Who I am and why I'm doing this.
Two weeks ago I posted my first blog entry, a request for readers to submit their personal reflections on what it’s like to be gay (or lesbian or bi or trans or questioning) and on whether there’s anything else they use to define themselves besides their sexual orientation. Despite my efforts to promote the Gay in the Life Project on Facebook and Twitter, I haven’t received any submissions. But I haven’t given up, since despite the lack of submissions, I do have one story to post, and that’s my own. I hope more will follow.
As a college student at a liberal New England university, I’ve been told over and over to find my voice, to express myself, and to make a difference in the world. For someone who arrived freshman year still in the closet, this was easier said than done. But my story is not a coming out story. I mean, I did come out soon after getting to college, and that was significant in itself, but it’s what followed coming out that was the best part: being able to speak openly, finding that voice I’d heard so much about.
I don’t know if it’s this way for everyone before they come out, but being in the closet made me feel like I was between two places, but not really in either one. I felt isolated from my family and my friends, gay and straight, because of that lack of honesty, and I felt like I was missing out on the things that out gays got to do that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t let myself.
So when I came out, it was like I finally got where I was supposed to be. I could be honest and frank about who I was with all my loved ones, and I got the opportunity to make a host of new friends on new terms. That to me was the best result of coming out: the sense of belonging to a new community, being a part of its heritage, pride, and even struggles. I’d obsessed over being gay long enough, but now I could exert that energy more positively since I was part of something bigger. How fortunate that I came out in college, where there is no shortage of opportunities to get involved with service and activism.
And if college is a great place to be gay, then the new millennium is a great time to be gay. I know today’s world is pretty crazy and that it seems pretty bleak with the economy tanking, the ozone layer shrinking, and a bunch of people with bombs trying to beat each other to the punch, but for some reason all the talk about the Good Old Days when America was on top and everybody had a job just doesn’t jive with me. After all, those were also the days in which separating your colors from your whites was more than just good laundry advice. Back then, homosexuality was barely talked about except as a joke, and gays themselves were forced to lives of fear and depression in their closets.
Today, you can do things like join a gay social network or talk openly about your feelings. Hell, you can even start a gay blog for crying out loud! But for all this openness, there’s still a great deal to be done, and I’m not just talking politically. The stereotypes and prejudices are still out there, but the more we examine them the better we can resolve them. Furthermore, the taboos surrounding LGBTQ issues still mean you can’t always express yourself as openly as you’d like, or that you’re still painted in a certain way that you might not agree with.
These are all things that I honestly feel about the LGBTQ community in our time, and that’s what led me to start this blog. Let’s share our stories as LGBTQ people and put human faces to the labels. If people fixate on your being gay, tell us who else you are. Or maybe you can’t always express your orientation as you’d like to. In that case, tell us what it’s like to be in that situation and how being gay affects you. Be honest, be frank, be you. I feel that we only stand to gain from this. In addition to showing the world who we are, we may discover things about ourselves by reading the stories of others and hearing what they have to say about ours. Each one of us has a story worth sharing, so let’s begin today.
If you would like to participate in the Gay in the Life Project, email your to gay.in.the.life@gmail.com, along with your fist name or pen name, age, location, and/or any other information that you’d like posted to introduce yourself. Include a title that begins, "A Gay (Lesbian, Bi, Trans, Questioning) in the Life of..." All contact information will remain private and confidential.
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