National Coming Out Day

I have read some of the other coming out stories that people have posted on blogs and I love reading them. So in honor of Nation Coming Out Day, I am going to post about mine. I am going to post about the hardest one that I had to come out to, myself.

When I was about 19 I got married, just because I thought that is what I was supposed to do. After I got married I got pregnant and I would not change having my son for anything. He was the best thing to happen to me. When I was about 4 months pregnant I moved to another state and my soon to be ex followed for about a week, then he left. After the divorce I had no interest in being in a relationship, even the thought of dating a man had no interest for me. I just thought that it was from having that failed marriage.

Years went by; I mean like 15 no dates, no desire to go out on one. I thought, still being the good girl, that men were my only option. It is not that I don’t like men, I do, they are great to tease, watch football with, or play video games with.

Then one day I was online in a chat room and started talking to this person. She and I would be online most nights at about the same time, as would another girl. After about a year there was a concert that we all wanted to go to in Idaho. So we decided that we were going to meet there. At that first meeting nothing happened we just became closer friends. As the next year went by we began talking on the phone more, less online.

Then three months before a bunch of us (7) were to get together in New Jersey, I thought I had fallen in love with her. I did convince myself that it was not love but a deep friendship, that the only reason that I was feeling that love was because it had been 15 years, and I was lonely. Then came the trip, boy was I wrong.

Talk about an identity crisis. Every time I looked at her I got the shakes, my insides would turn all quivery and not in a good way. I was terrified, of her of me. Everyone kept asking what was wrong was I ok. How could I tell them, these were people that I knew, people that I trust and that trusted me?

When I was finally able to talk to her about what I was feeling, what I was going through. She said that she wished she could help me, that I was her friend and that seeing me torn up like this was hurting her. But, she did not love me that way. I cried myself to sleep in the Philly airport when she got on the plane to go back to CA.

For three more months we talked and emailed, and as those months rolled along I became more comfortable with myself, my new found truth. Then one day, three months later she told me that she loved me too. That was about three years ago, she is now my Honey. As for me I am happier than I have ever been.

So I came out to myself at age 36.