Column 2: Coming Out Story (Part 2)

“To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Wine: ONEHOPE Vintner Collection Moscato

Recipe: @CookingForOne1 (Somewhat) Spicy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup

The story below is one that was more difficult to write about than I thought. It was a time filled with turmoil and many mixed emotions. Challenging times call for comfort foods, and one of my favorites is soup. I pair this “(Somewhat) Spicy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup” from @cookingforone1 with this beautiful ONEHOPE Vintner Collection California Moscato. Aromatic white wines like moscato are a good pairing for anything on the spicier side, great with chicken and is a perfect wine for summer. I hope you find yourself with a bowl and a glass of each as you read part 2 of my coming out story.

I was scrambling around my bedroom, looking for my phone. It was one of those “Nokia-like” phones that had a prepaid plan that I was using while I was in Italy. I was already late to meet my friends for drinks. I was living in an apartment just a few blocks north of the Duomo in Florence with 5 other students also studying abroad, and the bar I was headed to was a 15 minute walk from there. The brown leather jacket, which I had bought just a few weeks earlier, was hanging on the back of my desk chair. I had rationalized that it was a better purchase than a weekend trip to London, and I still have no regrets. It fits that good, and is as soft as butter. I named him “Lorenzo”. Anything that expensive deserved a proper name. I realize how pretentious the past few sentences sound. I was by no means flush with cash back then - my dear Lorenzo was one of my biggest purchases to date at my ripe old age of 20. I picked it up and threw it on. 

One last glance around my room, and could finally see my little black phone nestled below some papers on my desk. I walked over to grab it and the moment my fingers touched it, it buzzed. I hit the green “answer phone” button without even looking at who it was, 99% sure it was my friend Kayla, calling to see where I was.

“Helllll-o!”

I immediately answered to a low and hollow version of oldest sister Heather's voice. 

“Dan, are you there?”

“Hey! Yeah I’m here.”

“I’m going to give the phone to dad. Dan…I love you”.

My stomach instantly churned, knowing something was not right. I heard the low scuffles of a phone being passed from hand to hand, before I heard the voice of my dad, Albert. He immediately started to quietly explain in the most shaken and trying-to-hold-it-together version of his voice I had ever heard, how over the past few months, they had noticed that my brother John hadn’t been doing well mentally, and earlier that day he had taken his life. 

I don’t remember too much of the rest of that conversation after that. My brain immediately felt like it had gone numb and was fuzzy inside. I remember feeling light headed and overcome with shock. By the end of the call, my dad was saying how I didn’t have to come home if I didn’t want to. But for me, there was no way that I couldn’t not go home. 

After the call I quite literally didn’t know what to do with myself. All of my roommates were gone for the night, and after pacing around my apartment, I ended up laying down on my stomach on the couch in the living room, with my face cocked to the side looking out of the window across the room. The shock continued for the rest of the night. I couldn’t believe it. I realize how much of a cliche that phrase sounds, but I really felt like my brain couldn’t process the fact that John was now gone from this world, and he had made that decision himself. It was unfathomable to me at that moment. My tough & tattoo’d fisherman / surfer / about to become a firefighter, older brother John, had taken his own life. So many questions flooded into my brain. Mainly, “what made him so unhappy that he didn’t want to live anymore?” At the time, I had no idea. He had such a tough exterior, and I think it was rare that he let anyone close to him to share what was really going on in his head. He would have been one of the last people on my list of people I thought were depressed. Little did I know back then, that the people with the toughest exterior, can often be the ones suffering the most. 

I remember one of my roommates coming home a few hours later that night. I was still on the couch. I fumbled my body up, not wanting him to see me lying there all alone. I have always, and still to this day to a certain extent, had a hard time letting people see my emotions. I think it's part of the brick wall I built after so many years living in the closet. I’ve always felt like I need to present myself to appear to “have it all together” (I plan to write more on that soon, in a separate column). Another part of that was that growing up, John had a habit of teasing me when I showed any sort of emotion. By then I had trained myself to not show many of the emotions I would feel day to day. That's something I still work on - being able to let people in when I need support.

