my coming out pt.2

So just over 4 months ago I, John the (now) openly gay teenager, started this blog having finally accepted my sexuality. Wanting to scream to the world about my new self, I started writing a blog talking about it and my life. My second ever post that I made was titled “my coming out“, and in it I talked briefly about how I had started coming out to myself and my friends, but was unable to say anymore because there was nothing more to say since it had only been a few weeks. If you’ve read my other posts recently, then you will know that just over a month ago I outed myself through and Instagram post to all my friends and family. Right now I want to talk about my experience in order so that those still in the closet can find some comfort. This is in no way a justification that coming out is the best thing to do for everyone, because different people are brought up in different communities and with different beliefs. For me I was lucky and privileged to have been brought up in a community that it mostly accepting of gay people and in my past experience I really enjoyed being able to read about others coming out, because in my opinion it is truly a happy moment when one can finally accept themselves for who they are and those around them can do the same.

I previously talked about coming out to my friends and by the end of January, I had set myself a personal challenge of coming out to at least a person a day (keep in mind that my school has around 150 students per year). By doing this, I had finally accomplished being able to say “I am gay” in one quick easy sentence. No straining nor hesitation in saying the word “gay”. Now by the end of February I had come out to all of my friends and if I’m being perfectly honest, I was becoming happier. There was no longer awkward talks about “hot girls” and I was getting closer to a lot of my friends. I’m not exactly sure what took me over on the second of March in the year 2019. I was possibly on a happiness high, but I was sitting behind my computer watching youtube videos when I had the sudden craving to use Instagram. I had an account, but never posted anything. In my mind it was somewhat symbolic: a first post starting a new chapter in my life. So I did it, I thought about the right way to do it for 40 minutes and finally stuck to a completely random photo with a caption saying that I was no longer in the closet. Honestly, you’d be surprised how many followers you can gain in one day when you’re the first to publicly come out in your year.

In the end, everyone was incredibly supportive and my own aunt beat me to the chase of coming out to my parents 😂. This was an amazing experience for me and I don’t regret it, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe and brilliant for everyone to do so. I read this in another posting, I forget its name, but only you know when it’s safe and okay for you to come out, no one else can make that decision for you and you cannot take someone else’s story as incentive for you to do it yourself. Trust me when I say this though, you will know when the time is right 😁

a whole month

If you haven’t read my previous blog posts then let me introduce myself: my name is John and I am a fifteen-year-old gay boy. To those few who had read my previous blog posts, I am sorry for being gone for so long.

Quick recap to those new to this blog and a refresher to those who have read previous posts; in October last year, I finally accepted all of the signs that had been pointing out that I was a homosexual and came out to myself. From there in the next month I began to come out to my close friends, and began writing a blog in order to release all of my inner turmoils. By the end of my first term of school this academic year, I stopped writing.

The reason for my return now, is that it’s been over a whole month since I officially came out to the world and it’s been a really pleasant experience luckily. Having discovered my homosexuality, I had gone on a spree finding out about everything there is to know about the LGBTQ community (not that I know that much now, I’m pretty lousy at remembering things) and one of the largest things that scared me about being gay was coming out to my friends and especially my family. I had read so many accounts of parents neglecting, ignoring and even kicking out their children who have come out as gay. I am lucky enough to have been brought up in communities where this is not the case, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t scared of how my parents might react. During my childhood, I had never really been exposed to any gay culture, basically I had never met anyone who was openly gay and whenever the conversation of homosexuality was brought up, it was quickly shot down by either of my parents. Upon questioning them on why this was, my mother told me that my father simply couldn’t understand how one man could sexually desire another man and he just didn’t like talking about it, though he would not hate me nor my siblings should we have come out as gay in the future, it would just take some adjusting. I was told this when I was seven years old, and right up until by public coming out, it had been one of the main factors that I didn’t want to come out. Having been out to my family now for just over a month, I realise that there was no reason to be scared, because he is in fact very supportive and completely casual when we discuss the topic. The shocking part for me was finding that I had maybe mixed up the signs that my parents had been giving me, because lately my mother has been acting kind of strange and almost homophobically around me. I don’t mean to say that she is a homophobe, but it’s small things that I catch during our interactions privately and publicly. For example, upon returning home for the easter break, I had decided to wear a simple wire ring on my index finger. I don’t know why I did it, I simply felt an urge to wear some sort of jewelry. My mother’s weird reaction actually caught me off guard, “Why are you wearing a ring?” I know from reading this off of a screen on your device this doesn’t sound terribly shocking and it isn’t really, but the snide and almost mean tone she took whilst saying it was giving across another message, “Boys don’t wear rings, take it off.” There are also other small things like casually flinging around the word “gay” as something weird or odd and even calling things I say “gaybles”. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, I think that maybe it’s information shared between gays, but it’s not really nice to hear from her and there is only one other openly gay boy in my year at school that I could possibly confer secret information and tips with, but we don’t really talk anyway.

