How Coming Out Is (and Isn’t...

In 1998, I sat down in my stylist’s chair with an image of Gwyneth Paltrow with the pixie cut she made in style within the movie Sliding Doorways. It’s possible you’ll bear in mind the movie; in it, Paltrow’s character’s life splits in two. In a single model, she makes the subway because the doorways are closing; within the different, she doesn’t. Within the model the place she makes the subway, she arrives house early, definitely sooner than her boyfriend expects, to seek out him in mattress with another person. She leaves him, cuts her hair brief, begins a brand new life. Within the different model, she returns house as deliberate, protecting her lengthy hair and her illusions.

My stylist first staged a mini-intervention. She instructed me that whereas she might give me that haircut, it could not look precisely like Gwyneth Paltrow as a result of I didn’t have Gwyneth Paltrow’s hair. I did it anyway. She was proper.

Anytime I get my hair minimize, then and now, no small a part of me believes {that a} new me is about to emerge. Then the subsequent day, I notice it’s simply me… with a hair minimize. It’s a tough lesson: You possibly can enhance and alter. However you’re nonetheless you. With highlights. A brand new job. A bolder lip.

Final yr, I ended a four-year relationship with a person, a NYC police officer. It was the longest relationship I’d ever had. And that was lengthy sufficient. I’d lived alone for 25 years and guarded my time and independence. And so I used to be sincere with him from the soar: I had by no means lived with a person and had no intentions of dwelling with one now. However he had beliefs, too, about how love would change an individual, and if not, {that a} gradual and predictable merging of lives was inevitable. However the fact was, I used to be nonetheless me… with a boyfriend. I referred to as it off, maybe later than I ought to have.

They are saying you’ll be able to’t simply flip a swap and resolve to be homosexual. And to be honest that’s not precisely what occurred: I’d had robust emotions for various ladies over time — kissed my greatest pal in faculty, developed a crush on a folks singer in my 20s, even slept with a number of bored, bisexual wives in my 30s — however thought of them occasional feverish exceptions at greatest.

In any case, I’d dated males all my life and by no means questioned it in any possible way. Nor did anybody else. And that is how the thought of who you’re can set in: zero proof on the contrary. Even the ladies I did discover interesting for causes I couldn’t articulate appeared to strengthen my heterosexuality: I used to be so straight, I used to be even interested in ladies who appear like males.

Yeah, that’s not what which means.

A month after my breakup, and apparently, every week after I officiated my buddies’ homosexual wedding ceremony — coincidence? — I flipped my courting search to ladies. Simply to see.

Many of the profiles didn’t enchantment to me. After which I noticed her: a lady with a bleached pixie minimize, a wing of blue hair over her eyes. She seemed much less like a lady and extra like a nymph, a fairy who’d seduce you in a yellow wooden and hold you as her lover within the stomach of an previous elm for 100 years.

We matched. I gave her honest warning that I used to be the final individual she ought to meet. First off, I used to be not homosexual — and what’s worse, I had simply damaged up with a long-term boyfriend.

“If I had been considered one of your folks,” I wrote, “I’d inform you to run.”

We met for espresso anyway. Then every week later, for brunch. I felt like I used to be making use of for a job I used to be not certified for. We kissed shyly on the nook of 72nd and Broadway, and I trembled the entire means house.

“Do you want her?” my pal requested. “I imply, do you need to date her or buy groceries together with her?”

I didn’t know. A part of me believed there was no lesbian on the planet who would take me significantly. How might they? After I had so a few years of males to account for?

The blue fairy texted me the subsequent day and mentioned I’d been on her thoughts. “I used to be pondering of your hair,” she mentioned. “I prefer it.”

“Why don’t I come over tonight?” she mentioned.

“Certain,” I replied. “Ought to I make dinner?”

“Let’s skip dinner,” she mentioned.

SOS, I messaged my buddies: “She’s coming over in an hour and we’re not having dinner. All caps. THERE IS NO DINNER.”

“You’ll be advantageous!” they instructed me. “Have enjoyable!”

She arrived at 6 p.m. I needed to climb down from the ceiling to reply the door. I do know you don’t drink, I mentioned, however I’m going to wish one.