Anyway, my roommate walked into the living room, and I told him what had happened. His jaw dropped and he leaned in to give me a hug. He whispered, “Oh Dan, I’m so sorry”. He was a really nice dude - his name was Ray. That was the first of what felt like hundreds of “I’m so sorry’s” that I would hear over the coming months. The intention behind those words were always good, but they would do basically nothing to help me feel better. And later down the road I would realize that so many of the conversations I would have with family, friends and acquaintances would leave me feeling like it was my job to make them feel better about the situation. I don’t mean to sound harsh. There were and still are so many people that cared for John, and wanted to give our family their condolences, but the process of all of those conversations was completely draining and at a point became excruciating. And with me being an introvert, there were only a handful of people that I talked to that would bring me true comfort during this time.

The next day I went to my school to make the arrangements to leave the program early. They helped me make the travel arrangements to leave that night. And thank god for that. I was in such an altered state of mind, and I could barely think straight. For those first couple days, I felt like I was in a complete state of shock, and my brain had just completely turned to mush. I remember leaving the school, remembering that before I had left, my dad had asked me to get him a pair of leather shoes. I walked around downtown Florence in a complete daze. I walked into a few stores, looking at a number of different shoes but I couldn’t even make a decision to pick one out. After a couple hours, I gave up and went home to pack. 

That night, a small group of friends walked me to the train station, where I boarded a train to Rome. We all had plans to leave the next day to take a weekend trip to that very city, but now I would just be passing through to get to the airport. I remember my friends helping carry my luggage, and my good friend Kayla with her arm around me for most of the walk. I got onto the train and looked out of the window at them waving goodbye. It wasn’t until the train was pulling away that I broke down to tears. I was in so much shock for the past 24 hours, that I didn’t really even cry that first day. But leaving the train station, I think all of what was happening had hit me at once and I just lost it. Like I’ve said before, when something difficult is happening in my life, I tend to build up a wall to hide my true emotions, and it isn’t until when someone shows me a glimmer of kindness that I will break. It had touched me that my friends cared enough to just walk with me and see me off. 

About a day and a half later, and after some unfortunate travel delays, I was home in San Diego. I remember my family picking me up from the airport, and it just being such a mixture of emotions for me. I was happy to see my family who I hadn’t seen for almost 4 months, yet the mood was so devastatingly sad. It was so weird.

It was the day after Thanksgiving, and our extended family members and friends had sent over the most insane amount of food to my parents house. I will take this opportunity to point out that food always makes you feel better. That's for sure one silver lining of the death of a loved one - the massive amount of food that comes your way. I don’t mean to be flippant - just simply pointing out one small comfort during that time. I’ve always been a big believer in the saying, “actions speak louder than words”, and the point being that there was such a huge outpouring of love sent our way during that time. While I’ve said earlier that I didn’t care much to talk to most people during that time, I was really touched by the number of people that reached out or dropped some food on our doorstep. Thinking back, it was really incredible to see how our extended family, friends, and a wide array of people that we knew from growing up “show up” for us.

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I’ll pause here in the story to explain a few things. Writing about John’s suicide in parallel with my coming out is a complex challenge for me for a few reasons. They are two stories that are incredibly complex in their own right, yet they merged together at the same time in my life. Beyond that, towards the end of his life we simply didn’t have a good relationship, and it was probably at its worst when he died. There is so much more to both stories, and a big part of my struggle writing this was me feeling that this column doesn’t do John’s story justice. But for the sake of sharing how the two were related, this piece is the best I can do for now.

It’s hard to write about his death because no one besides him can fully explain that choice he made. I don’t think that single choice could be explained without explaining the 22 years of his life that lead up to that point, and even then it would be my perception of it and not his. As of today, what our family knows for sure is that John was quietly struggling with his mental health for a while, and that challenge was compounded with the use of drugs. Little by little we have tried to put the puzzle pieces of the decision of his death together, but even today we don’t have the full picture. His suicide affected every member of our family in different ways. I really struggled with what to share here for the purpose of telling my story. I’ve experienced the loss of loved ones before and after John’s death, but suicide feels like a completely different ballgame. Like I said, there is so much to the entire story, but at the end of the day, my intent with this project is to share my story in a candid & authentic manner with the hope of connecting with someone who has gone through a similar experience, and to provide them with some sort of connection or comfort - to feel a little less alone, and maybe a bit more understood. A big part of me felt isolated in my experience for a long time because of the state of our relationship. I’ve learned that we all grieve in our own way, no one way being more correct than another. Anyway, it's important to me that I share my story, while doing my best to respect the privacy of my family and the other people that were part of this time.

