everyone’s business.
It all went downhill during the middle of my freshman year of high school. I came home from school and my mom was in my room, sitting on my bed, ready to talk. She asked me, “Austin, is there something you’d like to tell me?” I answered simply, with “No.” She immediately threw a stack of papers at me and said, “I found these on your e-mail.” They were conversations I had been having with a boy I went to school with. “Oh no!” I thought. “What do I do?” So I came up with the most immature answer I could have come up with, “That’s not from my account.” She obviously didn’t believe me but I stuck to my story, and tried my hardest to convince her she was crazy, or crazier, I should say. She gave me a hypocritical lecture on how it was against our religion, when 1.) She had never taken me to church and 2.) Well ... let’s just say she likes attention from the male. This lecture went on forever. I can remember it like it was yesterday, mostly because it consisted of her bashing my friends because they “were influencing me.” She told me to turn off the feelings. So to simply make things easier, I played the “straight” boy at home, but still acted myself when around my friends.
This is essentially me: denial to my parents when asked, pretending to be effectively "straight" at home, coming out to my friends before my parents and assuming I'd never have to tell them.
Finally, someone else out there like me.
