the gift; coming out to myself
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” - James Baldwin
**The audio recording of this Morton Train is available to paid subscribers here.**
When folks refer to “coming out,” it’s usually in the context of a conversation with another person or visibility to the public at large. Coming out as in “when I told my parents I’m gay” or “when I told my colleagues about my spouse” or “when I put the pride bumper sticker on my car.”
My own coming out conversations (in the midwest, in the ‘90s) felt like an enormous risk. I wasn’t sure how being gay would affect my career and work prospects. I wasn’t sure who in my life would be disgusted or repulsed by me. I wasn’t sure who - be they strangers or loved ones - would hate me for being gay or, at the very least, become uncomfortable in my presence.
But none of those conversations were as terrifying or profound as the long and arduous journey of coming out to myself. It was a dark night of the soul, a personal transformation that wasn’t complete until I arrived at radical self-acceptance.
As I expressed in my essay on the topic for Salon, my “childhood spent in the Gay Void infected me with a huge amount of shame.” Society at large taught me to be suspicious of this particular part of my humanity; taught me to deny it, to hide it, to wish it away. Society taught me that I wasn’t normal.
Grappling with an inconvenient inner truth - being gay when I didn’t want to be - forced me to do some hard core self-reflection at a young age. There was a lot of unlearning I had to do. I can look back now and see… What a marvelous gift that unlearning was! What an invitation.
In the preface of Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote, “Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” (Amen to that.) This instruction implies that you have the power and authority to question even the strongest-held beliefs. This instruction also implies that you must first know your own soul before you do that. Or else how can you know what insults it?
When any of us, whether gay or straight or otherwise, journeys within and reverently asks that biggest of questions, “Who am I,” we make contact with a Self that is raw and real and whole and sacred. When we journey within, we willingly quiet the voices and opinions of others, daring to listen to the singular inner voice. This can be intimidating, sure, but also quite amazing. It’s a reorientation of power. (I mean, if knowledge is power, then self-knowledge makes one pretty powerful, yeah?)
It was the inconvenient truth of my being gay that opened the door to my own self-reflection journey, a journey that’s taught me how to trust and love and know myself in all the ways that I am.
Each of us humans feels the call (or the push or the demand) to journey within for various reasons and at various times in our lives. This pride month, for queer and straight folks alike, I choose to celebrate that journey and that invitation. I choose to celebrate radical self-acceptance.
What a gift!
Beautiful, Elizabeth! Joyous Pride!