Hey guys

Hey guys,

I was not too sure about writing a blog on this subject, not because I am uncomfortable in telling it but I felt that some readers who may read other blogs from gay might be like "oh great another coming out story." However I do feel that as I will be sharing some personal stories and experiences that I have had , I should include this one as the coming out process has been a long journey for me and has had a profound impact on me both while I was in the closet and as I started to come out. I also feel that most people who do share their coming out stories do so a long period after they came out. While I do feel it is great to gain some perspective on the matter that one only gains with time, I think that it would be nice to hear someone's story just as they are facing the reality of being an openly gay man.

Ok so here we go.....

First Inclinations

I would say that the first inclinations that I was gay came to me when I was about eleven, twelve years old. At the time, I had planned that when I was older I would get married to a woman and have kids. I also liked the idea of, I guess....."romancing"? a woman, you know, you know taking a woman on dates, developing a romantic relationship with them but here was the strange thing.... I was never physically attracted to girls. I have always been a very good student even back in the early days of high school, so I just thought I was just paying more attention to my studies and gaming (of course) than I was girls and that once I managed to get my school/social/caring life balance just right, then I will be more attracted to girls, that is what it is, right? WRONG. It was around this time that I started to like boys. I used to see guys as I was going about my daily life and think to myself, he is cute. This was a very strange time for me, which I still really don't understand to this day. At that point , just as I was going into my teenage years, I had attraction to guys BUT I still wanted to have a wife and kids when I was older and I felt that I could never date a guy as I could with a woman. Strange, right? There was some disconnection that I had between physical intimacy and attraction (by which at this age I meant holding each other and light kissing) and having a somewhat emotional connection with a woman . For me this was very strange and I did sense that something bizarre was going on yet I had no clue on what it is.


As the next few years progressed my feelings towards guys developed and I actually started to dream about falling for a guy than a woman. My dreams of when I what I would be like in my thirties would include me being with a man instead of a woman and we would have that nice house, great friends, good jobs
and just having a happy and content life. Now some of you guys maybe wondering what thirteen year old is thinking about when they are in their thirties, wouldn’t they be more into computer games, hanging out with friends and their biggest worry would be getting into school in time and their homework? While I was a huge gamer and I did worry schoolwork, I was, well still am a carer and I had to grow up pretty quickly. For me thinking of the future has been a way to deal with bad situations, almost like a method of escapism. But I digress, back to the story….
Things got even more complicated when I started to develop feelings for a straight guy at school. Now I am not going to go further into detail about this as it is something that only two people in my life really know about and I am not too comfortable in giving away details about this but needless to say these feelings grew very rapidly and stayed with me until I left high school. Hell they were one of the reasons why I came out to my mum (which I will come to later).

So there I was; a lonely, stressed out and sexually confused teenager who was also suffering from seasonal annual depression with his head up his arse trying to make some order out of the fucked up mess that was his life. Sounds like a swell time, right? Yep, as you guessed it, nothing for me was swell. Having issues with family stabbing me and my mum in the back, trying to deal with studies and caring responsibilities and the ups and downs that go with it, feeling alone and isolated with no friends, constantly being hyper-critical and frustrated with myself and trying to make sense of these feelings I had for a guy that didn’t even like me let alone have the same feelings I had for him. Night time would be the worst for me, alone and in my bed where my worst enemies would crawl out from the backdrop of my mind and come to haunt me. My fears and worries, evil ghosts from my past and raging bulls of anger and frustration, that were all shoved to the back of mind during the day would come out and wreak havoc with my soul. But one night when I was thirteen was different….. one night I said three words that would somehow bring some logic to the madness yet still cause huge shock waves throughout my mind and fuck it up even more. As I cried myself to sleep I said to myself “I. am. Gay”.
The release that I got from this was huge yet it threw me in another prison. That prison being a closet.

