On Coming Out

February 23, 2020

One day, this blog will get back to science and research and teaching. Not this day.

This post talks about my story of coming out as queer. Needless to say, it is a personal, and somewhat self-indulgent, piece, told from my perspective.

My Grandmother lives on the edge of Scotland, in a remote village so small the houses have names. There aren’t enough of them to warrant numbers. She is “not of the online messaging generation”. In handwritten curves, she wrote to me about about how she wishes me peace and fulfillment while being true to myself. It’s a beautiful letter.

My Grandfather has lived in the same house for over 50 years, nestled in a suburb in the north of England. He is a little better at the whole online messaging thing. He sent me an e-mail, saying he’d read the things I’d posted and that of course it makes no difference to them.

Then the next line mentions that he read my recent paper. It’s really interesting, he says, even though he hadn’t totally understood it all. At first, I found this a bit of a jarring transition. I have come to see it as a rather wonderful version of “everything is fine, nothing is going to change with us”.

I don’t think I’m particularly good at being open with people. At being vulnerable.

There are things that I just don’t know how to talk about very well.

Sometimes someone will ask me something, even a small thing, and I won’t really engage, or I’ll just sorta shake it off and say no, because that seems easier. And them I’m left sitting there, like “you actually are hungry, why did you say no!? Just say what you want!”.

Or, you know, like that, but also with other things.

Overall, and in so many ways, I am and have been so very lucky and very privileged.

I’ve been luckier than so many. I try to not take that lightly.

I know at least some people may be confused or even somewhat annoyed that I didn’t tell people, or perhaps more specifically, them, earlier. Often, I wanted to.

The first person I ever told that I was queer, and that I was struggling, was someone I thought was a good friend. Someone who I really hoped would be fine with it all and stick around.

The first conversation seemed to go fairly well. It felt, for a moment, like a breakthrough.

The next conversation… well, a next conversation didn’t really happen.

Unanswered follow up messages eventually got a response that maybe we shouldn’t talk so much.

Some time later, trying to follow up, I got the answer that actually we just shouldn’t talk at all.

I’m lucky that blatant homophobia - the sign-carrying spittle-infused bluster of wordsmiths who think rhyming Steve with Eve forms the basis of a compelling argument - is not something I’ve had to fear from those around me.

I know that some appeal to the academic demonstrations of rampant homosexual activity across the kingdom Animalia, or the consistent presence of homosexual tendencies across the extant histories of homo sapiens, as scholastic demonstrations of the validity and normativity of same-sex relations and thus a justification for considering it acceptable behaviour among consenting individuals.

I rather think that’s more than we need. Overdoing it a bit, really. I think it might be simpler than that. Homophobia is just ridiculous. It’s dumb and it’s wrong and it’s bad. That’s all we really need to say about it.

That doesn’t mean that blatant homophobia is not real, or dangerous. Or that I completely avoided internalizing any of the homophobia of a culture still way too full it. I’m still working on making ‘pride’ a thing I feel, and not just an event I can go to.

But I’m lucky that outright homophobia is not something that has weighed too much on my mind as an ‘argument’. I know it’s invalid. It’s also impersonal. If someone chooses bigotry, that’s not really about me so much as about the abstract concept of non-heterosexuality. Of all the possible concepts to get mad at, imagine choosing that one.

Of all the reactions I had imagined, I had not anticipated, and was not prepared for, the quiet exit.

Someone who knew me - who would say that of course that concept of queerness was fine, and that it’s okay to not feel okay sometimes - might still decide that, well actually, this instantiation of it and all it brings with it is just, you know, a bit too much.

It wasn’t abstract. It was very much about me.

For all the complexities that human interaction brings with it - and I am by no means saying I never messed anything up along the way - at a choice point of whether to try to figure things out or step away, it hurt to seem to not be worth communicating with.

I’ve heard tell that there is a corner of the internet with lots of nice words printed over pretty photographs.

You know what I mean - like the part of Instagram that’s filled with all sorts of seemingly nice and logical statements, like “care for those who care for you”, printed over a picture of mama bear nuzzling her cub or something.

I spend enough of my time wrestling with the hyper-logicalness of computer code to know that I do not crave the ‘simple’ rationality of logical dictums. That. can. actually. be. really. quite. infuriating. {SyntaxError: Invalid sentence structure.}.

