The anniversary...

This is my coming out story so readers be warned, this is going to be a long one...

It's 4 years to the day that I came out to one of my parents (it took a further two weeks before I came out to the other).

I had arrived back from the US where I had spent almost a year working in a tiny sea-side town on Cape Cod. There, I had met the most amazing people, including the landlady of the house where I was staying. Ginny, who had just retired as principal from a school for troubled teenage boys, rented me a room in her grand old New England home. She had been sharing this home with boarders since the mid 1970s, mostly visiting scientists drawn to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Marine Biology Laboratory.

Apart from me and Ginny, the house was occupied by four others at the time. Dan, the perpetual boarder, was a strange but endearing gentleman who looked like Jesus, played the french horn, hoarded other people's rubbish, and kept piles of newspapers in his room. Luke was a middle-aged guy with the quintessential Bostonian accent who spent his time living and commuting between the Cape (his work) and Boston (his family). Tyler, my best friend in the house, was a newbie who had arrived in the Cape only a couple of months before I did, so naturally, we spent quite a bit of time together hanging out and exploring the Cape on weekends. Finally, there was Brian who worked in a local cafe called The Pie in the Sky, spent his free time going to some liberal christian church and attended the local gay choir (along with Tyler who is not gay but enjoys singing). Brian, a gentle soul was dealing with mental demons in the form of severe anxiety. He was also the first person I came out to.

Coming out to Brian was not something I had planned and happened only weeks before I was due to return to Australia. I had left work early one day and came back to the house to find Brian sobbing away at the kitchen table. He had been sent home from work because he was feeling extremely anxious and had started crying uncontrollably in front of the customers. As I tried to comfort him, Brian started telling me about the trigger for his most recent episodes of anxiety. Apparently he had a minor falling out with his boyfriend a few weeks earlier (Mario wanted to engage in a deep and meaningful conversation about God. Brian didn't. Mario got upset. Brian was sent into a deep depression). The trigger seemed so trivial to me (such was my ignorance of mental health issues at the time). In my lame attempts at a consolation (and perhaps reflecting where I was in my own mind), I said to him that surely coming out to your parents would have been a more traumatic situation. Then, to my surprise, I just started off loading everything on this poor guy who, by now had stopped crying, and just sat there and listened in stunned silence. After I was done (and feeling that I had selfishly hijacked his moment), Brian bursts into tears, so touched was he that I had decided to come out to him first. I almost burst into laughter.

In the weeks ahead, I spoke to a few other people but was conscious of the fact that I needed to come out to my family and close friends back home. Everyone I came out to in the US was fantastically supportive but perhaps the most touching response was from Ginny who told me that I was a wonsderful person who deserved to find someone wonderful to be with. I will never forget those amazingly generous and kind words.

So...back to Australia. I tell my sisters first. They cried. I cried. And then we laughed. I come out to my closest friends and was, once again, met with incredible support. So far, so good. But what about my parents? I had no idea who I should speak with first. I feel that I am closest with my mother but, for some reason, I decide to tell dad first.

My father would go for a walk every morning to the supermarket. I decide to go with him one morning and tell him along the way. I chicken out. Instead, I tell myself that I would tell him on the way back. But I don't. I chicken out once again. And so it went on like this for a couple of weeks...I would walk out of the house with my father. I'd be full of hope going to the supermarket but kept returning home disappointed in myself. At night, in the comfort of seclusion, I would cry in bed. Why was it so hard? Going through my head were the lyrics of a song I heard on the flight back to Australia. The chorus of Gavin DeGraw's song "I don't want to be" spoke to me in a way that no lyrics had ever spoken to me before...

I don't want to be anything other than what I've been tryin to be lately
All I have to do is think of me and have peace of mind
I'm tired of looking 'round rooms wondering what I gotta do
Or who I'm supposed to be
I don't want to be anything other than me

I decided that if I didn't do it soon, I'd never do it. I was also running out of time since I was due to head off for work overseas again in a few weeks time (to Europe). I decided I would tell my dad after Christmas.

But then, on boxing day, disaster struck...tectonic activities off the coast of Indonesia caused an undersea earthquake, sending a catastrophic tsunami across the Indian Ocean, killing hundreds of thousands of people. The entire family (like everyone else around the globe) was glued to the television. Suddenly, my issues didn't seem all that insurmountable.

The following day, I sat in the kitchen watching the news. It's early afternoon. Dad is there also, already preparing dinner (that's a chef for you). I switch off the television. I tell dad that I need to speak with him about something. I ask him to come with me for a walk. He puts everything down. We step out the house, and I tell him everything.