How young is too young to come out of the closet?Unlike a lot of the contributors to this blog, I wasn’t out when I arrived on campus as a freshman. Far from it. I thought about coming out immediately after setting foot in Durham, you know, following the ever-popular doctrine that college is a new life, a new start, where you can be a new you. But that’s not how it worked out for me. I was much too shy and too insecure around all of the new people I was meeting to actually be myself, and eventually by the beginning of my sophomore year, I had let so much time fly by that I thought it became too late to explore that side of me. I was already set in a group of fantastic friends, I was doing well in my classes, and I didn’t want to disturb this seemingly perfect existence.
However, it was after months of feeling stuck in a rut, of that constant internal nagging and, as pathetic as it might sound, seeing my friends go out and hook-up and/or begin to have romantic interests (because we all know these things are sometimes mutually exclusive) that I realized that if I wanted to be happy, I needed to come to grips with whatever was holding me back from admitting to myself and everyone I knew, that I was gay. And so finally with one month left in the school year, I told my first friend the truth about my sexuality at, ironically of all places, Sirens Lounge (a lesbian bar in Durham, for those of you who are unfamiliar). The floodgates began to open and eventually I had informed everyone who was important to me, including members of my family, that I was, in fact, a gay man (because, like the slogan for Pringles goes, once you pop, you can't stop).
However, it was after months of feeling stuck in a rut, of that constant internal nagging and, as pathetic as it might sound, seeing my friends go out and hook-up and/or begin to have romantic interests (because we all know these things are sometimes mutually exclusive) that I realized that if I wanted to be happy, I needed to come to grips with whatever was holding me back from admitting to myself and everyone I knew, that I was gay. And so finally with one month left in the school year, I told my first friend the truth about my sexuality at, ironically of all places, Sirens Lounge (a lesbian bar in Durham, for those of you who are unfamiliar). The floodgates began to open and eventually I had informed everyone who was important to me, including members of my family, that I was, in fact, a gay man (because, like the slogan for Pringles goes, once you pop, you can't stop).