To this day I still carry a certain amount of shame for how I felt for the months following his death. I was sad that John was gone, but I wasn’t as sad as everyone else around me. I cringe as I write this today, but again, that's how I view the situation looking back. And because of that, I was guilty that I wasn’t grieving in the way everyone around me was. It was confusing and difficult and I felt like the odd man out. Looking back, the best way I could explain it is that I think that through the course of our relationship I had slowly grieved the loss of my brother for the years leading up to his death, with true ending being when I came out of the closet to him, and having him react in the way he did. I knew going into that experience that I may lose some relationships, and unfortunately that moment was truly the death of ours. In an effort to protect myself in that vulnerable time in my life, I had to emotionally and physically distance myself from him. It's sad, but it's the truth and I don’t know any other way to put it than that. 

So when thinking back to the time when I returned home, I was surrounded by people that had just lost someone they loved. I loved him then and still do today, but at that time I didn’t have many positive feelings toward him. How are you supposed to react when someone you love tells you that they want nothing to do with you because of something that you couldn’t change? For me, the answer was distance. Whether or not that was the best decision, I don’t know. But like I’ve said in the past column, that was the best I could do at the time. I was trying to get to a place of happiness in my own life, and back then I needed space from John.

Looking back, and knowing what I know now, I’ve learned that the people with the toughest exterior, who often can show feelings of animosity and anger towards others, are often the people that are hurting and silently struggling the most. I wish I knew then what I know now. Beyond that, these days I often think about how the two of us were silently struggling in parallel for so long for very different reasons. It's one of those things that are so hard to see in the moment, but after a tragedy like this one, you can’t help but look back and over analyze every little memory of the past. There are so many interactions that make more sense now that we are looking at him through this lens of understanding that he was in an unimaginable amount of pain. So much pain, in fact, that ending his life seemed to be the only way to get out of it. I can’t say that even today I fully understand John’s battle, but what I know for sure now is that so much of the hate in the world comes from people that have experienced pain themselves. It's my opinion today that there was trauma and pain that John had experienced that our family wasn’t aware of. 

The cycle of hate is a vicious one and what I know for sure is that more hate is not the answer. One thing our mom would repeatedly say to us over and over as we grew up, was that “you never know the day that someone is having”. She would always urge us to try to respond to people who wronged us with love rather than more hate. It's easier said than done, but I’m working on it, and I try to keep John at the forefront of my mind in these situations today when someone rubs me the wrong way. 

As I’ve gone through the process of writing these columns, it has been important to me that I don’t villainize my brother, but rather share my interpretation of his story to get to a place of understanding for both myself and for someone reading this story. With so much hate in the world today, it's very easy to villainize people that you feel have wronged you. But I think that a big part of the answer on how to end this cycle of hate is to get to a place of understanding of what brought someone to act the way they did. One of my favorite books is by (shocker) Oprah. It's called,”What Happened to You?”. It explains how all of the ways that the trauma someone experiences shows up later on in their life. A big message of the book is to not ask the question of “What's wrong with you?”, but rather, “What happened to you?”. The answers that explain why someone is the way they are, almost always lie in their trauma. It's from this understanding that I think healing can begin.

John and I had a complex relationship, and we were both to blame for the state of it when he passed. We didn’t always have such a strained relationship. Today I try to keep the good memories at the forefront of my mind, rather than the bad ones.

I remember riding my bike through our neighborhood with a long rope attached to it, and John trailing back behind it on his skateboard. Think wakeboarding, minus the water, boat and wakeboard…ha! He was a really good skateboarder, but he would often “eat shit”, as we’d say. He was tough and he’d stand up, get back on his skateboard, and deal with his cuts and scrapes later.

I remember me and John getting wasted on my 17th birthday. One of my all time favorite recipes is Ina Garten’s Tequila Lime Chicken. I used to ask my mom to buy a small bottle of Jose Cuervo gold tequila so I could use it in the recipe. I’d then lie to her about how much I actually was using, and stash the rest in my room. I was generally a pretty well behaved kid, but this was one of the more rebellious acts of my teen years.

Anyway, we had our extended family over for my birthday party and John & I had snuck to the garage to mix up said tequila with diet coke - probably one of the worst cocktails I’ve had in my life. I remember telling John that as we guzzled them down in the backyard. He said he didn’t think they were that bad. It wasn’t long before I was puking my guts out by some rosemary plants. Later that night I went to bed and John followed me into my room. I told him I was totally fine and just going to sleep, but he insisted he stayed because he knew I wasn’t done puking. I disagreed, but sure enough, within minutes I was sprinting out of bed to do just that. It was after the 3rd round that he seemed convinced it was over, and he said goodnight and went to bed. He certainly had his moments of being caring and showing it in his own funny way. I think he felt partially responsible for the state I was in that night, and frankly didn’t want me to choke on my vomit and die in my sleep, and for that to be on him.

