outed

a pride month reflection

Dedicated to everyone who never got a choice.

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My “coming out” story is not a feel-good one.

It’s not a sweet memory, not one I hold dear. It’s rocky, painful, and it caused more loss than I ever imagined. It always felt more like something I overcame rather than something that I was accepted into.

I grew up queer in the deep south. It was the late 2000’s, and the thought alone of being gay terrified me to the point of paranoia. I remember getting on my knees and begging God to change me, to keep me straight, to let me avoid the struggle I knew I was in for, even as a child.

When I was around 16, when I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I called someone that I loved more than the world and told them: “I think I might like girls.”

They said, “I’ll call you right back,” and never did.

A little while later, a woman at my church who was around my mother’s age cornered me in the bathroom. “God put it on my heart that you’re gay, and that’s a problem,” she said with faux concern. “Do you have issues with your mother?”

Acid roiled in my gut as I pushed past her, sprinting out back toward the pews where my mother and grandmother were sitting. “I’ll be outside,” was all I said.

I went to the car and repeated the Hail Mary until I couldn’t think straight, hoping and praying that maybe it would all go away if I pleaded hard enough.

Days passed and bled into weeks, and when I went back to school after that summer, I got a lot of nasty looks in the hallway. I saw girls stare at me and whisper, and my gut sank.

An older boy on the football team asked, “are you a dyke now?” He spat the word at me.

“No,” I stuttered. He was a lot bigger than me. I remember being in his shadow.

“Good,” he said. “Because if you wanna fuck girls like a man I have to beat your ass like a man.”

Other boys around him laughed.

There’s a lot I don’t remember after that, likely repressed.

What I do remember are the deep emotions I felt, the agony and shame of being outed that followed me for a long time. I was uncomfortable with platonic affection from other women for years, thinking somewhere deep down that I was something awful, something that others should be kept away from.

From that point on, I mostly kept my head down and sank into my online life. There was a bright glowing screen that connected me with people exactly like me, living in intolerant circumstances with a desperation for connection. I stayed up with my friends across multiple time zones every night and went to school groggy, but at least I felt some level of acceptance, of fulfillment. Of the realization I was not alone.

Looking back, I cannot fathom what that experience would’ve been like before the advent of the Internet. It gave me a lifeline in a time where I couldn’t see one around me. I often imagine those who came before me and think of what they went through, of the resources I had that they lacked.

Pride month is always bittersweet for me. I feel proud of who I am and what I’ve overcome, but at the same time, part of me still feels like that scared girl from fifteen years ago. It’s been difficult to write this piece, more difficult than usual. These memories have remained buried for quite some time, and digging them up took more effort than expected.

But it’s important to me that you understand just how recent this experience was. This wasn’t during the AIDS crisis, this wasn’t during the Stonewall Riots— this was around 2013. This mindset is still rampant, and it’s not just limited to the Deep South.

There are people in power whose greatest desire is to see queer people’s rights rolled back, and they’ll pay a lot of money to make it happen. Your experience, your pain, your passion, and your joy are invaluable. It is a matter of resistance that you and I both persist, and I hope you’ll join me in doing so.