Why did I wait so long to come out?

Why did I wait so long to come out?   Jim S asked this question with a grinning kind of emoticon, but you know, it’s worth a serious answer.  It’s certainly a question I have asked myself.  As well, this is tied to the question, why did I finally act on this?  Here are some things that address those questions:

1. I had too strong a need to be sure that I am indeed gay.  I like certainty.   While I know that life really doesn’t provide certainty, I get stuck grasping for it.  Just in the last week I turned that around to “I want to be gay”.  That doesn’t mean I’ve gotten carried away with being merely gay-curious, but rather, that I recognize the yearning in me to be who I am, and to now use that as a force for acceptance and coming out.  Yes I was in a conventional marriage and so I could be seen to be bisexual, but it’s not a concept that feels to me to be a good fit.  I have said that I am gender neutral, but when I look at my behaviors and what I am attracted to - stimulation is orientation, it is said - I’m just gay with a lesser dose of uncertainty.  I’m sure straight folk have uncertainty too.

2. I have a longing to be normal.  I wasn’t embracing who I am.  I wanted a better looking body, but there’s no changing that.  I wanted to be more socially skilled, but it’s just not my personality.  That’s not a gay specific need, but it speaks to my wanting to be normal.  The antidote for that is to understand that gay is normal.

3.  I feared I would lose a sense of self, sort of like I would extinguish myself.  In throwing off one image, albeit confused, and donning another - what would I become?  It’s like entering a strange forest with no paths.  It is today, right now, as I write this.  That’s OK - life is uncertain, unpredictable, and ultimately groundless. Paths are not laid out for us; paths are made by walking and that’s what I have to do now.  (BTW the self comes under a different microscope in Buddhism, but that’s not a discussion for here.)

4.  I wasn’t being true to myself.  As Polonius said to Laertes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

I thus wasn’t being true to those who know me and love me either.  It was time to change that.

I will probably come up with more observations on this later, but that’s a pretty good list for now.