IDAHOBIT 2018

Taken from my Facebook post on May 17th, 2018:

Today is IDAHOBIT, International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. I rarely post a status anymore (this will be a tad longer than a traditional status) as finding meaningful/poignant/ridiculous things to share becomes more and more difficult. But today I’m going to give a few thoughts.

I think about my sexuality and how people perceive me every single second of every single day. I have for as long as I can remember. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing. As confident and as stoic as I seem, I’m equally unassured and nervous. Some of my close friends will say I’m completely awkward and have terrible social skills. I’m not sure which of my ‘confident’/‘stoic’ and ‘unassured’/‘nervous’ behaviours are performed and which are a true reflection of myself. I think I’m a little bit of both. I know I put on a bit of an act to make myself more relatable or likeable. Sometimes this works, sometimes this doesn’t. But this ‘act’ comes from somewhere and I have thought about it a bit over the years.

This is where I start to feel uncomfortable. I can vividly remember a friend introducing me as gay to their sister in Grade 6. I can vividly remember a friend telling me I was gay in Year 9 for playing volleyball. I can vividly remember a friend asking me “You’re not gay, are you?” a couple of years after finishing high school. Each instance elicited a different response from me. The first time I went along with it because I didn’t want to cry. The second time I didn’t speak to that friend for a week. The third time I said “no” because their qualifier of “not” made me feel like it was a bad thing.

I think I knew I was gay from a young age. I could go through my crushes from primary school, high school and beyond, but I don’t want to make people too awkward. Don’t worry, Alyce. I probably still have a bit of a crush on you, albeit twenty years later. What made me anxious and question myself was that people seemed to know and want to share my secret before I did. I didn’t want to share, so why were they allowed to? It’s not like being gay was a physical thing. It’s not like seeing someone who is tall and saying, “Gee, you’re tall.” It was mine and only mine, but others didn’t see it that way.

I went through high school quite comfortably, doing and saying all (most) of the right things. In hindsight, I was probably quite reserved and a little bit angry. Don’t get me wrong, I loved high school, save for the acne and blood noses. I’d love to go back and do it all again, but now with my new-found sense of self.

I held onto my secret until ten years ago when I told some very close friends. They were supportive and lovely, and a weight was instantly lifted off my shoulders. But then I felt a bigger weight – I had to start telling others. In opening this can of worms, I had unknowingly started to cultivate my own worm farm where I had to tend to so many worms. Some worms I had to hand feed; other worms were left up to their own devices. Little did I know that worms are easy to take care of and I shouldn’t have worried too much about them. Why did I put this pressure on myself, and why are we still doing it to ourselves? Side note: in Horticulture in Year 9, Rory dared me to eat a worm... I did.

Everyone is different. There is no clear-cut ‘moment’. There are no ‘dead giveaways’. It is deeply personal, and I can’t wait until the day where coming out doesn’t have to happen. I hope there’s a day where a person’s worth, or how you react to someone isn’t measured or influenced by the gender they like.

How many times have you said one of the following? “Oh, he’s gay,” or “I wonder if he’s gay,” or “I wish he was gay.” I know I’ve said each hundreds, if not thousands of times. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing to do, but maybe I should curb the amount of time I dedicate to it. If you are, you are. If you’re not, you’re not.

I could go on, but this is probably enough. It is something I have been uncomfortable with for far too long. I’m less uncomfortable with it now, but there’s still some discomfort there. And this has me thinking that if I’m uncomfortable with it, how uncomfortable are others?

If you’re struggling, questioning, feeling uncomfortable, feeling confused, feeling empowered, feeling ‘normal’ as ever, or just want to discuss anything, reach out and talk. These fingers like typing and I know my ears like listening.

Have an excellent IDAHOBIT.