Why I felt the need to tell the Family. . .

I met with a new group of friends last night and one of them asked me if I was "Out"? If so how long and what the experience was like. After sharing briefly my experience of coming out to the family last December he asked me Why? Why did I even have to come out to my family? He had a problem with those of us who felt the need to tell others about our sexual orientation. I told him that I finally got to the point where I was so sick of living a lie and having to constantly worry about hiding everything that it was time to bring it out in the open. With me the timing was not good, but to be honest it would have been about the same no matter when I did it. People were beginning to find out about me and I knew it was only a matter of time before they began talking to members of my family. (people love to rush in with some big disclosure to the families of someone they "care" about) I had attended a widely publicized multi-faith gay religious gathering and had been filmed by three news camera's which had my picture on at least one of their nightly news programs. I knew that someone was going to see me and start talking so I decided that I wanted my family to hear this particular bit of news from my lips first. As I have noted in previous posts I am not the "Sassy Gay, In your Face, Accept me World, Wo is Me" gay man, however I am no longer the Milk Weed, Walk all Over Me, Hide behind the Mask, Self Loathing person I was for way too many years. My Coming Out has indeed upset the false coherency, outward appearance of security and the seeming unity within in my family. Yet at the same time it has brought more inner peace to my soul than anything I have done. It has opened a new door for those that follow in my footsteps. I know of at least one member of my extended family who is dealing with these issues and the day will come when the time is right for him to come out to his family. When this happens I hope that his parents will handle it with better love and understanding because of what they have experienced through my coming out process. In other words I sincerely hope that what I have gone through has helped to pave the way for the next generation of Gay Human Beings. It will be interesting to see where my family goes from here in their journey to acceptance of their Gay son, brother, uncle, etc. . .

As a side note my this man I met still can't understand why so many of "Us" feel the need to tell our families? If only he could feel of the Freedom which accompanies the honesty! I on the other hand am having a hard time understanding why we have to feel that we can't be honest about who we are? To me this is the question we ought to ponder, not why we want to be honest with our loved ones.