Is Coming Out Worth it?

[Jacob]

Also late to the convo!

I want to second you Heather on creative output, but also, radicallyunique, I only just realised I dropped the ball with you back in april. My apologies! I really appreciate you engaging in my answer to you and now hearing about the progress you've been making for yourself... I'm kicking myself that your reply to me slipped the net! I'm so glad to be getting an update!

[radicallyunique]

Hi everyone ,

It's so strange to have so many replies at once.

Karyn,
Thanks a lot for your concern about the potential anxiety I would face by going with the bulletin thing. I was going to construct a really long reply where I explained that even though I felt super anxious about the whole thing, I was still sure I wanted to go through with it. It was going to be some variation of the fact that I had tried to make progress with slower more incremental ways of reducing social anxiety but had ended up persisting through the situation and finding it difficult afterwards to think about the situation or repeat it. I then experimented with skydiving, like with the analogy you used, and found that though I felt a lot of anxiety before and during, this method was more effective at reducing my anxiety in future situations.

In any case, I decided that the reply would have been way too long and decided instead to just tell you how it went. It turns out I had worried more than I needed to, because since coming out in such a way, nothing has happened. No one treats me differently or flinches when I talk about being queer. Even if the response had been bad, I think the experience of facing my fear makes everything easier.

Heather,

For some strange reason, I am very excited to get a reply from you! I really like reading the articles you post on here and have even incorporated a couple of them into school papers.

So beyond the fangirling, I think your creative idea is awesome! I like talking a lot, because I really like the sound of my own voice. So I did a sort of podcast with myself. I am a bit too busy to make it regular but I could do weekly check-ins.I really love stuff like that. When I was younger, I used to imagine that I had my own talk show and would do it in the window outside and tell my audience about my outfits and my thoughts on stuff.

I do talk to someone in the gender office a little bit about my sexuality, but I think most of my conversations in that direction have actually been here. It's just cause I get distracted when I am talking to people and here I can make sure I stick to the point.

In any case, I am actually finding it easier to be "openly gay", whatever that means. It is a little harder for me to talk about being bisexual, for some reason. These days I just tell people, "I'm gay" and would revise it if I end up dating someone who is not female. I am not too worried about this though, since gay is a word I like to use to describe myself.

Jacob,

It's okay that you didn't reply. I actually think in a strange way, it helped me with my anxiety to realize that people might not reply for a good reason. But thanks for returning and replying though.

Thanks everyone!

[Heather]

That podcast sounds fantastic! And that's so cool using my pieces for papers. YAY!

Also: I have a tape of myself at six done under the table of the bar where my mother and her nurse friends used to hang out (ah, working class childhoods!). A friend of hers gave me a tape recorder to amuse myself with, and I interviewed such illustrious guests as a pencil and an orange, and performed a not-at-all-amazing take on the musical numbers of The Wiz. So, I feel you.