My name is Markus Boos and I am from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

I had been married to a woman for 10 years and we had twin boys and a dog. When we first came to Seattle, during that time, I was searching for a community. I went to the gym. There’s one person there that I would see regularly and so we started talking and hung out one time together then. And when we went out, I had no idea that he was gay but it became apparent, you know, during our our evening. We went out to get a drink. I remember going home that night and just thinking about him in a way that was a little bit more than “Oh, I made a new friend.” And that was something new and something I never let myself feel before.

So a few weeks later, we got dinner together and we were talking and he was telling a story about when he was growing up and he said that his parents, when they would have parties, family friends over oftentimes, and they were cleaning up, they would discuss what their friends had said. And what they commented was that what they really – what that person really meant was this. And what my friend took from that was just sort of a mistrust or distrust of what people are actually putting forward in their lives.

And as I listened to the story and kind of took it all in, I asked afterwards, I was like, “What do you think that I’m keeping a secret or that I’m not being forward about?”

And his response to that was, “I think that you’re attracted to men and you don’t act on it.”

It was the first time that sort of, like, the scales fell off my eyes and I was like, “Yeah, you’re right.” I mean, that was the only answer that I – the only response I could muster up. It felt strange and also really great because I knew that in that moment, I was actually being honest with myself for the first time.

I remember biking home from that dinner, and there’s a hill that I take to get home, and just going, just no breaks, and just flying down that hill and that rush and it really just felt like I was free for the first time ever. And then I got home, reality hit because I had to make a decision then. I had, you know, a life that I had spent the last twenty, thirty years building towards that I thought that I wanted. And more importantly, I had two kids and the thought of kind of disrupting our family unit really weighed on me.

You know, no one gives you the the guide book for a how to come out your wife. My wife said to me, you know, “You seem quiet. What’s going on?” And I told her I’m gay. And, you know, her response was shock and anger and sadness. That night, I slept on the couch and the next day was kicked out of the house that we had just bought. I went to live with friends for a time. And after a week or two, we had one of these mother-in-law suites in our house and so I kind of moved into that. It was just this, like, cut off from my family, they were so close but I couldn’t even touch them. And it was just this one room. There was no heat. It was the late fall/early winter and I’m freezing to death. Everything is dark. I can barely pull myself up out of the bed every day and I would just, you know, cry myself to sleep at night.

With each day that passed, I knew that things were getting a little bit better. I could see myself being study at work, that my patients and my colleagues appreciated me. I saw that my relationship with my boys wasn’t changing. I had a community of friends who came to my rescue, honestly, and let me know it is okay to be myself. And with every day that passed, I believed that more and more until I got to a place where I was really okay with who I was.

So a number of months afterwards, I had moved out to a new place and I had ordered a pride flag that came in the mail. And my boys were with me and the package arrived and they were so excited over the package and so we opened it.

I said to them, I said, “Do you know what this flag is?”

And my son said, “Yeah, that’s the gay flag.”

And he said, “And Daddy, I’m gay too because I love you.” You know, he totally missed the point about the flag, but for me, it was just his innocence and it was just such a lovely thing that he didn’t see it for anything other than he loved me and that’s what that flag was a representation of for him. It was in that moment that I realized that we were going to be okay forever and that I made this decision for the exact reason that I wanted to. What I hoped that my boys would get out of it, they were going to.

I mean, it’s only been three years and so I’m still kind of, you know, becoming the person that I think that I’ve been meant to be all along. I just hope that this whole experience keeps on making me a better person and shines a light on the fact that you can figure out who you are way late. I know my experience is maybe not typical, but it is the one that I have and I’m proud of this decision that I made and the person that I am and the person that this whole coming out process has turned me into.