In The Closet

Now I don’t know about anyone else but coming out to myself made me think two very separate things; one being, “Cool, I am gay. That puts a lot of things into perspective now. I now have a better grasp at what is going on in my head” and the other was pure and utter fear and panic.
Now guess which thought had a greater effect on me, I will give you a minute…… If you guessed the later then YOU ARE A WINNER! So yes, as you can expect coming out to myself forced me into the closet and my time as a prisoner of my own self-hatred and fear increased tenfold. For me, I had just entered the toughest time in my life. Mentally and emotionally I was in a place where I had never been before. Now I maybe young but I have had a lot to deal within my life some of which I have mentioned and I have found ways of building barriers to prevent people from seeing my true self. If people didn’t see me for who I really was then they could not attack it. Instead they would be attacking this cold, hard armour that was protecting the still broke person underneath it. The person that was dying to come out yet couldn’t deal with another family member, ‘friend’, enemy or unknown person hurting me again. People could call me fat or a scruff or a weirdo or a freak and I would not be able to find a flying fuck to give. They could say that I am an idiot or stupid and speak to me like I was a five-year old and I would just prove them wrong. If people beat me up my bruises and wounds would heal. But my sexuality was a different thing all together. , All those other things I could fight up against but with my sexuality, I had my guard down.
This is the one part of sexuality that many straight people, especially bigots, fail to understand or at least take for granted; one’s sexuality is intrinsic to one’s being. It is the you of you and the me of me. Sexuality is one of two things that you can never change about yourself, that and race. No matter what you do, whatever stupid, deranged gay ‘conversion therapy’ you go through, you will never change who you fall in love with. It was in this that lay my problem. Being gay was part of my true self, the person I swore that I would not show until I was fully mended. More importantly for me it was a side I didn’t know how to protect. A chink has appeared in my armour, a gap in which people could attack me and here I was desperately trying to cover it.
So what did I do to protect myself? Well I did a few things. The main thing was that I just hid away and I got engrossed with my studies, gaming and listening to music. I always like my own company but in my teenage years I became very insular, went out very little, socialised now and then to keep up with appearances but apart from that, I was very disconnected with the people around me. When I was around certain people, mainly people who I knew very well, I became very conscientious about the way I acted. I made sure that, there was no way that people could find out; any aspects of my personality that might allude to the truth of my sexuality were now all gone. A minimal, stripped back Keith so to speak that had little to no resemblance to who I once was. Yes, I know I said that I hid myself to protect myself but I was still myself to an extent to the few people who I trusted. I needed to let the armour breathe a little. The other thing was just a continuation of what I did before. I was still the no filter; don’t give a fuck jack ass around people I didn’t trust.
So as you can expect life in the closet was not that great to say the least. I was really focusing my studies in order to someway make moves to achieve my goals and while this at least gave me a response to people asking why I never had a girlfriend,when I hit 15/16-year-old mark, it put more pressure on my life at home. Trying to balance caring responsibilities at home while trying to do well at school is tough but when you are constantly putting shit loads of pressure on yourself to do better and better, even beyond the point where you have done your best, are even tougher. I had it in my head that I could always do better, that being happy with what I had done would lead me to being complacent and therefore lazy. Of course I had my moments where I couldn’t give a care in the world, we all do, but for me my future was (and still is to a certain extent) everything to me. Without that dream, without the knowledge that my life could be better just worked my ass off at school, I would have had nothing to keep me going.
This pressure that I was putting on myself added to my constant fear of being outed and my feelings for the straight guy at school, which developed at an alarming rate. Every single time I saw him it was like there was this huge wave of pure euphoria and then it quickly felt like someone had stabbed my heart with a thousand knives as reality kicked in. It was a drug; potent, uplifting and addictive yet devastating and like a poison; it was slowly killing me. Back then used to wish that I had the guts to tell him what I felt about him, even though it would lead to the inevitable pain of rejection, just to get some sort of release.
Just before I hit sixteen, the shit really hit the fan at home. My mum had a bout of severe depression. Out of respect for my mum and her wishes, I will not go into much detail about what she was like when it hit her but needless to say the mum I knew was gone for nearly a year. Now I have seen my mum like this a few times before and I suffered from depression myself, so I knew what to expect but it never gets easier. It never gets easier when you see you mum so lost, so upset and you are helpless. You would take away the pain she was going through in heartbeat but you can’t. You just have to weather the storm out and be there for her as best as you can. This just added the pain that was inside me; the pressure was blowing me up but the armour would not give. It got tighter and tighter until the plates dug into my skin; cutting into me and making me bleed. It opened up old wounds again and ripped open new ones.

