I’m a miracle to me!

I didn't want to come out (but I‘m glad I did it anyway)

Agoura Hills CA, May 2023

May 15th, 2023

Dear Reader,

By the time you read this, it will be sometime in June, and only a few weeks or days before the official start of Summer. It will be Pride, and, I will have just officially come out to my parents. I say officially because I’m pretty sure they already know.

Because they can see me.

My therapist keeps telling me that I’ll do it when I’m ready, and that I’ll know when I’m ready. I want to believe her, but I think maybe writing this letter as if I already have, will help.

I came out to my twin sister first, over a year ago, while sitting cross-legged on the carpet of her living room floor. My nieces had just gone to bed and my voice shook in a hushed whisper as I read aloud to her the hidden note that was stored in my iPhone. The letter was written during long walks, just before bedtime, immediately upon waking up, just after a date, or while standing in line at the grocery store. I lost track of how many times it was edited. No matter what was added or subtracted I knew there be no words I could say that would get me the response I wanted.

Tears streamed down both of our faces as I read through the words. I didn’t need to ask her why she was crying, and she didn’t need to ask me. We hugged each other fiercely at the end of it all. She told me she loved me, and I said it back. It was beautiful, and it was also one of the most painful conversations I’ve ever had to have.

Despite the pride I feel about what I did, I’ve had regrets about how I did it. And even though I now know there is no perfect way to come out, I wanted there to be. I still want there to be. So over the past year and a half, I have deleted the note from my phone. I’ve gone back to the drawing board only to leave it entirely blank. Instead, I’ve been meditating.

How can I feel more secure? How can I surround myself with more support? How can I continue to let go of the response I never got and will never be given to me? How will I do this all over again but this time, with my parents? How can I make it hurt less?

The regrets I’ve carried over how I handled the conversation with my sister mostly have to do with what I chose to say. In hindsight, I simply wish that I had said less. But as I’ve sifted through these feelings, I see that these parts only aim to protect me from the disappointment I assumed I was fully prepared to handle but was not. I thought I went into that conversation knowing that all of the words in the world wouldn’t make a difference to her, and yet for some reason I chose to say them anyway. I can’t blame myself for being hopeful. I wanted to give her that chance. Even though I didn’t get to be surprised by her response, I’ve learned that the residual shame I still feel about what I said only wants to find some way to make her response my fault—when it’s not.

I thought I would feel powerful after speaking my truth. I thought I would feel free, but instead, I felt confused. Suddenly I felt more trapped. I wondered if she’d talk to our parents or our brother. Even though I was not shocked at my sister’s response and inability to “fully celebrate” my “lifestyle choices” I didn’t know what to do with the mild rage pulsing through my body as I gripped the steering wheel on my drive back to LA.

I left that conversation feeling exposed. And I was angry about it.

Angry that it was me that had to confess.

Angry that it felt like a confession.

Angry that I felt I had to come out in order to be out.

I suddenly felt the consequences of laying it all out on the table, only to have it be misunderstood. I’m sure my sister heard me loud a clear, but she didn’t hear me in the way I wanted to be heard. I thought if maybe she had, things would be different by now. But I knew better. I knew it wasn’t and isn’t my job to convince her of anything.

The anger has shown me that I don’t need to overexplain myself next time. I don’t need to overexplain myself ever. I need only say what I need to hear myself say.

I’ve since deleted the letter and what remains of the conversation that was had are now merely smudges. I remember the carpet. I remember the spinning fan above. I remember her big blue eyes. Eyes that we share. I remember the face of T. —the person I was dating at the time—popping up on my phone just as our conversation had ended. I answered the call and we made plans for our next date. I never told them that I had just come out to my sister.

Because I hated coming out.

I hated that I couldn’t do it perfectly.

I hated that I even needed to.

But I did it anyway.

Agoura Hills, CA March 2023

Whenever I’ve shared this story with friends, it has been difficult not to feel the wave of embarrassment that flows over me. Instead of feeling the pride my friends feel for me, I’ve often felt ashamed over the delayed awareness of my queer identity. Imposter syndrome tells me it’s only a party trick for more attention or some ploy to stand out from the crowd. Despite wanting to be seen for all that I am, when I talk about how I came out, how I am coming out, and how I will continue to come out, I can feel the parts of me that want to shrink back and hide.

Sometimes I think I am jealous of the people that never felt the need to make a big announcement despite feeling secure in my need to. Sometimes I feel bitter towards the generations that will come after me that won’t have to (even though I dream of this world often.)

Sometimes I don’t know what to do with the privileges I do have. The privilege of living in a city that for the most part, is safe for people like me. The privilege of a family who cares for me. A family who is trying their best to be in a relationship.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the desire to be cool when I think cool looks like not coming out and just being out instead. I look at others, not knowing their full story, and project a kind of confidence that maybe they don’t have. Or maybe they do and I wonder how they got it. I resent the fact that I’ve turned it into a competition when it isn’t one.

