In honor of Coming Out Day, I would like to talk about my own “coming out.” However, I am horrible with timing, and this article will likely “come out” a week too late. This may be a bit poetic. The coming out process isn’t limited to one, simple, clean-cut day. Opening up about one’s LGBT+ identity often extends beyond a single moment, day, week, or even year. My lateness in publishing might reflect this lifelong reality in some abstract sense. At the very least, I’ll tell myself that before I go to bed, and hope my editor feels the same way.
Rewind a little under three years to the spring of 2014. I didn’t think that I would ever “come out.” Through the previous three years, I had learned to recognize and accept that I was attracted to men. I was gay. No amount of prayer had fixed me, and it seemed that no amount ever would. I started to live my life believing I needed to face that fact. Make no mistake, though, I had not accepted myself in any healthy sense. My sexuality was a terminal diagnosis, difficult to bear but impossible to ignore.
I accepted that I was alone. Christians weren’t gay. Although I didn’t believe salvation depended on a change in my sexual orientation, I was still overwhelmed at the thought of my situational isolation. There was no one to turn to, and certainly no one in which to confide. During the four years at my private Christian high school, there had been only one instance (known at least) of a gay student. Summarizing the story quickly, the person in question was removed from attendance when their identity was uncovered by the administration. What followed was a distinct change in the way the student body perceived and treated LGBT+ persons. Beyond the preexisting atmosphere of derision masked through humor, there was now a sense of “the other.” We already understood that gay people existed, that they lived a “sinful lifestyle,” that they were weird and even nauseating. But now, we knew that they did not belong among us or in a place dedicated to God. I doubt my peers remember the culture they inhabited and helped create, but the impact and implications were not lost on me. Maybe you could be a gay Christian, but you sure as hell couldn’t let anyone know you were trying.
I accepted that I was going to live alone. No one, if they really knew what I was, would continue to accept me. I imagined my friends’ pain when they inevitably learned that I had subjected them to friendship with a “homosexual.” In particular, I hated myself for how my male peers would feel knowing I might have been attracted to them. How could I betray their trust for so long? I began dismantling my friendships with that question in mind. I pushed myself into the fringes of my already small social circles. I stopped talking, literally going days without speaking, hoping I could just muscle my way into graduation. My friends would finally be spared coexistence with a secret, twisted deviant. The rest of my life would follow suit. I needed to work hard to avoid befriending anyone who didn’t know about my brokenness. Maybe you could be a gay Christian, but you sure as hell couldn’t expect anyone to stand beside you.
I accepted that I would die alone. Marriage was beyond consideration. I was incapable of loving a woman in ways that could produce a healthy union. I felt convicted that I couldn’t marry if I couldn’t offer the simplest foundation of attraction. Meanwhile, anyone I could possibly grow to love was morally beyond my reach. Even entertaining the thought of finding love tempted the punishment of God. I would live my life in celibacy until death. Until then, there would always be another victim of my disgusting affections. A friend who I let too close. I had to remind myself how sinful it was to love them. I had to fight the hope of being loved in return. There could be no hand to hold at the death bed, no children, no wife, no husband. I could only wait for death to finally free me from myself. Maybe you could be a gay Christian, but you sure as hell would want to die sooner than be one.
With this cacophony of self-hate, disillusionment, and hopelessness I arrived at the last respite I had left: prom.
The melodrama is palpable, I know.
Prom was bitter sweet my senior year. It felt like the last celebration of my remaining friendships before we each went our separate ways. It was the last time I would have any friends at all. In the past, I let people into my life without knowing how broken I was, and now I had spent four years struggling to push them away. In the future, I would have to be proactive. I could never allow myself to trick someone into friendship with me again. I could never allow people close enough that my twisted heart would poison our relationship. This made prom sweet. It was an opportunity to appreciate the wonderful people I had grown up with. And it made it bitter. Prom was the final chance to appreciate friendship as it faded out of my reach. This was my life now. I would always be the “outsider looking in,” wishing I was anything but myself and loathing the inability to escape.
I wanted to die.
But I couldn’t kill myself. I knew that. If I suffered through life, maybe God would let me into heaven, but killing myself would only concrete my place in damnation. I could only suffer and wait for God to finally kill me.
I quietly snuck out into the hall and cried.
This was my life now.
I don’t remember how the night continued from there. Somehow, I found myself talking with the school counselor. I suppose it wasn’t unusual for her to see me alone, crying, while everyone I knew was busy dancing. She was arguably the most invested teacher in our school, and we had interacted many times attempting to work through my undiagnosed depression and OCD. Although I had never admitted one of the root causes of my anxiety, she was still one of the few people I trusted. We talked about the usual things, my social anxiety and fear of rejection. However, as always, I made every effort to avoid the source of my crippling breakdown.