My head was well and truly up my backside now and for the next six months I went around in some sort of haze. The fake smile and laugh there, to have some sort of resemblance to normality and happiness; spending lunch times at school by me trying my hardest to stop myself from crying in front of everyone and looking like a freak. At home I would help my mum, study and go through my room and try to escape my own mind. I never told my mum anything, vowed not to. I didn’t want to burden her with my problems. She had enough on her plate and she definitely didn’t need my crap, so I just tried my hardest to keep it all to myself. Sometimes she would see the blood spill from my armour and I would cry my eyes out to her but I always said to that I didn’t know why I was upset or that it was just something that I needed to deal with it by myself and she shouldn’t worry about me.
Time passed and my mum got over the mountain that was her bout of depression, hell I knew she got over it when she dragged me outside one morning in the bloody snow as I was getting ready for school. It was a huge relief and I would like to thank my mum’s best friend and her family for helping us in that very difficult time. Yet as she felt better, I felt worse and worse. The fear of rejection, of being vulnerable, of being true to myself was killing me from the inside out. My mum had, on various occasions, asked me about my sexuality and she told me that she would love me unconditionally. Yet I never had the guts to tell her. As soon as I got the courage in my heart to tell her, my mind would just yank me back into the closet. I would go home from school, so full of sadness, frustration and fear that I would be crying my eyes out most days after school. It was the same on weekends. For me this was the only release I got but it was never enough. The armour had a death grip on me and was cutting me deeper and deeper. Blood was now gushing out of every gap of the plates forming a red fountain. Something had to give and give soon or else the core of me, the person who I was desperately trying to protect….. was going to die.

Coming Out

I remember the day I came out to my mum like it was yesterday. June 5th 2011 and I was coming home from a friend’s house. It was a nice sunny evening and I was in the first few weeks of my long summer holidays after I left school and was waiting to find out if I got accepted into university. It was also the night of my year’s prom- which I had chosen not to go to as I wanted to get away from the school and have a fresh start and I saw limos along the road taking people from year to the prom. I never went to my prom, the fear of getting drunk and embarrassing myself was too much. Yet the feelings for the guy were still there and suddenly came up. I had to escape so I ran to the only place where I felt safe.

