“When are you going to come out, Frankie?” — An actual thing that was said to me this week. Granted, it was said by an intoxicated individual who had just found out the unfathomable, confusing truth about who I am. I have come out. I came out. Multiple times to multiple people. I came out to my mother on three separate occasions. I’m gay.
I struggled for so long as a teenager well into my twenties to make sense of my internal circuitry as it existed in contrast to the world I was living in. I kissed girls. I went to proms. I flirted. I looked at Playboy. I tried and tried and tried to make the norm feel normal but it never did.
I’m not going to dwell on the challenges, because there were a ton, but I’m also not going to sugarcoat it, there were dark times. I was depressed. My grades suffered. There were arguments and confrontations and there were nights when I was sure I wasn’t going to survive. There was a lot of crying. My closeted sexuality was the driver of my inner angst and turmoil from about fifth grade through the entirety of college. Even as people around me started to pick up on the clues, I was hesitant and scared and wildly unsure how to proceed. It took me a while to be honest with myself.
And now that we’re here, no one perceives me as a gay man—whether it's the beard, or the gut, or the adoration of whiskey—there’s something about my character that doesn’t fit into the general public’s ideas of “gay”. Added bonus, I don’t know how to introduce this fact about me into everyday conversation, unless we’re talking about dating, ex-boyfriends, or those scenes in season one of How To Get Away With Murder.
Of course it would be much easier for me to discuss if I could introduce you to my boyfriend. Alas, he doesn’t exist.
Coming out is weird. Even in 2015. It’s scary. Even thinking that there’s bound to be someone here who didn’t know I was gay before reading this. It’s agonizing to put so much thought into pronouncing this one single attribute of your character, and it’s daunting if not outright depressing to consider that this attribute could jeopardize the fundamental relationships you rely on for support and guidance and love.
There are still people in my life to whom I have never said the words: I’m gay. And that’s my journey. It has never felt for me like coming out was a thing that happened once and then it was over. For me coming out feels more like a lifelong process that will occur one day at a time as it needs to until one day, like Ellen, I can have a TIME magazine cover photo with the headline: Yep, I’m Gay.