Suddenly, every emotion deserted me. No sadness, happiness, anxiety, or ease. There was only the cold and definite recognition that I would live and die alone. The cold and definite recognition that this person I trusted would never care about me if she really knew who I was. Being honest would mean risking the loss of everyone I knew. Admitting homosexuality to a school administrator could mean losing everything I had worked for only a few weeks before graduating. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. My life, everything I had and everyone who loved me, was an illusion held together my fishing-line. I never felt such an overwhelming sense of apathy. Looking back, if I hadn’t chosen to speak that night I would likely have killed myself by graduation.
It took me a few times to say it.
“The real problem is-“
The shame was unbearable.
“You don’t understand, I’m-“
Those two words I had only ever prayed to God.
“I’m gay.”
The floodgates opened and three years of agony spilled onto the hallway floor of the Dekalb Museum of Barbwire (we had our prom at a museum for barbwire; my town is very proud of its history). I told the school counselor about how much it hurt to push away every one of my friends. How it hurt to care about someone who could never feel the same way. More than that, the pain of knowing my affection was intrinsically disgusting to God and everyone around me. The pain of struggling to find comfort from parents as they repeated “it’s all just a phase, it’ll go away.” The pain of not knowing if they would love me when it inevitably didn’t go away. The pain of slurs and insults slung unknowingly by friends. The pain of telling myself it was wrong that I wanted them to stop. The pain of knowing that everyone who sung my praises would abandon me some day. The pain of knowing they morally couldn’t accept the real me. The pain of being a “golden child” to my school, church, or family who would lose all respect for something beyond my control. The pain of three years of unanswered prayers.
Every other sentence was punctuated with the same variety of lines.
“I know it’s wrong.”
“I know I can’t act on it.”
“I’m not trying to say it’s ok, or that I’m ok.”
“I’m going to follow God.”
“It’s wrong.”
“It’s wrong!”
“I’m wrong!”
When I finished, I was an empty shell. It divulged my shame and pain, but nothing came to replace it. This was it. I had passed the point of no return. Now, it was only and matter of sitting and watching my life fall apart. I sat, eyes digging into the carpet, and waited for the school counselor to repeat what I told myself for the last three years.
“The bible says-“
“Homosexuality is-“
“Marriage is for-“
“God says-“
“You need to-“
“You must not-“
I only remember two things about what my school counselor said to me that night. First, she never reminded me of the moral wrongness of my attractions. She didn’t pull out her bible and read the scriptures I had already branded into my brain. She didn’t ask if I had tried to change. She knew I understood the weight of my convictions, and that I didn’t need need a refresher course in the realities that were tearing me apart. Instead, she said something that still haunts me to this day.
“I’m sorry.”
She was sorry for the way she had talked about gay people while at our school. She apologized for failing to curb the actions and words of students who unknowingly mocked me. She apologized for school officials who created an atmosphere where that mockery was acceptable. She apologized for the ways Christians had hurt me for so long.
“I pity you.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “Not because you’re gay, Tyler, but because I know Christians…I know how much they’re going to hurt you. I’m so sorry...”
That was it.
She didn't tell me I could "act" on being gay. Even if she had, I wouldn't have listened. I simply went home later that night. I graduated later that month. It would be another six months before I even considered researching affirming theology. Another 9 months before I would become affirming myself. Another year and a half before I came fully out of the closet. When I first came out, there was no moment of realization that I could love men and still honor God. There was no triumph of full of self-acceptance. However, my first coming out experience has still permanently impacted how I see myself and every member of my community. My school counselor told me, in her apology, that I wasn’t a monster. I didn’t deserve to be mocked and scorned, even if I couldn't morally act on my sexual orientation. I didn’t deserve isolation and abandonment, even if that was exactly what would happen. My pain was real, and it wasn’t right.
You, whoever you may be, are not a monster.
You may choose to be celibate, or you might not.
You may choose to embrace your identity, or you may not.
But whatever you choose, know that you deserve to be loved, genuinely. You do not deserve derision and scorn. You do not deserve isolation or abandonment. You are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Your pain is real, and it is not right. Coming Out Day, for me, is a moment to remember that fact. An opportunity to be the private Christian school teacher in the prom nights of someone else’s life. Someone to say:
“I’m sorry.”
And to say that it really can get better.
