Coming Out Ep.3: Coming Out to Friends

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Can you believe how amazing I am with these graphics?

I mean, I could say it's symbolic as a way of figuring things out and starting to ease my way in... But, really I was just messing about, so enjoy!

I came out to my friends many times. I swung between the labels like Tarzan. A gay Tarzan (and let's be honest, we all want to see that adaptation).

And then in secondary school I met one of my best friends, who will be known as 'Charlotte', who reminded me of what a fluid little thing I was, and very openly into women. I used to have 'sexy' pictures of Rihanna and Girls Aloud around my room and never connected the dots for a little while, and neither did my family...

"I think you wrote a story on quotev that was about a lesbian relationship before I knew anything because we weren't close friends at that point. Honestly, I can't remember you coming out and announcing anything. I think I just heard you also liked women as well as men and that meant being bisexual. That was probably the first time I heard of the term because my childhood was very heteronormative and though you could only be "gay or straight", and you were probably the first openly bisexual person I knew of. That until in year 8 or 9, we started allowing boys into [insert school name] at lunch and many of the boys at the bench were gay or bisexual or pansexual, and slowly some girls started coming out as bi or gay. I already liked you as a person and wanted to be your friend and finding out you were bi at the time didn't really impact my impression of you. When you would date men though, I never saw you as "oh, she's straight now." NEVER. But I could kinda tell you preferred women. You just seemed more yourself and free with them. And when you came out to me that you were gay a few years ago? It wasn't a surprise at all. Since we were 12 or so I just felt that you gravitated towards women more.

"You were my first exposure to lesbians. Two of my primary school teachers were gay and both men and my favourite film, when I was 9, was The Birdcage and that had no lesbians in it. And your quotev story was probably the first story I read that had lesbians in it. I think Katy Perry's song in 2008, 'I kissed a Girl' was the closest thing to me knowing about lesbians. I don't know where I'm going with this but I guess gay men were more known to me than gay women when I was younger. By the time I met you, it just wasn't anymore. There's always gonna be bigoted assholes and I don't know how it was for you but I think our circle of friends at [insert school name] and that generation didn't really think much of it. This was all obviously from my perspective and idk how it all seemed to you.

"Even though I didn't really like [insert girl name] or [insert girl name] when you were dating them you definity seemed happier and it just seemed more fitting for you when you were with women."

At uni, I was openly bisexual, but it was struggling to stick and, after my little experiment, I was fully a lesbian, and not just bisexual. One friend was there when I did my scientific experiement, which you can read here, so wasn't phased when I finally said it sober. I didn't properly come out to anyone, in fact, I let it float around the rumour mill so half the work was done for me and got a few "so are you gay now?"'s which was easy to confirm.

Otherwise I just said "I've realised recently that I'm actually gay, not bi." And people don't ask a lot from that, it wasn't a shock to most people. Some friends were practicially waiting, others just shurgged it off, some seemed confused for five minutes.

Coming out to your friends, though, shouldn't be hard, and if is it means you're worried about losing someone close to you because of it. If you do, my advice is "good riddance!" You should never surround yourself with people that don't accept you, especially something you can't change, like being gay, so ditch them.

Good luck, don't sweat it, real friends will be happy you were comfortable enough to tell them.