I want to choose to transform my guilt, my shame, and my grief into gratitude for what is, even if I sometimes wish I could have different or more. I want to forgive myself for not coming out sooner or coming out better, even though I know there is no race, there is no score, and there is no winning. It’s not a game, it’s my life.

little Joy

But if it’s not a game, then surely it must be a prank. To be queer your whole life and only find out about it when you’re an adult feels like the biggest prank the universe could have ever played. In my grief, all I can think about is the fact that I’m so late to a party that I was meant to arrive at much earlier. It hurts to think of what I’ve missed out on. It hurts to think of the joy I was robbed of. It hurts to think of the Joy that couldn’t be.

But as my queerness unfolds, I find ways to laugh about the timeline. I choose to hold it lightly, knowing I am exactly where I should be. Coming out as an adult means that I am now a time traveler and a shapeshifter. I get to sift through my past, I get to transform, every single day. Seeing the world with a fresh pair of eyes is both liberating and terrifying. Dating is expansive and awkward. I have felt like a stranger to myself and also like I have finally come home. I don’t feel as though I am pushing a huge boulder up a hill anymore. I’m just floating. I feel strong, I feel hot, I feel like me.

Getting to date, love and make love with women, queers, and other trans people has been so deeply affirming and healing. We show each other who we are. We show one another what is possible. We set each other free.

Expanding my chosen family has shown me just how far love can stretch. It is boundless. I feel held by something that is so much bigger than I will ever be, and somehow I am also a part of it. The lights are on! Nothing is the same as it was before I found my words, before I found my body, before I found my people.

I love being queer.

As much as I want to write about my queer joy, I couldn’t seem to do it wholeheartedly until I acknowledged the pain. I can’t deny the thickness of the grief I am wading through. In stepping closer to myself I have had to step further away from so many spaces I once found a sense of belonging, including my family and my old religion.

I have been on the journey of holding the tension of our differences and the love that still remains in spite of it all for quite some time. When my older sister stopped speaking to the family years ago, it quickly became apparent to the rest of us that certain battles were no longer worth fighting. There seemed to be an unspoken pact that no matter what, we would find a way to hold onto each other.

the queers will google my astro chart

As my identity has continued to shift over the years, this sacred pact that once comforted me has started to haunt me. I have had to realize that there is a limit to my love and the lengths I am willing to go to in order to be accepted. I don’t know who I will build a life with, I don’t know what it will mean for me and the future of my family as I know it today.

I never understood the concept of the chosen family until I woke up to my queerness. Now I cling to my queer family with every fiber of my being. I look to the greater queer community, queer media, queer music, queer art, queer everything.They create an entire new world for me to explore and take shelter in. They fill in the gaps I know my family can’t even see are there.

Immediately after I came out to my sister I knew I had done the right thing, but I also knew that I was not about to tell my parents. I knew I needed more time. I didn’t know how long it would take. I didn’t know how much more I’d change, until now.

As I write this, I am still gobsmacked at the thought of how I will get from here to there. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully let go of what I wish things could be like. It’s overwhelming to know already what they’ll say and what they believe. It hurts to know they’ll never change. But maybe they will. After all, I did.

In the past year and a half, I have tried to focus less on wanting to be seen fully by my parents and more on building up my support system. Knowing I have a soft place to land afterward, changes everything.

I haven’t figured out how I might go about telling my parents. Sometimes I picture myself sending an email just to get it over with. Surprise! I’m gay! In other versions of the story, I write a long letter explaining that I’m queer and pansexual but that I’m also gay because I’m non-binary which also makes anyone who dates me very gay also but maybe not and my pronouns were she/they and then they/she and now they are just they/them except some of my straight friends who’ve known me for years still call me she but it’s fine, they’re learning, but my queer friends sometimes refer to me as a boy which is cool af because they GET IT and I might actually be genderqueer or gender-fluid but I really haven’t figured it all out yet, and maybe never will but my queerness is so much more than just SEX you know? But you might not understand and it’s fine because none of it really matters anyway except it does it changes everything and, and and..

What I do know now that I didn’t know back then is that I actually can’t make any promises about what I will and won’t do in the future. My only promise now is to remain holy devoted to myself and the life I know I’ve been called to live: a life where I am free.

As I mentally prepare to come out to my parents, I know my brain tries to play out the worst-case scenarios to protect me. It is so difficult to hold onto the love I have for them, along with the disappointment. But we’ve essentially been training for this moment for the past 5 years. I think I can handle it.

I have this dream that I know so many of us have: it’s the one where no one ever has to come out ever again. In this dream, language is secondary if not obsolete. Bodies are free to be just how they need to be, lips can kiss lips, and limbs can intertwine as they please with no regard to organ shapes or chromosome letters and what we’ve been told they mean. There are no laws that limit this or that, only an ethic that ensures goodness and love and respect and care. People see beyond the binary. People stop making it just about sex. People stop concerning themselves about who is using which toilet behind which labeled door. People wear what they want to wear. These factors don’t correlate to violence or public outrage. People can love who they love. People can feel embodied without judgment. People can just be.

This never-ending process of coming out has been teaching me so much about what it really means to be seen versus what it feels like to be known. I used to think that sharing more of who I am would move me closer to being known or closer toward a kind of intimacy with another person. But self-disclosure doesn’t guarantee anything. We don’t get to control how or if people choose to meet us. Now I know that sometimes telling the truth can just be about setting yourself free. And that can be enough. In fact, it’s everything.

June 2nd, 2023

More Soon,

JOY

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