Other than my mother’s surprising change in attitude towards me, my coming out has made me happier and I’m not even being bullied or teased by other boys, which was a pleasant surprise unlike the first.

I’m really hope that this was somewhat entertaining or nice to read about; it doesn’t matter whether you only read this because you were bored, it’s nice to know that I can share my stories with everybody in the world (or at least those that have access to a computer). Please contact me or leave a comment for any feedback or suggestions on future topics for blogs and remember to follow me on WordPress and Instagram @anothernormalboy. Also, tag anything you feel is related to me or my life or sexuality with #anothernormalboy.

party time

Hi my name is John and I’m writing for the first time a blog on my phone, because I have no access to a computer. The reason for this is because I’m at a party for one of my family member’s important birthday and therefore the whole family (grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles) is here to celebrate it.

If I’m at a party though, why am I on my phone writing a blog instead of socializing with my family? The obvious answer to that is that most of them are a few years older than me and though that doesn’t seem like it would make a big deal, it does when I’m 15 and they’re over 18 (the legal drinking age). Therefore they’ve all achieved being drunk, playing weird beer games and I sit at the far end of the table absent-mindedly staring at their fun and typing a blog on my phone. Fun.

Another reason I’m writing in for the fact that not only am I bored but anxious for something that simultaneously I do and don’t want to do. If I did do it then it would probably be a huge relief and weight lifted off my shoulders. However some of them may not like it or believe me and if I do do it then I cannot really take it back if it turns out I’m wrong, which is something that greatly worries me. The only reason the idea of it occurred to me is because this is quite an emotional event and the whole family is here, so I could come clean to all of them at once, but now some have already left and the rest are preoccupied with conversations and I don’t really have to guts.

This leads to something that has recently been worrying me. In my first blog posting I came out as gay and I really do believe I’m gay most of the time as I can’t really think of women in a sexual manner. I have a fear however that one day I may actually fall in love with a woman and not be gay and then I’d have to explain everything to the people I came out to that I in fact was not gay, which would not only be an awkward conversation but lead to future distrust of me. This also scares me because I want to be gay. It’s that simple, upon coming out to myself I’ve decided that I do not want to be straight. I want to be in a same-sex relationship and it scares me to think that maybe this is just a phase and that I will not end up with my own Knight in shining armour but with the beautiful princess.

Finally I think that I’ve run my mouth enough for tonight. I’m sorry if it’s a bit short or doesn’t really make sense, though I am writing this at midnight so I hope you can forgive me if that’s the case. Please contact me or leave a comment for any feedback on writing styles or topics and please do give suggestions to what you’d be interested in reading.

Goodnight, John.

life

Firstly I’d like to clarify that this blog is purely a means of release of stress and mental energy by writing completely about myself and my life, you won’t gain anything out of this other than knowing a bit about me for when you’re bored or possibly feeling a bit stalkerish ;-).

Hi, my name is John and I’m 15 years old. I’m just a kid, apparently. I have some very important exams next year in June called GCSEs and I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of afraid as these are some of the most important exams of my life, determining whether I stay in my current school, what subjects I will be choosing in the next academic year and can affect university applications. Effectively, they play a large role in my future endeavors.

