This is pretty awkward and humiliating...I know.
I guess I never
really came out. I mean I’ve tried before, but it’s always ended in disaster. I
feel like if straight people don’t have to come out as straight, I shouldn’t
have to come out as gay, but then it’s just awkward to suddenly bring a guy
back to meet my friends. I’ve always wanted to be in a band and tour the world,
but I never expected to be playing the genre of music I do. If I was in some
crappy electronia band I guess it would be easier to just come out and say it,
but my fan base consists of creepy bald guys with beards who think drinking
blood is cool, sadly, I am not even kidding. Coming out could jeopardize absolutely
everything and fuck me over…which it has before.
As a kid I never
thought I would actually grow up. I always thought I wouldn’t live to see
another day so thoughts of romance didn’t ever pop up. I never saw a loving
married couple so I didn’t understand the concept of a relationship. I didn’t
have my first HUG until I was 12 years old so intimacy wasn’t a thing to me. I
just believed that babies popped out of nowhere and you would magically just be
placed with a girl to live with.
Through school I
learned that guys and girls get married and have kids, and that was the purpose
of life. I was conditioned to believe that I liked girls and that was that. When I was around 9 years old I thought some
guy was attractive and literally beat myself up for it. I was always made fun
of in school for having two different coloured eyes, coming to school beaten up
or being an orphan so doing anything out of the norm scared the fuck out of me.
I jokingly brought it up to one of my girl friends just to gauge her reaction,
but she just laughed at me and told me it was disgusting.
I guess I
developed my first “crush” (is that what you call it?) on a guy when I was 11. I never acted on
it or brought it up, I’m pretty sure I actually avoided him. I hated myself for
it. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. It was around the
time I started to really get into drugs so I just…self medicated.
When I met Sunny
I never thought anything of it. I didn’t exactly bring it up to people, but it
was never what it was like with Ben. Looking back I guess I kind of knew in the
back of my mind that Sunny wasn’t all female. There was always something off
about him, something that made him “genderless” in my mind. He never brought up
gender, and I never saw him on the guy’s side of the boarding school. That made
it okay for me. Of course, I didn’t actually know that he was transgender until
I was 14 years old, which is when it really hit me that I was actually gay, but
I would never admit that to myself.
The first time I
ever said it out loud was when I was 13 years old. Ben and I were alone in our
dorm room at night because Aiden was off getting his stomach pumped. Ben and I
had slept in the same bed since we were 2, I know it’s kind of weird…well no,
really weird, but it worked. [We had watched people disappear at night and never come back while growing up. We were forced to share beds in orphanages.
He had really bad night terrors because he actually watched his family died, he
would wake up screaming and would always end up badly hurting himself. He was
the only consistent person in my life (and still is) so I wouldn’t let him out
of my sight (I HAVE ABANDONMENT ISSUES OKAY BYE).] That night as he was getting
into the bed I told him that he should probably go sleep in his own bed
instead. When he asked me why I actually came out and said it out loud for the
first time. I told him that I thought I liked guys. He just laughed and told me
to prove it, to kiss him. I laughed because I thought he was just being an ass,
trying to hide up what I had just done. Instead he grabbed my face and kissed
me. When he pulled away he asked if I was sure. I was.
The second person
I told was my brother. Since we met when we were twelve years old he didn’t
know much about me. When I found out that his life was perfect, that he was
adopted into a loving family and had essentially no problems I hated him. I
didn’t tell him what I was going through. I told him that I was adopted too; I
even made up a fake family. I didn’t want to be beneath him and I didn’t want
his pity. When he finally decided to transfer to my school and move away from
Australia I couldn’t exactly keep it a secret anymore. On the first day of
school I came in with a broken leg that hadn’t been tended to, ripped out hair
and bruises everywhere. I finally came clean and told him absolutely everything.
When I told him I thought I was gay he seemed to be okay with it at first. Him
and Ben would jokingly point out guys to me and never made it out to be a bad
thing. That was until we got into a fight. After the Christmas break I came
back bruised and broken, once again. He told me that he thought I was breaking
my own bones and hurting myself because I was jealous of him, that I needed
attention because I didn’t have a family like he did. He ended up telling everyone
at that school that I liked guys. My friends didn’t believe the rumour and I
just brushed it off like nothing had happened.
I was harassed every
single day at that school. Nobody wanted to sleep in the same room as me, the
boys wouldn’t let me into the bathrooms to shower. My physical education
teacher made me change alone at the other side of the school. He didn’t let me
participate in the class for a little while, just making me sit on the
sidelines to watch, but then I was transferred into the girls gym class.
Students made fun of me, teachers made fun of me, I was sent to counselors to
try and “fix my problem”. Eventually it turned physical. I was in my bed one
night when a few guys from an upper house came and dragged me out. They brought
me outside and beat the crap out of me. All I remember is waking up in a
rubbish bin, unable to move. It took a full day for anyone to find me.
My brother and I
didn’t talk for a long time after that. He went back home and we didn’t become “close”
(if you can even call it that) again until we were 16. I was kicked out of my
school and ended up going to one in a new country where nobody knew my secret.
My friends continued to believe that it was just a rumour. I switched what last
name I went by and dyed my hair so nobody would ever find out who I really was.
My first actual
boyfriend was named Adam. I’m not really sure I even consider it…a
relationship? It’s just…embarrassing. He found out what happened to me at my previous
school from a friend, since he was originally from that country. He told me
that if I had sex with him he wouldn’t tell anyone. I went along with it, and
he kept up his side of the bargain. Eventually he started paying me to sleep
with him. Oddly enough…and sadly enough…I started to like him. He stopped
paying me and we would sneak out just to hook up off school grounds. During the
day he would treat me like shit. We got into physical fights and basically abused
each other. But during the night he was one of the nicest people I knew. I told
him everything, he told me everything. He never admitted he was gay the entire
time we were together, and when I moved he didn’t try and reach me again until
I was 19. He’s married now, to a guy, and has three kids.
Sunny and I would
constantly break up, I would go do my thing with guys and he would go do his
thing with girls. So it was pretty much just random hook ups all through high
school. Nobody really knew, I wouldn’t even tell Ben and I did everything I
could to keep it a secret so what happened previously wouldn’t happen again. I
was totally ashamed about what happened and that I even liked guys. Since I
wasn’t exposed to media or….tv…I just assumed that something was wrong with me,
but at that point I would do anything just to make someone like me, so it
stopped bothering me.
After Sunny died I
was a complete wreck. I refused to get out of bed; I refused to talk for almost
3 months. I left everything I knew in England because I couldn’t stand to be in
the same country that he died in. Every time I saw something that remotely
reminded me of him, even a house that looked like his, my mind would shut off
and I would literally pass out.
In therapy I was
always told that I’m gay because I don’t have a dad or because of shit that
happened to me as a kid. Everyone always makes it out to be something wrong and
something that’s supposed to be fixed. I guess I’m not going to ever accept it
or feel comfortable with it, but it’s gotten so much better. I hope I’ll
eventually be able to come out and tell everyone that I’m gay, because it hasn’t
been all bad with the guys, and I’ve met some of the greatest people online
that know and still like me despite it. I don’t want to hide forever.
