Coming Out Later in Life

Coming out later in life has its advantages. You are more objective and less immature as you step into the gay culture. You can read people and know who to trust and who not to…. oh heck, who am I kidding. There really aren’t any benefits coming out later in life LOL. When you come out later in life, the only real joy is that you get to relive some of your youth because, well, you are kind of forced to. After years of suppressing yourself due to cultural and religious shaming, hormones are released and an identity crisis needs to be resolved. We are only missing the zits at this time.

Some people grow into exciting gay lives, or a rich, meaningful romance. Not I, said the fly. It’s been sort of a roller coaster or a ride at an amusement park. Picture it! It is fricken Gay Disney and you are getting on It’s A Gay World with a new friend or two you just made (btw. can you hear the song now, “It’s A Gay World, After All”?). You are so excited and relieved to finally have made your first two gay friends! Woot! Woot! Now you can ride all the rides with at least some friends in Gay Disney that you have heard so much about but have been too afraid to go on by yourself. On this ride, you see cute things like a gay church of animatronic people of diverse cultures. You turn yet another corner to see a massive choir of mixed-gender animatronics that rise up on a multitier platform singing the song “Rise Up!”. It blows you away. You then see gay men and women in simulated sporting events. Other things you see, are a support group where it looks like figures shed real tears, and, it’s your job to hand one of them a Cleanix from your cart (awweeeeee). Then you pass out condoms to the newly out at the group (awwwweeee). Then we see work scenarios that gays are doing but also witness some who are still being fired for being gay. Around the next corner from this, you get to see and hear various politicians that have spoken up for gay rights and gay marriage.

The first time around was so much fun that you all stay on for the second and third time around. You pick up new gay friends as you go and start forming what feels like a crew or family. You are no longer sure what is better: the ride or just simply being with these people! However, on one of times around, you all end up fighting and the ride breaks down mid-way through. No one from the park tells you what to do or comes out to help, and you are stuck there in the dark. You don’t understand how a park could be so mismanaged that no one would help and leave you in the dark. As such, each of you has to find your own way out. No one is talking to each other so you go your own separate ways. When you make it home to your family, you tell them the story and swear you aren’t going back to that amusement park ever again!

That has pretty much been my gay life since I came out around my late 30’s. I’ve done and seen all those things with people on that amusement park ride I just described to you. A number of years being with people in a variety of circles building connections and what I thought were good friendships along the way. Only years down the road, they start pecking at you and doing some crazy shit. Covid hit. Groups split. People move from kind folk to forever Trumpers, from living in this world to a “5 D world” so they can deny the here and now, shallow life crap, to backstabbing to get a leg up, and all sorts of gay drama you talked about and agreed with them to swear off of…, and yet they laid it right at your doorstep multiple times over unapologetically. They leave your life no less fast than the Fundamentalist Christians did when you said you were gay. You won’t play dead. You won’t follow their own gay life agenda of little to no meaning– happiness of placating each other to keep social appearances. No thanks, buh-bye to you as well! And just like with Disney’s Small World that is now closed, so too is your small gay world you were building.

So, it’s sad to say but I am increasingly sorry that I am gay. I never thought I would be saying that. It’s sad for me to write. I worked super hard to not be gay because I believed I wasn’t. I thought it was a hoax, a place I was stuck at that I just needed to grow out. Off I went for years into ex-gay ministry and then years into reparative therapy and Christian counseling to get “unstuck” and “change”. When I accepted myself as being gay, its been work and joyful work accepting myself and entering these new realms. Not easy but the long-term result is joy in encountering a release of parts of myself. And now here I am typing telling you that I regret that I am gay. I’m just saying this for me and while I know people who feel the same, I also know others who do not. So this is by no means a reflection of this area or all gay communities everywhere, but my experience in this community. My experience is that you aren’t a threat if you are someone who crosses boundaries sexually or with substances and hurts people. It will be forgiven, even brushed aside in some instances, and if you move away or pass on, old and young gays will honor you with a celebration. But if you are a good-hearted person and have a moral virtue of any kind where you may stand up against someone who is well known for crossing those sexual or addiction boundaries, that is unforgivable. If you aren’t drinking, and don’t carry a “girls want to have fun” mind frame all the time, you aren’t going to be invited to anything. And there’s so much more I can’t get into because it is too personal. You end up stuck. You are too gay to be taken in by the Christians and too Christian or moral to be gay. And to that latter part, any who knows me, knows I am in no way a prude. I have fun and I have boundaries though too.

All I know is I do enjoy my attraction to men and I do really enjoy my attraction to one particular man in another country right now who is deeply emotionally intelligent like nothing I’ve seen here in the US. I also love laughing with a close friend or two that are gay. But outside of that, I regret ever trusting or putting myself in places where I thought I could grow and spread my wings with a gay community of people because at the end of the day I was hurt and the relationships didn’t last. It showed me they were never friends in the first place. So, when you come out later in life, you are forced to make new relationships and romance where others have already built those relationships for years. It is not impossible. I do have a few close friends that I don’t regret but the one lesson I learned is don’t make them just to make them. Don’t make a hole in your soul to fill a hole in your soul with just anyone who comes along who shows interest or even desperation to do so. Let them show themselves trustworthy and once they break that trust, don’t give them a second chance. No second chances on trust.

There’s a saying (I believe this is Oprah’s) and I keep having to learn this one over and over. When someone shows you who they are the first time, believe them. Don’t give people multiple chances. They will swear till the cows come home they will change but they won’t. You are coming out later in life. Most people you meet will be older and will be stuck in their ways. I’ve had so many people apologize to me, come back again, and without fail, they start the same stuff over again. Look at the actions, not the words.

When someone shows you who they are the first time believe them.

I certainly hope one day to come on here and give a better report. But this is my experience for now. Covid pulled back the curtain more on just the bigotry of some people. It forced open a lot of things in people and it’s a sad, tough reality,y but I guess if there is a positive in this for myself it this: I can deal better with a truth than a falsehood.