Coming Out... Take 2!

By Lindsey Garcia

June 06, 2020

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Photo credit: Bigstock/william.perugini

Coming out is freeing, and terrifying, and exciting.

It can open you up to a welcoming community and a road to accepting yourself as you are. It gives you transparency in friendships and relationships that you once thought were strong and unshakable. It starts you on a journey of self-discovery and healing.

Coming out is exhausting, and wonderful, and turbulent.

I spent my early teenage years exploring who I was and came out slowly to friends at school after a short high-school romance with another girl. I started calling myself a lesbian and adopted that identity as my own. Despite ruthless teasing at school and hiding entire relationships from my parents, it was one of the first times I ever felt like I was truly myself. I spent a couple of years like this, dodging questions and family nights.

A young black woman with curly hair sits alone on a bench looking to her side contemplative.
Bigstock/iuricazac

Don’t get me wrong; I was super depressed through all this. It was severely disheartening to hide something so central to my identity and something I was so excited about from my family and close church friends. Like many who are closeted, I was terrified I would get ostracized from my community and kicked out of my house. When I was finally outed (not by choice) to my parents, it was an event. Lots of yelling, lots of tears, lots of disciplinary actions. It was absolutely everything I had feared. I began dating a guy from my family’s church in an effort to get back into my parent’s good graces. I did not want to be in that relationship, but I wanted desperately to restore my place in my community in my family.

Obviously, though not so obvious at the time, this is no way to live. I ended up breaking it off with the boy to get back with a previous girlfriend. I had remained out during all of this, dating a boy but still acknowledging my attraction to girls. It was not good enough for my family. In order to once more create a peaceful living environment with my family, I needed to admit that I made a mistake. So after a miserable year battling my parents and being reminded regularly that once I graduated high school, they would cease to support me financially, I essentially gave up. I broke up with the girl and admitted to my parents that it was just a rebellious phase, returning myself to the closet once more.

And in the closet, I have remained until recently. A little over a year ago, I got married to a man. He has always known my sexual orientation and accepted me for who I am. He has never once held it against me or made me feel like I should consider myself “straight” for being married to him. If anything, I feel like I can be myself and more “out” than I have been in a long time. He supports my efforts to fill the world with LGBTI stories and to tell my own.

An attractive man and woman hold eachother close. The woman is kissing the man on the cheek.
Pexels/Vera Arsic

Now I know my story is not unique or uncommon. Like many, I am still not out to my family and most friends. And because I have come out previously and been forced back into the closet, I know I probably will not fully come out again.

But it will not stop me from reaching out and trying to build a better community for bi people everywhere. Bis who are out, bis who are not, or maybe bis like me who are kind of out but not all the way and are still looking for a community. The same boy I dated in high school made sure to remind me constantly that no one else would want to date me since I had a “promiscuous” history of dating girls. He kept this fear looming over my head and used it to take advantage of me and my boundaries. At the time, I did not have access to any LGBTI or bi community to help me feel normal.

Especially now in quarantine, when relationships and self-expression are being maintained almost exclusively online, I find myself seeking out content and discussions that I can see myself in and relate to. I have been a long-time listener of the fiction podcast Welcome To Night Vale, a show with one of the best and most well-written same-sex couples I have seen. Recently, though, I have branched out to other fiction podcasts, Dreamboy, and Moonface, equally well-written shows featuring gay characters. I play Animal Crossing to calm my anxieties and watch my favorite bi Let’s players, Lindsay Jones and Fiona Nova from Achievement Hunter. This and television shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Legend of Korra have kept my little bi mind satisfied during the lock-in and inspired me to create more content that I can relate to.

Coming out is isolating, and memorable, and unifying.

We all have different stories to tell about our coming out experiences, and every story is important. I’d like to encourage you to tell yours.

A woman with bright red hair and a warm sweater holds herself in a hug with her eyes closed.
Bigstock/Krakenimages.com

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