I remember on our last vacation together as a family, him sitting on a dock outside of a cabin on Big Bear Lake with our niece Amanada who must have been 3 or 4 years old at the time. The two of them peacefully sat on the edge with their feet dipped in the water as they fished and quietly chatted together. 

I look at the photo of John holding our niece Caitlin, when she was a toddler. John was all suited up in his EMT uniform, and Caitlin looked giddy as ever as her big uncle in his cool uniform held her.

He liked that I cooked. Mainly because he loved to eat. Man, could that dude eat…like very large amounts of food. But food was generally something that brought us together, and our entire family together for that matter. And that is one of the main reasons why I love to cook and will continue to have cooking be a big part of my life. It just has that power. We were both pranksters, him more so than me. I proudly remember one of the times I got him good. I was making garlic bread and handed him a spoonful of a mixture of butter, parmesan cheese and crushed garlic. I had told him that it was frosting. He eagerly shoved it into his mouth, only to half spit / half barf it out a split second later. I’m sure he got me back 10 times worse shortly thereafter, but it was worth it.

John gave absolutely “zero fucks” about what anyone thought of him. In fact, I think he gave “negative fucks”. He did what he wanted and lived his life doing exactly what he wanted - spending as much time as he could fishing and surfing. I think he had very little desire to “fit in” to any specific type of crowd. But that drew people to him. His lifelong washboard abs and good looks helped too. I will never get over the fact that he has pretty much had a 6 pack since birth, and I have maybe 2 abs on my best day to date. Oh well…

I remember him grudgingly showing up to take one of the last family photos we took. We  were supposed to be dressed up, and John intentionally showed up in a “Bintang Bali” beer t-shirt, and proceeded to either act like he was picking his nose, or reveal his smile to show his teeth covered completely with melted chocolate. He could be a royal pain in the ass, but there was no denying that he could be pretty damn funny too. 

I remember John being an incredible surfer. And if he were alive today, he would likely have gone pro. He loved the water. We both had that in common and we spent much of our childhood and teen years at the beach. 

Like most of us, John was a complex human, and I still struggle to fully understand him and why he was the way he was. It has only been in the past few years that I have been able to connect with the good memories I have of our time growing up together, and less on the not so great parts of our relationship. There was a long period of time that I felt a lot of anger towards John before and after his death. I was mostly angry for how he treated me when I came out and for the mess he left behind him when he took his life and left our family devastated. These days I feel sadness for the pain that he must have felt for so long without any of us really knowing or understanding that pain or the root of it. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was home in San Diego for about 6 weeks in total after I came home from Italy. Like I’ve said, it was an incredibly difficult time and was full of so many mixed emotions. I had just had a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders when I came out and had one of the most incredible experiences of my life in Italy, and I was bursting at the seams to share it with my family, who I hadn’t seen for 3 months. And it felt like all of that had come to a complete halt. It felt like I was driving down Pacific Coast Highway on a sunny day, and all of the sudden my car had broken down and I got stuck in a rainstorm. And at the end of the day, for so much of that time, I felt like I was in a complete fog & shock, and much of my life felt abnormal.

I remember one day my good friend Sean came down to San Diego for an afternoon. We were in the same fraternity and he was and still is one of my best friends from college. He was in his hometown of Huntington Beach (less than 2 hours north of San Diego) for the winter break. He had reached out when John passed and said he would come down to San Diego to see me if I wanted. At the time, so much in my life felt so disrupted, and not much felt normal. That being said, seeing him brought me comfort to see a friendly face who I enjoyed spending time with. Sean drove down, picked me up from my parents house and took me to the beach. We sat in the sand and talked about things I don’t remember. We probably talked about John and how messed up the whole situation was, but I remember talking about a bunch of completely unrelated normal everyday things too. We built a sandcastle. I still have a video I took of Sean running through the sand to knock it over. I had laughed when he did it, and it was probably one of the few times I would laugh or feel any glimmer of happiness during that strange time. At many tough times in life, I’ve found that the simplest of things and experiences have the most power to make me feel good, or bring even just a sliver of joy back to me. That was a good memory from an otherwise difficult time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I returned back to school in Oregon in early January. After spending the past month and a half at home, I was ready to get back to my day to day life. I had a generally pretty happy life in college. I loved the town, I enjoyed what I was studying, and I had great friends. On that last topic, I still hadn’t told any of my friends that I was gay, but I wasn’t too worried about the reaction that my friends would have. It was going away to school that had opened my mind up to the idea that I could live a happy life as an out gay man in the first place. But it was still a bit nerve wracking. A big part of why I came out of the closet when I did, was that I was slowly but surely becoming an adult and realizing that it was up to me to craft the life that I wanted for myself. And I didn’t want this life to be built on a lie. Part of me felt guilty that I was hiding that part from my friends and lying to them. I felt pretty confident that they would have a positive reaction, but a part of me was nervous that they would feel “duped” somehow by me.

