The Smallest of Wins
I’d held him to myself for four months. Four months of a double life where some could see parts of me while I forced another side down, down down down, until even I was starting to get confused about who I was. Four months. Imagine it, that’s literally half the time a baby needs to be developed. Four. Fucking. Months.
The process, or whatever you would define "coming out" as, started two weeks ago. Two and a half, maybe. It was one of the nights where I couldn’t feel myself. Feel myself sounds dirty, which is kind of gross, but I have held the facade of being almost purely asexual for so long that maybe I was actually starting to believe it, despite having done so much stuff with him. Although this is anonymous, although you don’t know, although there is so much that could be way worse, his name, his identity, has to stay mine. Because no one really tells you that, once you come out, once you make yourself known as “gay” and not devoid of sexual feelings, these things that were once yours start to become the world’s. A product of a consequence, a small victory of not having a secret. So if I’m going to remain sane, the only reasonable thing I can do is keep pieces of it for myself and myself only.
Wow, that entire sequence right there was a tangent. Here’s another one, a small one, though, I promise I’ll keep it brief, but tangents are what started this. Off-hand topics, uncalled-for responses, bits and pieces of the mask I painted onto my face just slowly chipping off until I couldn’t take it anymore. I need you to understand that, to know that, if I had held it for much longer, I might never have revealed it all. A double life, one of straight-but-hinted-gay-and-asexual me and gay-oh-so-gay-and-going-out-late-at-night-to-see-a-man-and-kiss-a-man-and-oh-did-I-mention-he's-gay? me, like some sort of pretty socially fucked superhero. Except, you know, my own deception was my worst villain.
It started with a story. A tangent of my own private writings, a confession on the cheap Dell laptop's screen. Sometimes, when you just write for yourself, you see the little bits of plastic you threw in your own pond, hoping they'd sink to the bottom, just casually float back up, muddier but somehow cleaner than before. This is what happens when I'm depressed, when I can't feel myself (see, told you tangents are a real thing in my life). I write. And sometimes, you get too close to comfort, even for yourself. Here's a bit of it, and the motif of the story was glasses and how they let you see, but when you lie, these glasses become cracked, smudged, until you can't even see two inches in front of your face. Hell, is your nose even there? You don't really know. Not to detract from this writing itself, but to believe it, to see the amount of thoughts bubbling up in my head, you have to see it. See it in the way that I couldn't for so long.
Now, I sit in classrooms. I text friends. Or at least, I think they’re my friends. I accidentally keep secrets, because who wants to know about that, but what if they found out? Would they hate you? Would they drop you just like you dropped your glasses into the ocean, letting them wash away so that you were nearly blind for two days straight? And what if you tell them? Will they hate you then? Will they hate the initial lie? So.
You hold it in. You let the tears build up to the brim of your lenses, misty with your heaving breath, and you just play the part. You act clueless, although you know exactly what’s happening. You act innocent, although you know the things you’ve done. You lie and hold to it, you play the part, you get in the game, you shape up your personality and your life until everyone sees you as T.J., the boy who’s clueless, who’s smart, who’s dumb, who lacks any common sense, who has to break a little bit of himself each time he reinforces the web, who is just so tired of holding it in that he lets it leak through and everyone reacts with surprise, and you know it’d be even worse. So you keep going. You keep mortaring new bricks. You keep getting new pairs of glasses. You keep seeing these things, these lines, these threads of possibility.
And you wish that you’d never gotten any glasses at all.
Look at him. T.J., the boy who was literally dammed up in his own head. That's me. That's the person I am, I let the water rise and rise, but the reason I came out at all because of him. Not T.J., that's me, "him" as in the secret I get to keep from you. My own little piece of the world. But those last two paragraphs is part of what started it.
I asked my friend Samantha if she would something for me and tell me if she hated me. To confess, to alleviate some of my guilt that really shouldn't have felt like guilt. She didn't hate me. She said she loved me and that if I needed to talk, she "is always there for" me. I cried. A lot. Not uncommon for me, but still, figured it should be mentioned. And then, after a while, she asked a question, because she knew I wasn't going to let it out without someone telling me it was okay too.
"T.J.," she texted, "Is there something you want to tell me?"
I stared at my phone for a while. A good five, six minutes. My keyboard was open on the chat, the six keys just glowing, like they knew what was meant to be said. Prophesied, predicted. Just type it, I told myself, Just tell her and it will be over.
"I'm gay."
There's moments like this, pieces of your life that feel like there should be a grand score in the background or a lack of one, just a noise-blinded scene. You wait, and you don't know what to expect, but somehow, you're certain about something.
"Okay."
I sort of paused my heart here, can't tell you how I did it. It was the same feeling I got when I was with him, when I stepped into his car at 3 am, just to drive, just to see what Greensboro held for us. And she says what needs to be said. A simple word. So simple.
"And?"
And.
This is what I was talking about, the certainty. The knowledge that you just know, and I knew what I knew. This was enough. This was enough. There's no conflict. There's no disturbing plot twist. Just the simple acceptance of who I am. That's who Samantha represented, what she represented.
Acceptance.
So before I start texting so much, before the tangent comes back, before I get lost in my own hidden glee, I made myself write something down in my Google Keep, a quick flick of my home screen onto the application.
I typed down, "This is not an uphill battle as long as you have someone on your side."
I studied it, the curves in the S's, the word "not." I listen to her dings as she tells me it'll all be okay, that no one is going to hate me and that I knew that she was right. This didn't mean I wasn't scared as hell, I absolutely still was.
Pressure, though, isn't immediately let off in things like this.
Four months, I had held him to myself. And now some of the steam has hissed out of me. And you know what?
Smaller victories mean winning the war at the end of it all. "You won this battle but you haven't won the war" is literally one of the most bullshittiest things I've ever heard. One battle is enough, enough to hold you through.
And I'm glad this battle was enough for me to finally shine through.