"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

[mousme]

tx_cronopio asked me to talk about my own experience coming out. Most of you who read this LJ these days were there when I came out, but I suspect there are a handful of you who weren't, so I guess this might be new to you.

I feel like I should preface this with a few caveats. For one thing, everyone's coming out experience is unique, even if they share a few common elements. My own coming out story is even less typical than the ones you will usually find in North America, though it has nothing especially remarkable about it. In fact, my story is probably remarkable for the fact that it's wholly unremarkable, if that makes any sense.

So back in 2002, I ended an 8-month relationship with the only guy I ever *properly* dated. I won't go into that here, but it was not a good end to the relationship. I was struggling at the time with undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder Type II, the guy in question had his own issues, and he reacted very badly to my deciding to end things between us. It made for a very ugly time for everyone for several months.

It was during that time of emotional and mental upheaval that I started questioning why I felt so strongly that I couldn't be with him, or indeed with any man at all. When I talk to most queer people, I hear the same refrain: "I always knew I was gay/bi/trans/etc." I am sure that this is true, but I also feel that many in the queer community feel that they have to present this narrative so that they will be believed. I think the underlying assumption is that the "born this way" argument trumps everything, that if you argue that you never had a choice, people can't hold it against you, as if being gay or bi or trans was some sort of flaw about yourself that you just can't help.

The short version of the previous paragraph is that I was not one of those people who "always knew." Likewise, whereas I often hear of parents who "always suspected," this was not the case in my household.

For one thing, I was never particularly interested in dating or sex, although I did love romance in all its forms (and still do). Full disclosure: while I identify as a lesbian, as I am attracted to women as a rule, I'm probably closer to asexual on whatever scale this sort of thing is measured on. Romance? Yes. Love? Bring it on. Sex? Meh. I can take it or leave it, and as a rule I prefer to leave it. This has been a hell of a sticking point in past relationships, believe you me, but that's a story for another day.

Back to my coming out as a lesbian. Since throughout high school I had never considered dating anyone seriously, it had never really occurred to me to question whether I wanted to date someone of the same or opposite sex. The prevailing paradigm in my life was, of course, heterosexuality. Until I was much older I didn't have much reason to think about homosexuality or any other kind of sexuality. The first time I encountered it was a very quick reference to two men having sex in secret on a BBC mystery show on television. I didn't understand what was happening (I was about eight or nine), and my mother explained to me that these two men were committing a sin, or at least a very shameful act, especially since at least one of them was married. And that was the end of that.

The first time I was properly exposed to the queer community, especially the vibrant one we have in Montreal, I was at university. I started volunteering at the Women's Union early on, and through the women there I got to know members of Queer McGill (probably not the club's actual name, but that's how I knew them) and began learning about what it meant to not be heterosexual. Of course, at the time I still assumed I was completely straight, but I was happy to be an ally and do what I could for what felt like a very just cause. I mean, equality for everyone regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation? Why wouldn't that appeal to my very idealistic 20-year-old self? (Oh, sweet summer child. How little I knew back then.) It honestly never occurred to me to question my own motivations at the time. I suppose, at twenty, most people aren't all that aware of their own biases and limitations.

It's notable that, at the time, my mother freaked out when I told her I was going to advocate and volunteer for a LGBT group. She made it very clear that I would become gay by association, or by osmosis or something. She was fine with gay people, so long as they kept themselves hidden away and didn't come near her or her family with their depraved ways.

I should further note that the only openly gay person my mother ever had to interact with on a regular basis was one of my paternal uncles, and he is a pretty miserable human being all around. It has nothing to do with his being gay, of course, but my mother didn't understand that. She also held onto some pretty antiquated notions about why people were gay, and assumed that my paternal grandmother had coddled him too much. She also held onto the prejudice that all gay men must be pedophiles for a lot longer than I would have liked. Much like Queen Victoria, she didn't give any thought to lesbians whatsoever, and bisexuals just didn't even register as existing to her.

In short, I found out pretty early on that homosexuality was something that should not be brought into my mother's house, not even as a topic of discussion.

Fast-forward three years, and I was having my own little sexual identity crisis among the many other crises I was having at the time. Let it never be said that I make things easy on myself. ;) Once I sat down and actually forced myself to think about things, I eventually reached the conclusion that I was, in fact, gay. Yes, I did have to actually figure things out and have a discussion with myself that lasted for several weeks before I made a firm decision on that front.

