Recently a friend of mine decided to come out of the closet and just let the world embrace him for who he is. I thought it was really brave. I can’t imagine how difficult that can be but I hope that ultimately it makes him happier to be himself.
This post goes slightly off track from the overall theme. This post is about being yourself. I already know it will be the hardest I’ve written. I have butterflies in my stomach and I feel a bit shaky.
Before I start in on my confessions, I have a pre-confession to make. In keeping these certain things to myself and not sharing them with close friends and family, I haven’t been giving any credit to you (when I say you, I’m not even sure who all reads this blog at this point). I’m the one making assumptions, thinking I will be treated differently, or certain people I care about won’t want anything to do with me, or maybe some other horrible scenario that I can’t even imagine. Given the overflow of love coming my way right now, more than ever I say it isn’t fair not to give everyone the chance to love and accept me exactly as I am. I’ve been the jerk for giving the people who care about me so little credit.
The first of the two is less difficult for me to say: I’m bisexual. I’ve been attracted to some women and some men. If you think being gay or bisexual is wrong or sinful, I might have lost you just now. But if you’ve loved me until now, you should allow this new information to find its way in, explore it, and decide whether you really think there is something wrong with me. This is not the confession that I thought would be difficult to make because I haven’t noticed a problem among my friends and family members with gay hate. I feel like making a quick note though that if you are reading this, I am not in love with you. That is definitely not what this is about, haha. I am not currently in love with anyone.
The second confession is much trickier and I’m actually feeling a bit sick to my stomach. I’m sure there are many who could word the following much more eloquently than I, but I’m really going for delicacy. But I’ll get right too it: I’m simply not religious. It seems that the majority of my friends and family are and this does not have one iota of impact on my love for them. Why should it? I only worry that it won’t be the same the other way around. I should say that because I’m not religious, this does not mean that I do not have a moral framework or care about what’s right or wrong. This is also not something I decided overnight. I’ve been thinking about it for years and still continue to think about it. Now because discussing this can lead to angry and hurt feelings (because a religion is usually a framework for a person to live their life by and therefore taken very seriously) I don’t want to have arguments about it with the people I care about. It really does break my heart to think of someone deciding I’m a bad person after they read this. I’m the same. I also don’t want to start getting overloaded with invitations to go to church. I know that these invitations come with the best intentions, but I am as set in my beliefs as you probably are in yours.
I’m really nervous to post this now but I feel good putting it out there. I am open to talking about any of this with anyone one on one but know that I am prone to getting my feelings hurt if you imply that I’m going to hell.