I got home and my mum asked if everything was OK. I lied but then soon broke down in tears. I could see sadness in her eyes but also frustration. I could see that she was pissed off that I wouldn’t tell what I was going through. She told me that whatever I was going through, that I would not have to go through it alone and she was there to support me no matter what. “I can’t, I just can’t”, I said to her but then it all came out.
Out of sheer desperation and need I came out to her. I told her everything that was going through my messed up mind and for once, it was the release that I really needed. For the first time in years I was being true to myself. I felt weak, vulnerable, scared yet relieved.
My mum was amazing and right from the get go I had her support. She told me that her love for me was unconditional and that being gay would not in any way affect her love for me. The only thing that she was pissed off at was that I didn’t come out to her sooner but I tried to explain to her that I had to be ready to come out and that, before hand I was not ready to. I remember that I thought that even though she accepted me, there would still be some sort of awkwardness and some underlying tension within the house. I told her this and she nonchalantly replied, “why should there be?”
So I just came out to my mum, time to come out to the world right? Hmmm, not quite yet. I thought that I would now be transformed like a somebody that goes into a telephone booth and comes out as a superhero (for me I would be the same but with a rainbow flag as a cape); however I kept my sexuality a secret to the outside world. I did say that if anyone asked I said to myself that I would answer honestly but to be honest I tried to avoid situations in which people might ask me about it.
I think what it came down to was that I still was not ready to come out. I still didn’t truly accept myself and wasn’t ready to show my true self to others, that fear of vulnerability and feeling weak has created a huge scar that was still healing. I went to university but I had to leave, which left me gutted.
Yet in retrospect, leaving was great for my mental well-being. Instead of being focused on my studies, I had time to focus on myself and properly begin to heal myself from all the crap that had happened. It gave me time to really accept my past and myself. For years I felt that I had to leave Edinburgh to get away from it all. To drop all the baggage there and start anew. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to leave but just not for the same reasons. Now it is more just to see new places, meet new people and do new things. The past is always going to be there, if you like it or not. It helps make you the person that you are but it doesn’t define you, if you let it then you will be a very bitter, miserable person in life. I learnt this the hard way. This really put things into perspective for me, for the first time I realised that this armour I had on, forged with past torments and pains, was killing me. It was this armour that I put on to protect me from other people, left me weak to the person that was doing the most damage to my soul. Myself.
Now, while I recognised this problem, it still took me a bit of time to face it. However, eventually I got the balls and some dutch courage to come out to my best mate by building a rainbow flag house in minecraft. As I started to build the house, people in the game then started to ask me if I was gay and I just blurted out yes. I told the rest of the people in the game that it was a joke but I told my best mate the truth. I did this mainly out of respect for my friend; I didn’t want to tell him at the same time as I did to people on Xbox, it just didn’t seem right. He and his fiancée were fine about it though, I knew they would as they had other gay friends. My best mate was very surprised, I am not the stereotypical gay guy like many gay guys are but the gay guys he met were on the stereotypical camp side. There is nothing wrong with that of course but some straight people get a bit surprised when someone who does abide by those stereotypes.

This was a huge turning point for me, not in terms of having a safety net; I knew I had this already, this was the point I was truly becoming comfortable with myself; the armour slowly falling apart piece by piece. I started to come out to more and more people, not in terms of saying “hey, I am gay” but just being honest to people if it was brought up in conversation. It also helped watching gay vloggers on YouTube like Will and RJ on the shep 869 channel, Hankchen and Davey Wavey. For me just seeing these guys living their lives authentically and not giving a shit was a real inspiration for me.
Now there were loads of people who I had not come out to, mainly because I did not know how to tell them. So what is the best way to tell a few dozen people all at once that you are gay? Yep, you guessed it FACEBOOK! Seriously, I am not joking. It was two months to this day when I was like “To hell with it. Mum, I am going to come out on facebook.” My mum was a bit uneasy about it, mainly due to the fact that I might get some negative repercussions in terms of gay bashing and people saying homophobic crap to me. However I just got to the point where I couldn’t give a crap. So this is what I wrote:
“ Look I know this is strange way to do this but as I rarely see a lot of you and facebook is the only way I keep in touch with you guys, this is the only way I can tell you. I am gay. If you are pissed off that I didn't tell you privately, I am sorry, many birds with one stone I guess. Look if any of you don't like it or believe that being gay is wrong please remove me from your friends list. I don't need bigots in my life.”

With one press of a button, the rest of the armour felt off my body. The burdens of the past dropped, the ghosts and demons inside my head were gone… well most of them, enough of them to keep me from going insane but then nobody is perfect. I managed to break the shackles free, escape the prison that was my mind, run through Narnia and fully step out of the closet for the first time. And you know what? It felt fucking fantastic.

So, What is Life Like Out of The Closet?

