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Paddy OConnell | 46 | London | Journalist & Broadcaster

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I made coming out as complicated as possible.  

I did it in stages, like I was performing some kind of strip tease.  Off came one glove here - telling a friend - or another glove there - telling a stranger in a bar. 

Then, whoosh, my shirt would come off, and I'd tell my work mates. 

But when I finally had everything off -  the Full Monty - and I'd told my family, my friends and random bus drivers, I received a note from a guy I'd known since we were both 13.

"Dear Paddy" it said, ".... Bugger your sex life!  I'll always be your friend."

Friends later told me they'd known from when I was a teenager since I'd had lots of opportunities they thought I never took.  (Except for Laura Jane, a 16 year old girl from whom I was surgically removed at the end of a school disco.)

I said I wished they'd told me, since I'd wasted a lot of time and emotional effort on the whole thing.

"I grew up in a single parent family after my Dad died when I was 11. 
I think this made me want to be a strong masculine kind of son, as loyal as possible to my family and my mum."

Of course, you can be gay and masculine and strong, but as a teenager I was baffled by the whole thing.  I was lucky that I had friends who liked talking endlessly, and over the years, it all came out - like me.   I think the first person I told was a married mate, and we both loved to stay up late at night, putting the world to rights, listening to music when everyone else had gone to bed. 

It was a relief and I'm sure there were tears, but a lot of smiles.  In the end, the whole thing took a few more years when a close family member came out to me, when I was living in America. I'd gone there partly to live with my boyfriend, but I gained a sense of freedom from the old worries about who I was.  

"When I came out
it didn't please everybody, and in fact, it still doesn't."

It still amazes me how some straight people don't care at all, and helped me on my way, and others still get their knickers completely in a twist about it.

I support this website for giving different stories, and showing how there is no copy-paste way to be yourself in life. 

Thanks for reading my words and well done rucomingout for your website.


Follow Paddy on Twitter - @paddy_o_c

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