Coming Out Part I
Rarely, does someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, etc. come out of the proverbial closet more than once. I guess I enjoyed the revelation so much the first time, I took a second crack at it to make sure I got it right. All joking aside, I’m not proud that I shoved my entire being back into hiding. More about that later. I write this with the hope that anyone who reads this and feels self loathing from having had moments in your life with one of your deeply held values clashed with another value. In my case, those values were authenticity and independence and caused me about ten years of deep cognitive dissonance . By the time I was a sophomore in college, I had at least one close gay guy friend who was trying to gently nudge me to come out as a lesbian. I don’t know if it was my stereotypical tomboyishness, or that I never shared his fawning over a guy. Maybe it was that I had played football or chosen the University of Miami because they had the best co...