In my school I wouldn’t call myself a popular or “cool” kid though everyone seems to know my name as I am the silent, small (but finally growing) intriguing boy that everybody seems to remember from a school play 3 years ago. Frankly, I don’t have many friends and that is my fault, I’m quite a sour person and normally find myself more drawn to the unpopular teens of my year other than the jittery and wild girls or big punk guys. I could probably count the number of proper friends I have on 2 hands, but these aren’t those that I know and then occasionally talk to. These are the people I talk to every day and could call my family (we do in fact refer to ourselves as a little dysfunctional family), but like a real family we have our fallouts and currently, because of a relationship between two of us, tensions have been slowly but steadily rising. It doesn’t help that I’m keeping a pretty significant secret from them and Daisy (the one who’s in a relationship) constantly complains about being mentally exhausted and stressed from current occurrences with her other friends. This is not only annoying since, not to be self-obsessed, she’s not the only one stressed or tired and her friends are annoyed at her because she lied to them and once the news came out she told them that she hadn’t told them because she didn’t trust them. Yikes! The directly affects another member of the family who was one the people Daisy told this to. The weirdest part though is that it seems to be a couple’s thing since David (her boyfriend) seems to be increasing irritating lately as well, constantly whining like a child, talking about himself and his success in relationships and being best friends with one of the loudest and egotistical people I know.

On another not-completely-unrelated topic, my love life (can we call it that at my age?) is more uneventful than ever now that I’ve confirmed that I absolutely, most definitely don’t feel attraction to women. Why does this make it more uneventful? Although I’d never have the courage to do it, at least being straight means there’s a much higher chance of finding someone who you like, and most importantly, is attracted to your someone of your gender (in case you didn’t get it I was describing a female). Being a closeted gay boy in a secondary school with only 100 boys in your year makes it quite difficult to start a same-sex relationship with someone who you actually like, not just any gay boy who comes around. Something that confuses me about this thought process of relationships, is that it also seems unlike anything I had ever experienced or thought of before. Obviously I had thought about having a girlfriend in the past but only because that was what I had seen around me and in movies and I never really ever felt deeper emotions than a need to seem normal by having a girlfriend because I thought that once I reached that step everything would fall in place. The truth is that I was never going to know what would happen afterwards because, deep down, my conscious had other plans for me. One of the reasons I probably never really considered a same-sex relationship for myself was because first off it wasn’t seen as normal and I think that, off the top of my head, I can only remember ever meeting one gay couple though only because my parents told me that I’d met them as a child. So in reality, due to a lack of exposure to same-sex relationship couples, I never thought of the idea to have that kind of relationship.

I think that I have sufficiently drained most of my energy, so that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed leaching from my small life events and leave any comments on things you’d like me to write about or ways I could improve my writing.

my coming out

HOMOPHOBES BEWARE : GAY CONTENT

I’ve recently taken one of my first steps to take control of my life. I came out to my closest friends that I’m gay and I’d like to share my feelings on the topic of coming out and why it isn’t something you should be scared of doing, however, in some cases, should be done with some caution as not everyone will be as accepting.

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself” – Jim Morrison

The first person I told is my closest friend and roommate, Paul. I think that the first step to coming out is to be completely honest with your most trusted friend in your life, whether this is a family member or friend. This is a crucial first step to coming out as it makes it easier to be able to say it to more people. Personally, I had quite a bit of trouble actually saying the word, “gay”. And was stuck saying, “I’m …” a few times before managing to get it out. This isn’t always so simple though as to some it can be thought of as a lie or plea for attention, and then it is confirming it with all honesty that can be very hard especially when you could easily say you weren’t being serious and become stuck in the closet yet again.

Upon telling the first person, it becomes easier to tell the other significant people in your life, for me this was by telling Liam and Jessica. This can be done anywhere, I found that it was easier to say when we were alone. And in my opinion, I should be told in person as it is a large step in embracing the new and better (cringe, I know) person you become.

The Next Step

I can’t say much more about the topic yet, as I still have to do so much more to complete, in my own coming out experience. This will probably be telling all my friends gradually and finally, once I summoned up as much courage as I possibly can, my family.

Please tell me about your own coming out experiences (if you aren’t straight), if you feel like it would help you as I always find that it is easier to deal with something when you have someone to tell and talk to about it. Thank you for reading my blog and be sure to share it with friends or family.