thegaysiandiaries:

Dear Diary,

I feel like I’ve been out forever, but it hasn’t been that long. When I started writing this entry on April 2nd, 2016, I had come out exactly three years ago.

I was nineteen, a sophomore in college, when I came out to my first friend: he was a good college friend of mine who, like me, was gay and Vietnamese American. It was a Tuesday night when it happened. I had asked my friend earlier if we could talk at a quiet café on the edge of campus. I didn’t mention to him what it was about. As I walked to the café, I clutched an index card inside my jacket’s pocket as if everything depended on it.

Days before, I had been deliberating about how I should come out to my friend. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to say the words to him when the time came, so I compromised: I’ll write “I’m gay” on an index card and give it to him—simple as that. But when I wrote the index card the night before, I decided I didn’t want to just write “I’m gay”. Instead, I wrote “I’m very gay” because I thought the word “very” would make it clear to him (and myself) that I would no longer deny my sexuality. After sitting down with our tea, I handed my friend the index card, and my fate was sealed.

Thinking back on it, using an index card was a silly way to come out. But it did the trick. What I hadn’t fully comprehended at that time was that coming out is a process that never ends. Handing every person an index card with the words “I’m gay,” or even the words “I’m very gay,” wasn’t going to work.