What happened to that feeling?

It’s funny how we humans can lose feelings over time. We can have this overwhelming emotion, but within months, days, hours, sometimes even minutes, we forget what that experience felt like.

I recently experienced a moment where I remembered an emotion I haven’t felt in a long time. The feeling I had when I first started coming out. Isn’t it interesting that we can forget something so monumental like that? It’s been almost a year, and I’ve become so used to who I am that it is no longer something that I have to think about. I don’t think, therefore I am. I simply am.

Maybe that’s how it should be. It’s probably supposed to feel this natural. Who I am shouldn’t be a big deal. I shouldn’t feel something extra just because I’m not what the world would consider “normal.” It should feel normal to me, and it does. Maybe that’s how it should be, but sometimes I wish it wasn’t this way. Sometimes I wish it felt like something more.

Anyone who hasn’t come out (or who doesn’t have anything to come out about) can’t possibly know what it feels like. It’s indescribable. Imagine a world where a part of you must be locked up. Hidden. Caged in like an animal. Imagine that you are the one imprisoning yourself. That the cage – or “closet,” as we call it – is your own mind. Then imagine that feeling when you finally decide that you don’t want to live – if you can call it a life – in that cage anymore, and you finally reach out to someone. You can’t imagine it. You have to feel it.

I first started coming out on November 15, 2012. At that point, my sexual orientation was a part of me that I was so completely desperate to hide. I was scared, ashamed. I saw myself as a walking sin. I had spent years of my life, wasted years of my life, trying to pretend it all away. I thought that if I would just ignore it, then it would disappear. On November 14th, I finally decided that I’d had enough. I was in an extremely bad relationship with someone I honestly didn’t love, he had just gotten arrested (for beating his mother, no less), and I was exhausted. Putting on my happy face façade every morning and pretending that I was someone else was draining everything out of me and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was done. That night, I was emailing my best-friend/little-brother (who I knew was bisexual), and he knew that something was wrong. I told him that my boyfriend (ex-boyfriend now) had been arrested and also that there was something else on my mind, something I was really struggling to deal with. He asked me if I wanted to talk about it, and I suddenly had the feeling that I did. I arranged to meet him before school the following day to talk.

That night, I started to have second thoughts about coming out to him. Then I just took a look in the mirror. I kid you not, I looked my reflection in the eye and said to it, “You know what? You’re not straight! Suck it up and deal with it already!” The next morning, I met with my little brother to talk. I tried to tell him how I felt, who I was, but I couldn’t. Those two little words were on the tip of my tongue, but I simply couldn’t say them. I knew he was a safe person to tell, but I just couldn’t do it. My fear had such a fierce, intense hold on me that it simply wasn’t possible. So I wrote him a letter telling him everything. Even in the letter, I couldn’t just say it. I wrote at least a page-and-a-half discussing other topics, other struggles. I wrote about everything on my mind, except the one thing that I’d been dealing with for five years that, in reality, was probably the source of all of my other struggles in the first place. Finally, I decided that I’d stalled long enough and wrote out the two words that changed everything.

Later, he and I met up to talk again. I took out the letter and read it to him. I know that my voice must have been dripping with emotion, not because of what I was reading at first but from the anticipation of the part I would have to read. I was terrified, but I knew that I had to do it. For myself. I couldn’t keep living in a cage.

Finally, I reached the part that I’d been stalling on saying. I paused and took a deep breath, then finally said the two words that carried more depth, more meaning, than anything I’d ever said. “I’m bi.” I continued to read the rest of what I’d written. About my past relationships and how tired I was of it all. About my home life and how ashamed I felt. About how I wanted to stop feeling like there was something wrong with me. When I finished, he pulled me into what was probably the longest, most loving hug I’ve ever received.

After that moment, the first emotion I felt was a sense of relief. Someone knew my deepest secret, and it was okay. There was no judgment, no condemnation.

About a week ago, I came across the email conversation I had with him later that night. It was nothing incredibly special, and I think that perhaps that is why it is special. There was no pomp and circumstance about my orientation. It was just a conversation between a bi girl (that’s what I identified as at the time) and her bi brother. A week ago, when I reread that email, all the emotion of that time came back to me.

As I sat there reading through that email again, I could almost feel myself wearing my favorite sweatshirt over my favorite spaghetti strap. I could almost feel the weight of my favorite blanket draped over my shoulders. And above all, I could feel the novelty of it all.

In that email, we talked a bit about my letter, but it was mostly just random conversation. At one point, he mentioned his boyfriend (ex-boyfriend now, but boyfriend at the time). I remember how different that felt. Talking to a guy about his boyfriend, and that actually being ­okay. Normal, even.

Suddenly I felt like I was in a new world. A new reality. A world where everything I’d been taught was wrong and that meant that suddenly I was free. Free to be myself. A world where I didn’t have to be afraid to be who I am. A world where suddenly it was okay to talk about my orientation instead of hiding it like it was some disease that I didn’t want anyone to see. In this strange new reality, it was okay for me to talk about thinking that a girl was cute. It was okay to see two guys kissing or two girls holding hands. It felt strange, but pleasant.

I carried that feeling with me for months, all through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, even into St. Valentine’s Day. All through the cool fall and the frigid winter, I carried that feeling. Everything had a new meaning to me. Everything I did had a new purpose to it.  Even the simple act of ­­breathing was different. The air that entered my lungs felt, smelled, different than it had before.

As I read that email, I could feel that sense of the cool autumn air. I could imagine the fall decorations that decorated the mantle of the kitchen fireplace. I could smell that warm autumn scent, with the pumpkins and just that feeling that the world outside was cool but I was inside all nice and cozy. Then I could imagine the atmosphere beginning to change as the weather grew colder and the autumn leaves on the kitchen mantle were replaced by a Christmas tree in the living room and stocking holders on the mantle of the family room fireplace. I could smell the peppermint. The snicker-doodles  sugar cookies, hot cocoa, pumpkin pie. These scents carried with them a different meaning because they came at the same time as a new sense of freedom. I walked through life with a different attitude, a different outlook. That time wasn’t perfect. I didn’t suddenly have everything together simply because I came out to one person. It didn’t take away all of my other struggles. But it changed my world. Life was different for me.

I don’t feel that emotion anymore. I don’t carry that feeling with me everywhere I go. Now, the only emotion I feel connected to my orientation is that occasional fear. The fear I get when I’m around my “family.” That’s the only time I don’t feel like I can be myself. Yes, there’s that sense of freedom when I can be myself. But when I do feel like I can be myself, it doesn’t feel like there’s anything extraordinarily special about it. It’s just normal. And I wish that it did feel more special. I wish it had the feeling it used to have.

The other day, I asked someone how it is that we lose the feeling we get when we first come out. She responded, “You don’t.” If that’s true, then why can’t I feel it anymore? If other people keep that feeling, why didn’t I? What happened to that feeling? And will I ever get it back?