25 Years Ago This Summer

This was our home from 1990 - 1996.

It was 25 years go this summer, 1995 that I came out as gay to my friends and a few co-workers.   They were mostly supportive and even a few were happy for me.  A quarter of a century.  Wow, how time flies. 

As my ex-wife used to say, “Time flies like an arrow, but, fruit flies like a banana.”  That is so true.

We’d gotten into a rather loud, very pointed argument the previous December, 1994, in regards to discipline with our young son.  One thing led to another and out of the blue, this came out of her mouth, “Are you gay?” 

“No. What?”  I didn’t want to be associated with that word.  “No, I’m not gay.  Why would you say that?” 

I don’t recall the specifics of the conversation after that, but a couple of things happened later that week. 

1)     I did some serious, introspective thinking about myself and my life at that point, and realized that, yes, it’s true. I am gay.  And it wasn’t fair to continue a charade with my wife and son.

2)     My wife said to me, “It must be hard having those feelings and not knowing what to do about it.”  We talked a little more and decided that yes, we needed to get a divorce and sell our new home of 5 years.

We both still had our jobs to focus on and our son to attend to.  By June, I decided that since I’d be going back to school in a few weeks and seeing my teaching partners, I’d better be proactive (a favorite word of our current principal at the time – see "Being Proactive Does NOT Mean Telling People What To Do!", April 2016, for more about him) and share some news with a few of them. 

I’d invited a couple of them over to my home and sat down to have the “coming out talk”.  It was amazing to me that as I spoke to each of them, they both said the same thing about me:

“Oh, yeah. I’ve known that for a long time now.  You did this, and this, and then of course, this.  Oh, and the way you looked at this parent and this one.  Yeah, this isn’t very shocking or surprising.  I am surprised though that you took so long to realize it yourself.”

The subsequent conversations that I have the following day and then at school during in-service week were almost the same verbatim. The maddening thing from my perspective was how I didn’t see any of that when it was taking place.  Totally oblivious. 

Initially those first several years were horrible for me because I knew that inside, in order to feel whole and complete and not just moving around in some zombie-like state, I knew I had to have a boyfriend in my life.  My personal relationships, including with my own son, suffered the most.  I was not a good, decent, loving father to him during that time and it scared me because that’s exactly how my relationship with my father had been so many years earlier.  History was repeating itself in a very bad way.

Several years later, I was diagnosed with a persistent depressive disorder, called dysthymia. It is a continuous long-term (chronic) form of depression, whereby you lose interest in normal daily activities, feel hopeless, lack productivity, and have low self-esteem and an overall feeling of inadequacy. These feelings last for years and may significantly interfere with your relationships, school, work and daily activities. And they did interfere.

It’s no excuse for some of my behaviors at the time, but it is a reason for them.

Over time, now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s a perfect time for self-reflection and looking back at our lives.  Not necessarily making peace with things, but in order to see what we can learn and perhaps grow from moving forward.

No, at this time, I am still single and still very much interested in having a husband in my life.  Absolutely.  As I am writing my final chapters, living my life in the best possible way that I can and the best possible ways I know how, I am saddened for the many missed opportunities on which I’ve missed out.  Many regrets.

I know that I am not perfect – people point that out to me daily.

And likewise, I know I’m not the bad, evil monster I was portrayed as once upon a time, either.  I can’t be that person, nor do I want to be him/it.