Marie Marolle’s Coming Out Story

I’ve always felt “different” since I was a kid. I was very tomboyish, very feminine and masculine at the same time. I never really understood how to feel comfortable being a girl in the way society defines a girl, but I didn’t feel like a boy either or fitted in with how boys are defined in our society.

At the age of 15 in high school, I once asked a friend: “What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror?” She told me “I see myself as a girl, why?”.

I told her “That’s funny, I don’t see myself as anything. I literally just see me! A human named Marie, I don’t think I match or feel like any gender”. Of course, at that time I only knew two genders, male and female and I spent years being surrounded by binary people. 

I was really scared to tell anyone that I liked girls even though I always knew, but my family was so conservative. I wasn’t able to open up to anyone because I was scared. Another good friend I met outside school once told me “You know Marie, I really think anyone can fall in love with anyone, the gender doesn’t matter.” That clearly triggered something positive in me. Finally, someone in my surrounding was saying something that resonated with me.

“Being different which is being myself is probably the best feeling in the world”

I came out to my mom at 18 when I came back from China where I did my university studies. I cried a lot that day and took the chance to tell her I had a girlfriend. My mom just said I wasn’t normal and left my room. It really hurts to hear that from someone who means the world to you and since that day, I embraced being “not normal”. Being different which is being myself is probably the best feeling in the world.

A man on a film production once asked me “How was it to be gay in Asia?”

I told him, “Honestly, I have been very lucky to meet lots of people from different generations and to have been accepted just as I am without judgements on my love relationships. I believe if you are a good person, with good intentions and a good heart, people will like you for who you are not for what you like.”

He replied: “Yes, it would be nice if the world was like that, but it’s not unfortunately”. It made me realise that his thinking was part of the problem.

I have 3 sisters and 2 of them are extremely supportive of the person I am today. I myself try to deconstruct the language and question the “standards”. Who decides what is normal? Who decides if your feelings match a standard?

My partner Katherine has been my soul mate for 4 years now and she has taught me a lot about myself. She supports me through the ups and downs of my journey. She makes me feel loved and safe, there’s no other place I’d like to be than by her side. When you find someone who accepts your whole self, you truly become who you are, which is something I really needed. I also have wonderful friends around the world that are always there for me. I am so grateful for the people I met.

When I was filming the series The D Cut in Toronto last year, first, I was so happy to be on a show with so much diversity behind and in front of the camera. Secondly, I met an actor called Joanne Vannicola and they told me the way I feel is exactly what they have felt their whole life, this “alien” feeling is being non-binary. Not conforming to what society gives us. It changed me. When I knew their pronouns were they/them, I thought it was awesome. It took me some time to realise that changing pronouns could actually make me feel more like myself.

I passed an audition this year for the UK series Sex Education and the role was for a non-binary character. I felt so happy first of all because I love this TV series but also because it was the first time I was auditioning for a non-binary character and I truly felt a connection, a joy inside speaking lines of someone who feels like me. Since that audition, I decided to use the pronouns they/them.

Coming out stories