Better this way

Hey everyone,

My name is Sandra (25 yrs old) and I’m Dutch, though I currently live in Honduras, though I’m currently writing from Miami where I’m visiting my older sister.

At the time, I wouldn’t have said coming out was the best thing that ever happened to me. If anything, it made a lot of things more difficult. It made life shitty for a good 6 months. But since I’ve come out it’s been easier for me to live with myself, to be honest and open with my family, and to embrace the doubts and questions I still have about many things, my sexuality included.

My coming out was a gradual process. I had grown up in a sheltered Christian environment where homosexuality was, and still is, considered a twisted version of God’s creation. In retrospect, I realize that the best friends I had, most of them wonderful Christian women, I was deeply in love with. Unfortunately (but fortunately), they were already married (and to pastors, to boot).

I started to more seriously question my sexuality after leaving the “safe” environment of my church community in Colorado and going to Amsterdam to continue studying. This was only 3 years ago. There, I was still involved in the church, but I was allowing myself to explore the possibility that I was gay. I observed gay couples on the street with an embarrassed, curious half-stare thinking, “it’s wrong, right? but why does it seem okay and even nice?” As a musician, I discovered artists like Kaki King and Tegan and Sara. I also met my first lesbian friend, Sara, at a Kaki King concert.

Within the span of a year, I was realizing that I was probably gay. It was still something to be ashamed of, I thought, but it was probably true, and that’s one thing I’ve always known about myself: I’m not a good liar. My friend, Sara, walked me through a bunch of doubts and shared her story. While completely different from mine (a not so religious family, for one), there were still the same elements of fear that she overcame by fessing up, both to herself and her parents, a fear I hoped I could also overcome with time.

Meanwhile, I had befriended a girl in my Master’s program. I was attracted to her, but wasn’t at the point where I could allow myself to acknowledge the attraction or do anything about it. Her name is Chiara, and we’ve been together for more than 2 years now. Chiara had never been attracted to a girl, but realized she liked me even before I admitted to myself that I was gay (why is it so much easier for other people to deal with this stuff?).

As part of our Master’s program, we traveled to Lebanon to do research. Even before I had openly admitted to being gay to anyone (but maybe Sara), Chiara and I were falling in love in a Syrian monastery, feeling that rush of excitement from merely holding hands and, later, sharing those anticipated (and in our case, forbidden) kisses of first time lovers. We hid our relationship from almost everyone we knew; Lebanon isn’t the easiest place to come out and we didn’t know any other lesbians.

Several months later, back in Amsterdam, I decided I needed to tell my parents and break their hearts. My mom felt angry and betrayed. She shouted and cried and called me in the middle of the night asking if I was “sleeping with that beeeech right now?!” (my mother’s Peruvian, that’s how she says bitch). Her better half (in this case), my dad, quietly disapproved but talked to me, prayed for me, and hoped I would be able to reconcile my beliefs and ideas. My little sister, the most liberal of our family, said, “what took you so long?”. My older sister, once proudly “bisexual” at 15, wasn’t surprised either.

It’s been somewhat of a journey since those rocky months where I doubted my family’s love for me and the ability to continue connecting with them as we once did. They’ve shown me, though, that nothing has really changed except that I am now living a more honest version of myself.

I was watching one of Liz Feldman’s hilarious videos yesterday. She said something like, and I’m paraphrasing, “the best part about coming out is that your being gay becomes THEIR problem, not yours”. And it’s so true. Since I’ve been honest about being gay, I’m free to enjoy the status. I’m free to not feel ashamed or worried about what they MIGHT think. I’m free to watch a gay couple holding hands, walking along one of Amsterdam’s canals, and smile for them and their defiant, but honest, love.