Ok, so here goes.
My name is Daniel, and for reasons that will soon be clearer to you, Im not yet gonna give you full details about myself. I’m starting this blog not only as an experiment and a journey, but also as a promise. I’m hoping that this blog is going to help me keep the promise I’m soon going to make. Not only to myself but also to the one or two or more people that might take an interest in me.
For now what you need to know, is that I am confused. I am not the only one that is, and I know for a fact that many people out there are also confused. Some of you may even be confused about what it is that I’m actually going to talk about, so I’ll just say it!
I think I might be GAY!
There! I said it… and actually it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Then again, no one actually knows I said it yet. But - People might be seeing this after I post it, so that is why I didn’t tell you my full name. I will tell you what I think you should know about me for now. But don’t worry. You will get to know the real me. Soon you’ll hear my promise and then you will understand.
So as I said my name is Daniel, yes it IS my real name. I always thought it was a pretty good name so I’m not going to lie about it. I am not American, but I live in Here now. I don’t really know yet what I want to do but I’m an architecture student and I go to a pretty good school. When I tell people in my home country about going to college in the States everyone always says: “Wow, you’ve got a hard life, don’t you?” in kind of a sneering way, as if to get back at me for patronizing them when just saying the truth. In reality, I think I DO have a hard life. Ok ok so maybe that’s an exaggeration, maybe just a rough patch in the road? I can’t deny the fact that I was pretty fortunate. I have a great family that will always support me, I have a great friends back home and in college, and as for now I'm pretty healthy. I think maybe the fact that people always think I AM lucky, makes the idea of me being gay seem like a huge misfortune. Whatever it is, I AM confused, and I DO need a change in my life.
What scares me most about all of this is not only the idea of coming out, which is scary as hell on its own, but the idea of what will happen to the people around me. In my eyes, im still gonna be the same person, but who’s to promise that other people will still see me as the same person? Obviously this is what scares most of us closeted gays, and that’s what we need to deal with.
So back to that promise I was talking about.
I decided I need to deal with the idea of me being gay. Right now no one knows about this. This is between you and me. But I promise that I’m going to take this coming year and finally deal with it. How did I come up with this idea you ask? Well, it all started a month ago. Not the gayness issue, but the coming out issue, surely the gayness has been than longer than that. When I was vacationing in my home country for summer break, I was having such a good time that I was thinking about not going back to the U.S; And when I decided I was going to stay back home, it occurred to me that in the U.S it’s a lot easier for me to be who I really am, even though no one in there knew I was gay, still, less people knew me here! And back home and the small town on the beach I grew up in, news travel fast. So torn between the possibilities of having fun in one place, or getting a good education in another, I went to see my old friend, the shrink. I’ve been seeing this guy on and off for 5 years, since high school, I would always go to him when I needed to talk and It’s been a year since we last met, but I bet he was happy to see me. I swear to god that after 5 years of our sponsored friendship, telling him I was gay was one of the hardest things I ever did. I don’t know if he knew or not, but he did seem surprised. Im sure suddenly a few issues from the past seemed to make more sense, but that’s not for now…
So after finally telling him, and talking about it for a while, he ended up saying what is now my motto: “you’re not gonna know what you feel about being gay, unless you actually try being gay”. I think the way he said it was probably more articulate but this is how I remember it… So my mind was set! Im going to go back to college, and take this school year to really dig in to who I am, find my inner self, and deal with him!
Yours,
Daniel
