The Phone Conversation. Source: Sophie0305

This is like the dollar bill that should be framed in a restaurant, it seems; the first coming out story on ComingOutSupport.com.

I’ve only recently officially come to realize that I’m a lesbian, and I was lucky to reside in Los Angeles when the truth finally sunk in to my dear sweet little religious head. Have such luck, it’s not been a very challenging road for me to actually be gay and be proud of said gay-ness. Most people in this city don’t care, and there’s a select few who have embraced me and helped support me in ways beyond what I would have ever imagined, regarding me being gay.

Despite the support here, I still, personally, find the hardest part of it all is talking to people from my past. “You don’t need to tell everyone” echoes through my head with each conversation I have when someone asks if I’m dating any new guys or anything along those lines. Some people, though, I feel like I shouldn’t be dishonest to and have tried to make the “coming out” to them a strategic thing. There’s always going to be people that you come out to that are story-worthy; multiple people, multiple stories. I’ll focus on one for now, and share more later.

I was going to give you all the easiest experience I had, but then I remembered that this is a support site, so I’ll share my hardest, which happens to be my most current, experience.

The Mother
Over the last three years, my mother would sporadically ask me if I’m a lesbian. For the first year, I was fairly certain I wasn’t (denial). The second year, something happened that changed my feelings on my orientation, and the question was harder to deny. The third year, she seemed to step up her questioning to nearly every conversation we had. Well, the problem was, by the third year–this year, I knew I was gay.

My mother is a liberal woman trapped inside of a conservative Christian mindframe. She lives liberally, but thinks conservatively. So, in other words… talk is fancy; a fancy talk belonging to someone I just happen to love dearly. Over the last few months, every time she talked about my orientation, I tried to change the subject and move on. I hated lying to her. I’m generally not a very good liar, and I feel that every time I had to lie to her about being gay, it made my self esteem in the issue plummet. I don’t want to have a low self esteem, so I realized recently that honesty is my only option with her.

So, finally, during another conversation about feminism and gays and lesbians, I asked her, rather abruptly, “Why do you always suspect that I’m a lesbian?” “Well,” she paused, “I don’t think you are.”

“What would be so bad if I was.?”

Mom’s pauses grew longer as she tried to process where the discussion was going. “…I’m just worried that people might have influenced you to lean a certain way and try to destroy your life, like they tried with me.”

Back from the side-bar, now. My response was probably as eloquent as it was going to get with a, “Well, I guess now is as good of a time as any to tell you, but yes… I’m a lesbian.” It slid downhill from there. Two questions that I’ll probably never forget her asking me, “Are you seeing someone?” and “Are you going down on her?” came next, and after I answered the first one and grunted an answer to the second one, the click followed by silence afterward should not have been such a shock to me.

But it was. I wasn’t upset that she hung up on me. I was upset that I hurt her. Deeply.

She called again about an hour later, crying. She expressed how much I hurt her and wanted to know more details. Her questioning became denial, as it often does. “Is it because…” was the next set of questions I had to answer. “No, mom… there’s no reason or explanation for this.” One of the more heart-breaking moments for me was when I assured her that it wasn’t her, or anything she did wrong. The temporary relief in her voice really just about broke me.

Her denial turned from pure “it can’t be true” to “it can’t be true and now I’m angry” which is the last state she and I left off in. She’s always liked to use hanging up as a mechanism to end conversations. It works, but its just so frustrating. I’m currently in the “give her time to come around” stage, and trying not to let it bother me. It’s just difficult because she’s my mother, and she’s fragile at times. I want to be supportive to her, but I couldn’t lie to her any longer.

So, that’s my first “coming out” story to share. I encourage you all to share your stories with us either to get support or to show support, or to get the courage to come out to those you love. The wonderful thing about being gay is that you’ve got a lot of support both from gays and straights, and thousands of people are willing to lend and ear and some wisdom to you if you need it.

There’s only a few rules to posting, which involve posting nothing that breaks US law (details on child pornography being the first thing that comes to mind). We have a list of rules in the menu for you to consider as you tell your story. They’re not too restricting, but we do ask you keep them in mind if you want your story approved. Each story is read by a volunteer moderator and if it passes the approval process (chances are very very very high that it will), you’ll be notified via email when we publish the story, so please use an accurate email. We don’t publish the email addresses or contact info as each story gets published under a generic user.

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