My Coming Out

My name is Amber Wright and I am from Evansville, Indiana.

First, I want to say to Tracy and Stamie how much I enjoyed watching you on the Real L Word and that I appreciate you sharing your life with all of us. I can relate with a lot of what both of you are going through with family acceptance.

My girlfriend and I had been dating for a couple of years before my family found out it was more than a friendship. My mom found out because my girlfriend and I had gotten into a fight and I was really upset over it and my mom put it together that nobody would be that upset over fighting with just a friend. When I could tell she was feeling like something more was there by the questions she was asking, I just blurted out that I was gay and we had been dating for years. Not to mention, this was over the phone. There was just silence after that until mom could think of how to change the subject.

This phone conversation was about three years ago and my girlfriend and I are still together and going strong now. To this day, my mom doesn’t even bring it up or ask anything about it. I guess she figures if she ignores it, it will go away. My mom has talked to my girlfriend over the phone but never actually met her. She also has a child, whom I consider mine, and no one in my family has met this precious little boy either. It’s hard when family ignores the most important parts of my life. I would love to share these two wonderful people with them.

Another part to this story is that I am 30 years old and have been wanting to have a baby for a couple of years now but have been putting that on hold out of fear of my family’s reaction to it. I’ll be 31 in a couple of months and I can hear my biological clock tick and if I keep putting my life on hold in order to make everyone else happy, I will let the most important things pass me by and find myself really unhappy.

Tracy’s comment on the last episode about choosing herself hit me hard because that is exactly what I need to start doing. I need to live my life for me and stop putting my life on hold for everyone else. Also, watching Tracy’s mom progress in her acceptance of her lifestyle was very inspirational and gave me hope that my mom could do the same one day. Thanks to Tracy and Stamie again for sharing their story.

The Real L Word is more than a television show. It also gives people a perspective that they are not alone in dealing with these issues and for me, it helped give me some hope that family can come around one day. I learned that I can’t let them keep ignoring this huge part of my life and that I need to confront them with it and talk about it. They need to know that I am with someone I love very much and who loves me and that my girlfriend and child are my family also. We need to be one big family and not two halves.