There is a quote by Tony Venn-Brown that really resonates with me about finally getting the guts to come out of the closet. It goes like this;

”When you finally embrace the gift of your sexual orientation it IS the end; the end of shame, fear and oppression. You leave the darkness of the closet and begin a life of honesty, authenticity and freedom.”

For me this pretty much sums up what it feels like being out. I have never felt as open and honest about myself and yes people may try to attack me for being true to myself but those people I have no time for, so they can say nasty things at me and try and harass me but it will just be deflected by my indifference. If they want to be angry that I am being true to who I am and being happy for it, they can go ahead. It is also the sense of freedom I now have and the ability to put history aside; let it help me grow as a person but not let it dictate my sense of being and for once being proud of it. Being proud that I have come through all this crap at a young age. Being proud that the experiences and how I overcame them have made me strong and will serve me well in future trials and tribulations.
So what lays ahead me now? God knows. The main thing I would say is it to get my life back on track and get into education again. Hopefully in two years time I will be in Dundee studying Politics with French and this blog will have a little following (doubt the later though) or I might find my prince charming who whisks me off into the sunset….. happily ever after , you know all that cheesy bs … that I love watching on chic-flicks. To be honest if I do find someone, who I fall deeply in love with, then yes my plans will change but I am going off on another tangent here. The point is that for once in my life I am truly happy with myself. Are there parts of me I would like to change? Am I still a cynical idiot that is super critical of himself? Yes but that is just a part of myself that I will have to grow to love.

I hope that one of the main points that come through from this is how we can be our own worst enemies. How our own minds can warp reality and surround our souls with hate for ourselves and fear and distrust for others. It can cloud our judgement to the point that logic and reason give up trying to get through to our heads and that decisions are being made through seeing the world through a dark mist of regrets and bad memories being played on a constant loop. The most twisted part of it is that our mind somehow convinces us that this is good for us, that we are just protecting ourselves and if we stay in this bubble we will stay safe forever. For me this damage that I have done to myself has taken the longest to repair than anything that someone else has done to me, as it didn’t just take time and a sense of detachment to heal but also a complete overhaul in the way I think about myself and the interactions and relationships I have with others. In reality I should have had no fear about coming out of the closet; everyone that I have come out to has been fine with it yet it was my own mind playing deadly tricks on me.

Now my message to any readers who are still in the closet or has just came out of the closet and are having a bad time is this. Learn to accept and love yourself first. It might take time but it will help with getting to point of being able to come out and help take the blows if someone doesn’t accept you for who you are. Secondly try to find a place where you can release your worries, anxieties and get help to overcome them. From experience I can tell you that keeping it all in is not a great strategy as it can all come bursting out when you least expect it. The Internet has some amazing outlets in which you can share your story anonymously as well as see other stories from people in the same situation that you are in or people that have came out the other side and can give you advice (I will post a link to some sites at the end of this.) Also come out when you are ready to, there is no rush. If you feel like you need to be financially independent before you come out as you fear that you parents might chuck you out, then wait. If you are unsure that your friends will accept you then wait until you gain a new set of friends that will accept you .The next thing I will say is that for every person that calls you a fag or a poof, for every person that says that you are nothing and that you are somehow a monster for being gay. For every person that says that because of your sexuality that you are not worthy of love, understand this; there are thousands more people that love you and will embrace you into their lives. They will cherish you for the amazing person that you are. They will help mend you when you are feeling broken and will not use you when you are vulnerable. Know that you are worthy of love and of being happy and that anyone who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves whether it be bullies at school, religious leaders or even family members and friends.
The last thing I will say is that no matter what you are going through and how fucked up you feel inside, it will get better. Whether it be due to your sexuality or just trying to make sense of a messed up situation; with strength and determination you will get through it. Here is a link to song that is very personal to me and helped me through this tough period in my life. Listen to the lyrics and you will understand why. Hopefully it will help you in the same way as it did with me.