People ask me all the time about my coming out experience wanting to hear about what happened with my high school friends, or what happened with my parents. But, I’ve told this story so many times. The real and raw “coming out” for me was the moment I came to terms with being gay. Sometimes I call this moment “the moment I came out to myself.”
For years prior, while I was in middle school, I started noticing things about the way other boys in my class were acting and how I didn’t feel or act the same. I started asking myself questions about this and pondered deep, life-shifting thoughts. For weeks, and then months, I asked myself questions until the moment I came out to myself.
This moment is vivid for me: I was sitting in the shower under the falling water, thoughts rushing through my mind. You know when it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and sometimes you just have to sit in the shower and let the water run over you? That was this.
“I wouldn’t ever afford myself the answers”
As the water ran over me, I started forcing myself to stop ASKING the questions and to ANSWER them. For so long, I’d asked myself questions about why I got excited to talk to boys or why my heart jumped when the boys in school talked to me, but I wouldn’t ever afford myself the answers.
Until this moment, I don’t even think I had the courage to answer myself honestly. In some ways, I don’t know that I knew enough about myself to answer these questions at all. But, as the water fell onto my back and shoulders, I told myself to stop hiding and to harness the fear.
“I admitted to myself what I was afraid to before”
For minutes, I sifted through the static created by my mind and heart yelling opposing messages at each other. My mind was telling me to protect myself and to keep these feelings at bay while my heart was begging to let them through. After some time, I admitted to myself what I was afraid to before. I felt the immediate release as I gave myself the space for these thoughts and feelings to rush in and wash over me.
Before this moment, I had built a dam and these feelings were welling up. Perhaps it was the drops splashing over the edge, the feelings getting through, that led me here. Like the drops falling down on me in the shower that day, these feelings woke me up to a larger warmth. In this moment, I was more honest with myself than I can ever remember being.
This wasn’t me trying to fit in or to avoid a conversation with the people in my life; this was me being honest with myself about what I was feeling and, more importantly, why.
I sat there for a few minutes, giving myself the time to process, and then I made a commitment: I would give myself the time that I needed here, but once I stood up, dried off, and stepped out of that shower, I wasn’t going to hold these feelings back anymore.
“I was no longer going to deny who I was”
I didn’t need to tell anybody about it, or even act on them, but I needed to be more authentic and honest with myself about who I was. Moving forward, I was no longer going to deny who I was.
This moment started a movement within me. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about my sexuality, it became about many feelings in my life. I suddenly realized other things that I was doing that I didn’t actually like and that I was doing for other people in my life. I started letting my feelings run more freely and this experience was liberating.
“suddenly the rainbow colors on the pride flag made more sense”
It was almost as if my feelings before were coming through a filter, all of them dull greys and blues. But, when I removed that stop and let them flow, suddenly the rainbow colors on the pride flag made more sense.
Sure, this experience did lead me to my coming out to friends, family, and, eventually an online community I never thought I’d have, but the REAL coming out for me was this: the coming out to myself and giving myself the permission to live authentically.
Nobody on the outside needed to know about it. That moment was solely mine and it changed my life forever.
Paul Alan Hunter
Edited by Aislinn O'Keeffe
LGBTQ+ Activist
