Allow me, if you will, a moment to recount something that happened to me nearly 8 years ago…

It seems almost surreal to me now. That I was so scared of being discovered. That I was so scared of people finding the truth. That people would find out this dark secret that I had held inside for so long.

People often ask, when I first realised. They ask questions like “When did you know you were gay?”, “How old were you when you realised you liked guys?”. The truth sometimes surprises them.

I didn’t.

I mean, I must have at some point. I have vague memories of being 13, 14, maybe even 15 and knowing that I couldn’t tell anyone because to do so would have meant bad things. I’m not sure I knew exactly what it was I wasn’t telling people however, or even what those bad things would be but I knew that I couldn’t tell anyone.

Despite this however about 8 years ago I finally let people know the secret I had been carrying. I came out to my classmates. See, I’d always been the quite one. Sure I had my run in’s with the occasional student, teacher but nothing that ever left any permanent mark on my record. I pretty much managed to fly under the radar for the most part. I kept myself to my fairly tight social circles and that was that.

In truth I’m not really sure what triggered me to come out apart from that it was my time to. Something in me realised I needed to for my own piece of mind. It was gradual at first. I took the morning break to find a female friend of mine and tell her one the quiet I was gay to which she just pretty much shrugged and went “so” (a rather surprising reaction from someone who I had asked out multiple times over the years).

With that I realised that this might be a lot easier then I originally realised. With renewed confidence I went and found my best friend. For the sake of anonymity (although it will be painfully clear to anyone who knows us who this is) let’s call him Michael.

Despite my new found confidence I needed to make sure I told him on the quiet in case things didn’t go as I hoped. So after managing to separate him from our social group and move to a quite section of the grounds I rounded on him as he walked behind me and just said it aloud.

“Micheal I’m Gay”

To say that he didn’t react the way I expected would be an understatement.

He laughed.

And not just a haha laugh but a full on belly laugh. Now me and micheal had been pulling stunts on each other for years but this was no stunt. Time slowed down and all I could do was stand there as he bent double laughing.

I was frozen to the spot. Not sure how to recover this until he looked up to breath. In that instant his face dropped. The laughter stopped and his colour ran from his cheeks. “You’re being serious”…

Under statement of the year…

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s cool, we’re cool, that’s cool, I’m sorry.” And so and so forth.

The wave of relief was palpable and from then on it became a lot easier to come out despite some of the disapproving looks from my peers and even one or two members of the faculty (but only when they thought I wasn’t looking).

A lot of people asked me in the coming days if it was true. At 16 in the final year of high school to suddenly have the straight guy who flew under the radar come out as the only gay guy in the school it’s safe to say that the grapevine was singing.

Some tried to make a joke of it until they realised It didn’t phase me, the majority of them either ignored it or didn’t even get to know (unlikely) one or two asked me directly if it was true (a surprising number of whom turned out to be gay themselves I would discover in later years)

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So why am I sharing this. Well today is national coming out day. The truth is I have no idea when this was in the year beyond that it was my last year of high school so today seems as good a time as any to make a mark that it has been nearly 8 years. Nearly a third of my life since I came out.

I’ll follow this later with a few pieces of advice on coming out I picked up over the years that I wish I had known back then but for now I just want to say that if you are considering coming out or find yourself in a position that you are outed. Remember… it isn’t always as hard as it seems, it does get better and people will surprised you (sometimes that’s good, sometimes that bad, but either way your better of knowing)