National Coming Out Day

Yesterday was National Coming Out Day and given the recent spat of gay suicides, and the blood chilling events that took place in the Bronx last week,  I thought this might be a particularly good moment to tell my coming out story. But I was wrong.


My coming out story is boring.


I was 16 years old. My parents (while not thrilled) were loving. My friends were supportive. I've never been beaten up (for being gay), and I've never been called a fag.


Boring.


So if you are a blossoming little homo and you've somehow stumbled across this blog i think i'd feel a little disingenuous telling you 'It Gets Better," (though it does little homos, it does).


So instead I'll tell you this, "You are better off,"


You might think i'm crazy, or maybe you think i'm lying, but it's true.


You are lucky to be gay.


It might not look like it from where you are standing, but straight kids have it rough. The vast majority of them already have their lives mapped out for them and they don't even know it. They will graduate, get married, have kids, buy a boat and mortgage a house in the suburbs. They will spend nine hours a day pouring their lives into jobs that leave them empty and unfulfilled. And afterwards they will come home to partners they have been trained since childhood to mistrust and children that are practically strangers. Most of them don't even realize they have any kind of choice; they move from kindergarten to old age, from predetermined role to predetermined role. Some of these people are happy (honestly). And some escape these lives of quite desperation, and forge truly unique paths.

Most of us figure out pretty quickly that we aren't like the other kids. I remember being a kid and feeling like there was a game that everybody else knew the rules for, but i was always half a step behind... until i realized i didn't half to play at all. There are no roles just waiting around for us to step into, we can define ourselves. And if you do have kids, and a boat, and a mortgage it's because you fought for it. No one handed that life to you. You chose it.


Thats why we are lucky.


Because we are free to write our own destinies.


We get to choose.