My biggest fear about coming out

Here’s a quote from the first draft of my book, a few lines from the Author’s Note:

I have realized while writing this book that from an early age I had an incredible fear that being gay would destroy my life. I carried that fear with me through childhood into my adult years where, when I finally decided to give in to gravity, to come out, that telling this secret would separate me from love—the love of my parents, my family, my friends... anyone and everyone that made up my world.
Only in writing this book did I realize that all that time I had an even deeper fear. The biggest fear I carried from the moment I knew I was different was that my life would become something I hated. And this is a question I don’t hear many people talk about. “When I come out, will I like who I am?”

I started writing this book because I love writing. I wanted to tell a good story, and for me, one of the best stories I have to tell are the two years I served in Peace Corps.

That journey started three days before I left for Peace Corps when I told my parents that I’m gay. What followed was two years that completely changed my life.

Before I came out I was scared. Being in the closet, holding onto that secret alone, made me the kind of person who was always looking over my shoulder. I was afraid someone would find out, and when they found out, I was afraid that secret would detonate like a bomb.

In queer culture, there is a lot of very helpful conversations and resources around the real loss that does so often happen. Parents who reject their queer children. Families who separate themselves from gay kids. Religious groups who cast out queer people from their communities. Nearly a third of LGBT youth report experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives. (The Trevor Project)

I knew that being gay might separate me from everyone I knew, might destroy every connection and leave me humbled, humiliated or so much worse. But there was a bigger fear - that a life out of the closet would be a life I didn’t want to live.

For a short time before my kids were born I worked for a non-profit oriented toward the support of LGBTQIA people forced to leave their homes as refugees or asylum seekers. I’ve spent a large portion of my life working with people forced to flee. Living as a refugee is extremely hard, and LGBTQIA refugees have to survive without their families who so often reject them for who they are.

From my time working with these brave queer people, the biggest lesson I learned is this - The number one thing a person needs to survive is not food or water or shelter or a job or even a community. The number one thing a person needs to survive is the belief that their life is worthy of survival.

It is that belief – that you are worthy of survival – that motivates you to make the next right move when you have the opportunity. It is that belief that motivates you to find food, to find shelter, to step out into the desert with the hope that water is on the other side.

“When I come out, will I like who I am?”

That is the biggest fear I had, and the one I grappled most with during my two years in Peace Corps after I came out. I’m grateful for the chance to return to those two years while writing this book and find out the answer to that question that scared me for so long.

Looking out of an apartment window in Yerevan, Armenia. I lived in Armenia for two years after I came out.