I shook a grimy martini practically to loss of life within the kitchen after which sat beside her on the sofa. It felt like swinging each legs over a fence and getting ready to leap.

After which she kissed me. I’m going to strive to withstand all hyperbole once I say that it felt like I had simply surfaced from ten leagues beneath the ocean. As if I’d by no means breathed earlier than, and would by no means get sufficient air.

The following day was April eighth, and I keep in mind that as a result of it was the day of the photo voltaic eclipse. And whereas Manhattan wasn’t within the path of totality, the sunshine went down like a dimmer swap, the colours flattening to sepia tone. My pal Kim and I had been sitting on a wall within the park, taking turns peeking on the solar by these flimsy glasses because it waned to a brilliant cuticle.

“So, that is occurring,” she mentioned. “Proper?”

It appeared a gross understatement to say sure. After all, sure. I had by no means felt extra sure.

A couple of minutes later, the solar waxed to fullness, the colours returned, however nothing seemed the identical.

After I say I “got here out,” it’s not like I’d been harboring a secret. Extra like I’d stumbled upon one thing unbelievable, like a unicorn in my kitchen. How did that get there? What do I do with it? After which wanting to inform each single individual I ever knew about it.

I can’t converse for all late-in-life lesbians, however I believe I had it fairly simple. After I instructed my buddies I used to be courting ladies now, it was like I’d proven as much as brunch with bangs. They’re like, Whoa wasn’t anticipating that, however what’s necessary is that you just like them.

Folks had been additionally fast to present me an out — saying issues like, “You will not be homosexual, chances are you’ll simply be in love with this individual.” However I didn’t must be shielded from it. Homosexual felt proper. It’s like saying, perhaps you similar to this omelette; it could not imply the rest.

No, fairly positive I like eggs. Interval.

I fell so head over heels for this blue fairy, it shocked me and everybody else. Me, who’d all the time been traditionally gradual to say the girlfriend mantle and loath to let go of my single standing. Sure, I needed to be her girlfriend. Proper now. When she talked about probably transferring out of her residence 10 blocks from mine, all the way in which to Brooklyn, I used to be inconsolable.

I used to be totally different with my girlfriend than I’d been with any man: mild and accommodating, handled her like glass. I instructed her she was the one one for me, and I believed it.

Possibly this was my downside! I wasn’t aloof and dedication phobic — perhaps I used to be simply homosexual. And now that I used to be embracing who I used to be, absolutely this could repair every part.

However deep down, that a part of me who’d all the time frightened I wasn’t sensible sufficient, adequate, fairly sufficient, merely had a brand new concern: That I used to be not homosexual sufficient. That I used to be solely homosexual due to her, that I used to be merely… homosexual by affiliation.

It didn’t take lengthy, a month or two, for purple flags to emerge and for the blue fairy to disclose herself as a grasp manipulator. In July, issues constructed to a frenzied state: She accused me of getting the “incorrect attachment fashion”; I accused her of asking for greater than any individual might give. We had been in all probability each proper.

You realize the place that is going. It ended as quick and furiously because it started. It was essentially the most excruciating breakup of my life.

My complete life, my concern of dedication had boiled all the way down to the assumption that I’d disappear right into a relationship with a person and stop to exist. And what was making me anguish now was that I believed if I let her go, this homosexual model of me would go together with it.

It took me some time to acknowledge that I might and would nonetheless be homosexual with out this individual. That what I used to be actually crying about was the lack of one thing I couldn’t really lose: myself.

I didn’t want a girlfriend to be homosexual, and I additionally didn’t have to alter. Briefly, I used to be nonetheless simply me… with a brand new sexual identification.

A yr later and I’m completely happy to report that I’m nonetheless right here. I’m nonetheless homosexual. Similar hair; new day.

Terri (proper) together with her sisters.

Glad Pleasure Month!

Terri Trespicio is the creator of Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create a Life that Matters to You. Her TEDx speak, Stop Searching for Your Passion, has been seen greater than eight million instances. She can be the founding father of The New Rules Studio, a stay, real-time writing workshop for getting work performed. She earned her MFA in artistic writing from Emerson School and lives in Manhattan.

P.S. “What nine movies and shows with gay characters meant to me,” and the “little gay house” in Portland, Oregon.

(Illustration by Julia Rothman for Cup of Jo.)