Jake | 27 | London, England | Internal Recruiter
Comparing me pre-coming out and now, we are two very different people. Those who know me, know that I am very fortunate to have a strangely close bond with my family, even so that my mum has now ‘adopted’ a plethora of my friends as her children (they call her Mum all the time) and a number of Drag Queens as her closest friends and is more known on the Scene than I was as a Semi-Pro DJ. Even my 73 year old nan frequents the drag circuit and loves everyone that she has ever met who is gay or lesbian. However going back to my youth, I never really felt like I had that bond with anyone in my family. It felt to me as if I was a complete outsider and that in some ways I felt that Mum had got me off the street and raised me as her own. "I remember being at school and feeling like I wasn't ‘normal’, that something was seriously wrong with me but I had no idea what it was." I remember Lily Savage was hosting ‘Blankety Blank’ and all I felt was sheer jealousy at this wonderfully funny, confident individual who was at ease with him/herself. I didn’t understand it.
|
I found myself becoming very introverted, I didn’t have many friends at all and the friends I did have used to bully me anyway but I was so very alone I just put up with it. My six week school holidays saw me never leave the house, I didn’t want to make friends because they'd only beat me up or emotionally taunt me.
I found Yahoo Chat and started to speak with people online. I purposely made sure that if I spoke to anyone that they lived at least two counties away so I could be anonymous and just talk freely about things. I spoke to a guy called Chris in Essex who was everything I wanted to be. He was the polar opposite to what I was like and as we chatted more and more we began to text all the time. Mum will now know why she had to top up my phone every other day! He was always with friends and seemed very confident. He had realised a lot sooner than me that he was gay and had embraced the fact he likds men and although he hadn’t yet come out, he was at ease with the fact that he knew why he was different.
I started to question if I was gay too. I began to do research online into what gay meant and what it was like to be gay. Some of the horrific stories I read about people being murdered, people being beaten up, abandoned by their families and in some places tortured for weeks fuelled my desire not to be gay. I tried dating girls, tried to make male friends and even tried to like football (it’s safe to say I still have no idea what the offside rule is).
I found Yahoo Chat and started to speak with people online. I purposely made sure that if I spoke to anyone that they lived at least two counties away so I could be anonymous and just talk freely about things. I spoke to a guy called Chris in Essex who was everything I wanted to be. He was the polar opposite to what I was like and as we chatted more and more we began to text all the time. Mum will now know why she had to top up my phone every other day! He was always with friends and seemed very confident. He had realised a lot sooner than me that he was gay and had embraced the fact he likds men and although he hadn’t yet come out, he was at ease with the fact that he knew why he was different.
I started to question if I was gay too. I began to do research online into what gay meant and what it was like to be gay. Some of the horrific stories I read about people being murdered, people being beaten up, abandoned by their families and in some places tortured for weeks fuelled my desire not to be gay. I tried dating girls, tried to make male friends and even tried to like football (it’s safe to say I still have no idea what the offside rule is).
"Nothing I did could stop that niggling feeling."
One of the male friends I made lived locally and we had a really solid friendship. By this time, puberty had kicked in and hormones were through the roof for both of us. We began to spend a lot of time together and our feelings went beyond that of a friendship. We kissed. For him, it was an experiment and trying out his sexuality I guess however for me it was the moment I realised I was gay. All those connotations about being gay made me spiral into a place that now I realise was form of depression. I went through the ‘Goth phase’ where I could listen to angry music and have a reason to be alone and a moody teenager. I wasn’t moody, I didn’t know where to turn as I had a dirty secret. I remember sticking up for a girl called Kwan at school. We had hated each other for ages but I could see whatever the argument was about, she wasn’t in the wrong. We became friends and really close friends too. She was the first person I came out to and with that, it cemented our friendship. I was her GBF (gay best friend) and she was the support I needed and she helped me through the next stage - I decided to come out to the school. I don't know why I didn’t tell my parents first, but I didn't. I suddenly felt a huge lift of pressure come and although the remaining couple of years at school weren’t great because of the bullying, I felt happier in myself. |
I tried to tell Mum I was gay, but as I laughed to try and make the mood easier, she called me a ‘lying bas**rd’ and laughed with me. I was crushed as it had taken me so long to build that confidence up to tell her and she didn’t believe me. I wrote a letter which I found recently in the loft and gave it to Mum. When she read that letter for the first time, she cried for days as if I was terminally ill but we eventually spoke about it. I found out that her main issue was that she thought she wouldn’t have grandchildren from me.
"I went to groups aimed for LGBT youths and made some friends who I was comfortable with."
10 years on, I can say that although coming out is scary at the time, don’t ever hold back. Things have moved on but we are still a long way to go until being LGBT is fully accepted. Even recently I was asked to stop kissing someone in a ‘straight bar’ whilst some classy lady had her knickers down in the corner of the venue - but no one should be ashamed of who they are.
When my niece grows up (yes, Mum is a grandmother, she obviously forgot that she has a daughter and a step-son that may not be homosexual!), I know that she will be living in a different time. A time where any remaining stigma of loving someone who is the same sex as you is gone and same sex relationships are just as normal as heterosexual ones - but we have to make the changes ourselves, like the generation before us.
Follow Jake on Twitter @JakeHob
When my niece grows up (yes, Mum is a grandmother, she obviously forgot that she has a daughter and a step-son that may not be homosexual!), I know that she will be living in a different time. A time where any remaining stigma of loving someone who is the same sex as you is gone and same sex relationships are just as normal as heterosexual ones - but we have to make the changes ourselves, like the generation before us.
Follow Jake on Twitter @JakeHob
Comment Form is loading comments...