When I got back to school, I had 2 separate conversations with some of my best friends and told them I was gay. Both were very positive. A big part of them weren’t surprised by the news, and had a general attitude of, “Well yeah, we kinda figured that. Now let's move on with our lives.” I don’t say that with a flippant tone. It was more so that it was a minor detail to them and at the end of the day, the news didn’t really change what they thought of me. I think it's a generational thing and to a lot of people my age, it has become a norm of our society that people can be all over the spectrum of sexuality. 

Anyway, after I told my best friends, I wanted to tell my fraternity, where I was living at the time. That was a bit more daunting for me because it was a big group of mostly straight men. I viewed them as a pretty progressive and accepting group, but still I was nervous. A big part of me coming out when I went back to school was that I didn’t want it to be treated as a secret, or some type of hot gossip that people would whisper about behind closed doors. I wanted people to know, and then have us all just move on with our lives. And that’s why it was only a matter of a few days between when I told those groups of friends. 

I told my fraternity at the end of our weekly chapter meeting, on the first Monday that I was back at school. We did this thing called “gavel pass” at the end of each meeting where we passed around a gavel and each person got to leave the meeting by saying one last sentiment. I was about to be the first and only openly gay dude in the house at that time, and with that brought a certain amount of anxiety. When it came my way, I took it in my hand, stood up and shared the news. I think for a brief split second there was a feeling in the air from the group of, “Oh shit, did that just happen?”, before the group gave a big round of applause. It was actually overwhelming and I was taken aback by it. If there was anyone in the house that felt negatively about it, my general sense was that there were too many other guys in the house that it didn’t matter to and that had my back, and that they would be the odd man out for saying anything remotely negative about me. It's hard to put into words what that reaction, and that amount of support meant to me at that moment in time in my life. But I think you could probably imagine how good it felt.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When I was younger, I ignored the feelings of being gay and tried to compartmentalize them and put them in a box. I had thoughts and feelings that I knew were there, but didn’t want to acknowledge them or process what they meant. As I went through high school, I would suppress those feelings and thought to myself that I would end up “being straight” and end up with a woman. It wasn’t until I left San Diego and went to college that I began to process those feelings and actually ponder what my life would look like if I lived my life as a gay man. Before then, I just simply thought that it wasn’t possible and that there was no way that I could live a happy life as a gay man. I often think of it as a teeter totter. For the first 18 or so years of my life, it balanced so far in one direction, and then the weight slowly shifted and I started to realize how I could actually live a happy life being gay. It was an awakening of sorts. And when the pro’s of coming out outweighed the cons of coming out, that was when I decided it was time for me. 

The process of coming out felt like it was a bit of a bell curve of stress. The months leading up to me coming out were filled with a great deal of anxiety. The thing that sucks about it is that in a way, you feel like it is a feeling of confessing of a sin. At least, that's how society made me feel. Like it was a negative thing that you had to tell people. It's my hope that there comes a day when there is no “coming out” for anyone. That a certain type of sexuality isn’t something that is assumed in anyone. But anyway, once I finally mustered up the courage to tell the first person, I felt like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. The backside of the experience for me, especially when I was accepted, felt like one huge wave of relief. 

I have a lot of feelings about how strange the process of coming out really is. To me, the act of coming out is just awkward, for both parties. On my end, there is a certain amount of anxiety feel when I tell someone the words “I’m gay”. What I’ve noticed on the end of other people is that there is almost this feeling that they need to prove to you that they are accepting. And while that sentiment isn’t a bad thing, my point is that it often feels forced. I often hear things like, “Oh, I love that”, “I love gay people”, or “Oh, all good. I have a cousin that's gay”. It’s like they need to show you their “pride badge of honor”. Let me put it in another way for those people reading this that identify as straight. If you met someone new and told them that you were straight, how would you feel if someone said those same things back to you. A little strange and awkward, right? 

