Hardening Myself

I have been rattling on quite a bit recently about the struggle to accept your sexuality. It’s a difficult topic to broach because every person’s situation will be different depending on their friends, their family and what prior exposure to homosexuality they have had. I do know people to whom realisation that they were gay was not an issue – members of their family were gay, they had liberal parents and many of their friends were gay already. How I envy them.

And then at other times I reckon I am the lucky one. There are people who live most of their life in denial because of external pressures. People who know that the consequences of their sexuality would be so far reaching, they sacrifice their own happiness for that of others who will never even know the sacrifice they have mad. Some claim these people are in denial – but I have a great deal of respect for them.

I have thought many times over the consequences of my coming out. From worst to best case scenario. I reckon that really my parents do know about my sexuality, but I still reckon that if I was to come out with it, I’d still face their wrath.

Part of this self-realisation has been a hardening of myself. I was always fiercely independent, but I have perhaps gone further. I know it may be difficult, but if I was forced to sever all ties with my previous ‘life’, I would do it if it meant I was being true to myself.

Am I wary of close relationships because I realise that it all may change for the worse? Have I hardened myself, and in the worst case, could I really cope with going from having everything to having nothing by my self?

And is this burden one entirely overlooked by those investigating gay and lesbian mental health?