But I would also be lying if I said anything other than that for every text infused motivational image on the internet I haven’t had the thought of trying to logic myself into ‘not spending time thinking about people who won’t spend time thinking about you’, or about ‘not letting a lone voice become the choir in your head’, or whatever the quote of the day is.

Logic be damned.

Around the time I first told someone I was queer, I was in a bit of a messy patch. I had basically figured out my sexuality, but didn’t really know what to do about it. I was burning out at work. Because academia, I lived far away from many of the people that I knew best.

All sorts of things that had been building up for a while all kind of merged together, and it wasn’t a great time.

But, in theory, things were going well for me. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it all to change.

When things already feel a bit broken and a bit lonely, the energy needed to reach out is a lot. Lingering thoughts that maybe this would break things - that I’d lose what I had; that maybe people wouldn’t get it or would just walk away - all became potent excuses.

I was aware, logically, that these weren’t particularly good or useful thoughts. Brains are weird. Someone should probably try and figure out how they work.

The second person I told I was queer was an old friend from high school. At the end of a day that made me feel like I might be falling apart, I messaged them.

I said it very casually, dropping it in in an almost joking manner. Looking back, I think the casualness was a bit of a defense. If I didn’t make it seem too serious, or too big of a deal, maybe it would be less likely to go badly.

Second times the charm. That turned into a very good conversation.

They told me that they would message me the next day. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so relieved to get a simple ‘good morning!’ message.

I never really figured out how to start telling more people. The idea of so many separate conversations that I didn’t really know how to have was daunting.

Once I started telling people, I’d have to keep going, and keep doing it. And each time, I’d have that thought sitting in my mind, however improbable, that it might not go well.

The people I had already told lived far away. Telling more people meant bringing it into real, day-to-day, life.

Posting on social media was not a long considered plan. I thought about it just long enough to decide to do it, and not long enough to think my way out of it.

It was the ‘rip off the band-aid’ move.

I spent most of the weekend that I posted online that I was queer walking around the city. I love walking around cities. For much of it, I had a little smile on my face - one that I hadn’t realized how much I’d been missing.

At some point after I had posted to anyone who wanted to know that I was queer, I was chatting, and laughing, with a friend, throwing out all the jokes I could think of. “What the hell, did your sense of humour just come out as well?”, they said at one point. I liked that.

I’d be lying, if I said I the idea of being vulnerable and losing people doesn’t still haunt me a bit.

When I think about or see people that I haven’t talked to directly since I came out, I can’t help but wonder if maybe they’ve opted out. Maybe we’ve already had our last conversation.

But this is no longer a devastating thought. If that’s your choice - so be it.

Since posting, I’ve had many great conversations with people who were already in my life, and also with new people just entering it. Sometimes, it didn’t even take any words - a look and a hug conveyed everything needed. I’ll be alright.

One thing I have thought about quite a lot recently is about when kindness and support are theoretical, and when they are applied.

If nothing else, maybe I can get my own nerdy version of a quote printed on a stock photo in some corner of the internet.

I’m not saying this is something I have it all figured out, or that it’s something that I have always enacted. It’s aspirational. But I try to think more about what it means to make support applied - to listen, to try to understand, to give space when it’s needed - and also to show up.

I don’t always sleep well.

In the days before I posted that I was queer I wasn’t sleeping too well. It was a restless and fraught awakeness.

Overall, I’ve slept a lot better since my 2nd most popular tweet (it was briefly the most popular, but then there was a very exciting electric bus).

This past week, I again haven’t been falling asleep quickly. But it’s different. It’s a calm awakeness. Maybe because I have something to say. Each night I’ve found myself writing pieces of this post.

Probably I should have done the more normal thing and started a journal, rather than dropping my late night thoughts onto the internet… but, well, if you’re reading this, it’s too late now.

As you do in PhD world, I have somewhat stock answers for the typical questions of ‘what are you up to?’, ‘what’s next?’, ‘where are you going to go?’, etc.

There was a point when the words that would fall out of my mouth to form these answers started to feel like ghosts of a possible life fluttering away.

They captured plans that began to feel out of reach. Things that I didn’t feel like I had the energy to pursue. Pursuits that I was losing track of if I even wanted them.

I no longer feel like that.

I’m getting back to the usual excessive list of goals and ideas. It’s a much better problem to mostly just have to think about wrestling some of them into actuality. I’m excited to try.

So, there it is, my story, or some parts of it, stitched together, at least.

This turned out to be quite a long piece, so if anyone made it to the end, thanks for reading.

And finally, thank you to all of the wonderful people in my life.