Let me put it a different way. For me, actions speak louder than words. As of today, I’ve found a different way of sharing that part of myself that just feels a little more natural and less anxiety filled. These days when I meet someone new I just find a way to work it into conversations in a way that feels organic. I’ll say something like, “Oh I used to date a guy who lives in Oregon”. It feels less of an announcement that requires a certain type of response. And at the end of the day, you still have accomplished the same thing, but for me in a less awkward way.

 I like to share that detail about myself with people that I am comfortable sharing it with, and then move on. I have gotten to a place where the way I share the news is how I expect people to receive the news. I say it casually and then move on with the conversation. Bottom line, no one's sexuality should be a stopping point in a conversation where they should have to explain it. 

Like I said, it's not something that really ever ends, so I’ve found a way to share it with people in a way that feels comfortable for me. And that's the point I am trying to make here. To find a way to continually do it over and over that feels good to you. 

To a certain degree, what I didn’t fully think through or realize in the months leading up to me coming out, was how long it would last. And how it actually never really ends, at least for me. Everytime someone new comes into my life, I almost feel like there is a certain amount of weight put back on my shoulders before I find a way to share with them that I am gay. There is certainly a stereotype of what society views a gay man to look like. And if you don’t appear at first glance to meet that stereotype, people often just assume that you are straight. I’ve heard some peoople say, what I think they view to be a complement, “I would have never guessed that you were gay”. It's a funny phrase which, I wouldn’t exactly say feels to me like a backhanded compliment, yet I think is a bit of a strange comment. And one that is simply just rooted in a lack of awareness. At the end of the day, being a gay man means that you are attracted to men. That's it, period. 

I think as a society we need to get to a place where a person’s sexality is never assumed. At some point in time, assuming that someone is straight generally just became the default assumption, and that's one of the reasons why I think coming out never really ends. Anyway, while it never really ends, I can say with confidence that it does get a bit easier every time. 

I think one big part of coming out is being able to separate out what other people want you to be from what you want to be. You are abandoning societal norms and the script that life gave you, and you are able to write your own script. Even still today, the freedom that has come with that decision still is one of the main contributors to my happiness. I feel empowered to craft the life that I want for myself and I don’t feel like I need to conform to what other people think my life should look like.

For anyone reading or listening: I know how scary the idea of coming out of the closet is. If you’re having a hard time coming out, as a starting point I recommend starting with writing & journaling. I did that when I was a teenager and I felt that it was a safe way for me to work through my feelings and process what I was going through. For me, writing down on paper that I was gay made it more real for me, and even gave me a little sliver of hope that one day I would have the courage to say it aloud. And, as you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a big believer in hope. Beyond that, the practice of writing in and of itself can be very therapeutic, and is helpful when sorting through thoughts & feelings. 

I recently heard the quote, “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it”. I wrote on the homepage of this blog about how important representation is. When I was younger, I struggled to find gay men in popular media that I identified with and looked up to. And that's simply because there weren’t many out there with big enough platforms to reach people like me. That being said, when I did see them, and learn about their stories, I felt like it was a huge breath of fresh air, and the oxygen I needed to keep pushing forward. And that's one of my biggest motivators in writing this blog. So, in that spirit, here is my list of people that I think you may benefit from learning more about: Anderson Cooper, Michael Sam, Nyle DiMarco, Colton Underwood, Gus Kenworthy, Neil Patrick Harris, Nate Berkus, Sam Smith, Carl Nassib, and Billy Eichner just to name a few. Billy is pretty funny too.

For me, life has only gotten better after being on the other side of coming out of the closet. There were so many little gifts that have been part of the process, and lessons I learned along the way. The biggest is that it was a big step towards creating the life that I wanted. After having made the decision to no longer hide that part of myself, it has made it easier to acknowledge and recognize the other elements that make me, me. For so long I lived in fear, hiding parts of myself in fear of being rejected. Having made that big decision to come out has made so many other decisions in my life easier to make, because I had already faced up to that initial big one. Essentially, it's a shift in mindset from living day to day making decisions from a place of fear, rather than a place of truth and hope. And I can say with confidence that that causes every area of your life to get better. Today I feel that I am the healthiest and happiest I have been in my entire life.