The Silence Before
I carried the secret for twenty-three years like a stone in my chest, growing heavier with each passing day. It lived in the spaces between words, in the careful deflections when friends asked about girlfriends, in the way I'd change the subject when conversation turned to dating and relationships.
Growing up in suburban Ohio in the early 2000s, being gay wasn't something you talked about openly. It wasn't that my family was particularly conservative—we weren't religious, and my parents considered themselves progressive. But there was an unspoken assumption that hung in the air like humidity: that I would grow up, find a nice girl, get married, and give them grandchildren. That was simply the way things worked.
I learned to navigate around my truth with the skill of someone walking through a minefield. In high school, I dated girls because that's what was expected. I became an expert at performing straightness—laughing at the right jokes, nodding along when friends rated girls in our class, even having girlfriends who I genuinely cared about, just not in the way they deserved.
The cognitive dissonance was exhausting. I'd lie awake at night staring at the ceiling, wondering if this feeling would ever go away, if I could somehow will myself into being different. I made bargains with a God I wasn't sure I believed in: Just let me be normal. Just let me want what I'm supposed to want.
The Reckoning
College provided some distance but not relief. Away from home, I thought I might finally be able to explore who I really was. But fear followed me to my dorm room, settled into my new friendships, whispered warnings whenever I caught myself looking at a guy a little too long.
It wasn't until my junior year that everything came to a head. I'd been struggling with depression, though I didn't have a name for it then. I just knew that getting out of bed felt impossible some days, that food tasted like cardboard, that I felt disconnected from everyone around me like I was watching life through thick glass.
My roommate Mike noticed first. "Dude, you've been weird lately. Like, weirder than usual weird. What's going on?"
I wanted to tell him. The words sat right there on my tongue, three simple words that felt impossibly heavy: I am gay. But instead, I shrugged and said I was just stressed about classes.
That night, alone in my room, I typed those words into my laptop: I am gay. Just seeing them on the screen made my heart race. I deleted them immediately, as if someone might see the pixels lingering on the monitor.
But something had shifted. I'd named the thing I'd been running from, even if only for a few seconds. And once you name something, it becomes harder to pretend it doesn't exist.
The First Words
My coming out happened in stages, like slowly turning up the volume on a song. The first person I told was my friend Sarah from my psychology class. We were studying in the library late one Tuesday night when she asked, seemingly out of nowhere, "Are you happy?"
The question caught me off guard. Not "How are you?" or "What's wrong?" but "Are you happy?"
"I don't know," I said, which was the most honest thing I'd said in months.
"You know you can tell me anything, right?" she said, not looking up from her textbook. "Like, literally anything. I'm not going anywhere."
Maybe it was the casualness of it, or the late hour, or just that I was tired of carrying the weight alone. But I found myself saying, "I think I might be gay."
Think. Might. Even then, I hedged my bets.
Sarah looked up from her book and smiled. "Okay. How do you feel about that?"
Not Are you sure? Not Have you tried...? Just How do you feel about that?
"Terrified," I admitted.
"That makes sense," she said. "It's scary when something about yourself doesn't match what everyone expects. But you know what? You're still the same person you were five minutes ago. You're still my friend who brings me coffee during finals week and who laughs at my terrible jokes."
That conversation lasted three hours. We talked about fear and expectations and the difference between who we are and who we think we're supposed to be. When I walked back to my dorm that night, I felt lighter than I had in years. Someone knew, and the world hadn't ended.
The Domino Effect
Telling Sarah made telling others easier, but not easy. Each conversation felt like stepping off a cliff, never knowing if you'd find solid ground or free fall on the other side.
I told my college friends one by one over the course of several months. Most were supportive, some were surprised, a few were awkwardly supportive in that well-meaning but clumsy way that shows people care even when they don't quite know what to say.
My friend Josh's reaction was typical: "Dude, I had no idea! But like, that's cool. Good for you for figuring that out. So... do you have a boyfriend?"
The assumption that coming out meant I must be dating someone always amused me. As if accepting my