After that, I was a bit of a chicken, and tested the "coming out" waters on LiveJournal first. At the time my LJ was completely friends-locked (as a result of the bad relationship I mentioned at the beginning of this post), so it was easy for me to control who exactly had access to this information. I also told one trusted friend at the time (though we are no longer friends now), and that was it. So, not surprisingly, the first reactions I had to my revelation were universally positive, which is what I needed at the time.

Things got a little more complicated after that. While all my friends reacted positively to my coming out, I was a lot more leery of coming out to my parents. During all this time I was also dealing with being bipolar, though by then I had received a diagnosis and was undergoing treatment with varying degrees of success. So it was especially difficult for me, between tinkering with medications and experiencing a wide range of psychiatric symptoms as a result, to truly focus on my sexual identity. Compared with the anxiety, the crippling depression, the suicidal urges, and one psychotic break, being gay was the least of my worries. It wasn't as though I was planning to get into a relationship until I was "stable," after all (this seemed very reasonable at the time, though looking back I'm pretty sure I was just shielding myself from the reality of having to out myself to my parents).

My psychiatrist put my name on a list for group therapy with a pair of psychologists working for M.U.S.I.C. (the McGill University Sexual Identity Clinic), and so I went to that group for about nine months or so before I quit. I wrote about that extensively at the time, and don't plan to go into it here. Let's just say that the group therapy was quite possibly the worst experience with the psychiatric community that I have ever had to undergo, and I have never been happier than when I left. I think it was mostly to do with the leader of the group, who had a very specific preconceived notion of who I was and how I should be reacting to things, and who would browbeat me in sessions until I cried and begged her to stop. Now, crying in therapy is not a bad thing, but I have had plenty of other therapists, and not a single one of them has ever insulted me or told me I was lying or that I shouldn't be on medication for being bipolar. If I had been in a better headspace at the time, it might have occurred to me to file a complaint against her, because her therapeutic practice was damaging at best.

It was during this time that I finally worked up the nerve to come out to my parents. I was already pretty sure that my father would be mostly okay with it, but I was very worried about my mother. So I found a few PFLAG pamphlets and looked up a bunch of websites and even called a local hotline to see what the "best way" was to do it. I followed all the steps listed to the letter (because if you can give me step-by-step instructions for anything, I am a very happy camper), and picked a date to have dinner with my parents and tell them about it. The date was a year to the day after I'd first come out to people here on LiveJournal.

Because I'd never reserved a dinner date with them ever in my life, my parents worked out what I wanted to tell them long before I even sat down at the table. They were, to put it mildly, unthrilled. My father was, as I'd predicted, a little more supportive, but because he knew the full extent of the homophobia out there, he was extremely worried for my safety. My mother, on the other hand, was... I don't actually know how she was feeling. Probably a lot of things. But she did right away tell me that I was her daughter and that she loved me and that this wouldn't change anything (that last part was a bit of a lie, but she did mean it). She did also ask that I not come home in the next few weeks and tell them that I'd murdered someone, because that's where she'd draw the line. Apparently being gay and being a murderer were on par in her head. *sigh*

It's been ten years since then. It actually feels like it's been a lot longer, but time is weird that way. My parents and in particular my mother have come a long way since then. It's been a very long road for all of us, and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to sit down with my mother to explain that no, X is not an acceptable thing to say. When you say things like this it is not only wrong and bigoted, but it's also personally hurtful. Even my father occasionally slips up and uses homophobic language (even this year), and I have to point it out every time and wait until he stumbles across the correct answer himself and apologises to me (he's always very contrite).

I won't get into the details of being out, since that's not what this post is about. It's been a long process, and it's still ongoing. The thing about being out when, like me, you don't look stereotypically lesbian (and don't get me started on that), is that you spend your life coming out of the closet. Every new person you meet has to "discover" that you're gay, whether it's when you tell them about your family life or in some other fashion. You come out over, and over, and over. And every single time you brace for impact, because you never know whether today is the day that someone is going to react badly, whether they'll stop talking to you, or lecture you about your immoral lifestyle, try to convert you back to God, or in bad cases physically try to harm you.

Coming out is a huge thing. It's not as huge now as it was, say, forty years ago, but it's still a huge thing. I was very lucky, in that I lived in an area which was open and accepting, and the worst I had to face was some serious prejudice from my mother. Others are not so fortunate. There are still more places in the world where coming out presents a serious risk to people's lives and physical safety.

This is why I will never, ever pressure anyone to come out except on their own terms. Each person knows best how to gauge their own level of safety. I experienced censure from my mother, but others might face a beating from their parents or siblings or their peers. Some might face imprisonment and death in other countries. This is also why I will always, always support anyone's decision to come out, in whatever way I can.

So, uh, that's it. Hope this helped even a little bit, tx_cronopio!