What If, - anonymous
TW - This blog post contains language that may be harmful or distressing.
Sometimes I think about how it could’ve been if I came out earlier in my teens.
I came out when I was eighteen and it was a really cathartic moment for me. One aspect I loved was that coming out brought everyone in my life closer together. The question of whether this truly fostered closer connections among people or if it was merely a case of finally having the freedom to be authentically myself and engage with the world more honestly is one I find myself coming back to. The whole experience felt like a total rebirth, a complete coming-of-age, and from that day on, my life resumed.
I strictly use the word resume here because it felt like everything was on a momentary pause for such a long time. And by a long time, I really mean since I started to become conscious of the fact that I was ‘different’, so about ten years. The moment I said those three words, I am gay, I was suddenly lifted from a spell, extremely disorientated, but ready to get on with life and move forward.
Ten years… I was entirely stuck in a stationary position for such a huge proportion of my existence. And for what reason? Was it to fulfil my own satisfaction or to prevent those boys in my year from winning the £50 bet they placed on my sexual orientation? So again, here I am again, asking myself the question of, what would have happened if my life had ‘resumed’ earlier on? What if it had never been put on pause but instead continued uninterrupted? What was the reason behind my persistent prolonging of this 'secret,' which only denied myself the potential for euphoric catharsis and positivity all along.
It's very easy to question myself with all of this hindsight, but to be honest, I have to remind myself that if it wasn’t as simple as this. Because, if it was a path which was so obviously positive and amazing, wouldn’t I have done it? It wasn’t like I was in an environment which encouraged coming out.
Recently, I watched Heartstopper, purely for my thirteen-year-old self. I cried when Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) came out to his mother (Olivia Coleman) and remember watching this scene and thinking to myself, “fuck, why didn’t I do this earlier? I wish I saw this when I was younger. I am so happy for the young, queer people who will be able to learn from this”. TV has changed so much since I was growing up, which really wasn’t too long ago either. So close, yet so far. I don’t really recall seeing openly queer relationships on popular programmes, mind you I most definitely don’t recall watching a British school teen coming out to his mother over a cup of tea. When I was younger, all the queer men represented in popular media were gimmicky, two-dimensional side characters, whose existence in the plot line was to make people laugh at their bitchiness. Today, kids have programmes like Heartstopper to give a voice to the people a bit like me. Now, queer people, and queer experiences, are at the forefront of plot lines; we are celebrated, not berated.
Heartstopper makes me think about how amazing it is that there might be a me equivalent, but like seven years younger, watching this tv show and realising how special and important their identity is. Surely teens are all like this now? I’m not sure, but I would have to be a moron to take a TV programme like Heartstopper this literally. Unlike the school in Heartstopper, my school was most definitely not a space to have fostered a positive environment for queerness at all.
There was a teacher at school who was once recorded on video colloquially calling gay sex “grape” – explaining that it stood for “gay anal rape”. The video circulated among the students at school. In the background, the boys could be heard gasping for air and doubled over in complete laughter. They proudly cheered over this comment - a comment which made me feel so much shame. I remember being shown the video by these boys, I felt as if they were waiting for me to react so they could point and laugh at me, exposing my secret. That video was shown around pretty carelessly, and I am positive the school turned a blind eye. I know this for a fact as I am certain that they continue to still be employed by the school.
Not coming out was purely for survival, I wasn’t going to come out and subjugate myself to such hostility. I intended to survive, which rendered itself in long term girlfriends, as it provided a sense of momentary silence. What was the boy in my class going to say if I had a girlfriend? That I was into men? Hah! On paper, it was a solid plan of action. As an added bonus, often the girlfriends went to different schools, so it made sense if we didn’t see one another, “our timetables didn’t match up”, it provided the perfect excuse to not actually act in these relationships. Today, with full honesty, I sincerely apologise to these women, you are all amazing and fabulous, honestly, I’m just not into women.
I have looked back at my childhood and teens with such unrest and anger towards experiences I went through. But I guess, who would I be today if it wasn’t for these experiences? Not only would I be boring as fuck, but I’d also be entirely stunted and probably still closeted, and who is that fun for? Not me, I love being gay!
Instead, from now on I am going to focus on what I have learnt from my momentary pause; the learning objectives, and how can I apply these lessons to my adulthood now that I am loud and proud. Other than the obvious ones: you don’t like women, get out of north west London and no more skinny jeans, I have learnt that this is just my timeline, I have to stay in my own lane. I have learnt to love who I am for who I am, which is harder than it seems when you feel like everything was so against you for such a long time. I want to take the good times and envision them as delicate, floating lanterns in the midst of my darker times. Each memory is a radiant reminder that, even in those moments, I was not alone.
In summarising this reflection, as Lana Del Rey so eloquently put it in Radio, “now my life is sweet like cinnamon, like a fuckin dream I’m living in”
Written by Anonymous
