Coming Out As A Lesbian: Just Curious Or Really Serious?

I admit that the movie I was running in my head when I came out was not at all what happened in real life. My movie included me and a woman I viewed as beautiful being together. We had a sweet house and animals and maybe a child or two (one was mine and the other her’s) who got along so well. We had beautiful music playing all the time, we always wanted to do the same things at the same time, we moved and breathed at the same pace and believed all the same things about life. She was soft. Soft lips with no pointy prickly beard bristles and we would melt into each other’s soft bodies to make love that would last for hours.

Oh did I mention that there would be beautiful music playing all the time. It would just be in the air, like the smell of ylang ylang when you walk into a spa. And we would talk softly and about deep things except for the times when we would laugh with abandon. And did I mention that there would always be romantic music playing, floating through the air.

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We’d be so happy and content. We’d enjoy and share all that life has to offer. Even enjoying all the same foods and sharing dinners together every evening.

Let me tell you that this didn’t happen? No, it didn’t happen for me. It’s not my story of coming out. In my story, yes I fell in love and then my heart was broken. Now that’s not unusual is it?

My first love didn’t want me after all. It didn’t take long, just 3 short months and that first love had fallen apart. She had warned me that there was a process to coming out and she’d been there and done it. She also at one point talked about wanting to share this season of my life with me, but that didn’t happen. We parted ways and I was off to figure it out on my own.

What a mess I felt I’d created. I was overwhelmed with the magnitude of changes after being married for 21 years. No one had really helped me understand the “rules” of the lesbian community and when I ran into them face first, it was one more thing that broke my heart.

I just didn’t understand why women didn’t want to get to know me or be friends. Ok, I was pretty naive. I’d forgotten about 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade girls. Yeah, it can be just like that if you’re trying to hang out with the wrong crowd.

The therapist I was seeing actually fell asleep on me one day. Yes, really. That was the end of that relationship. It was one more thing that hurt too deeply. I moved into a neighborhood that was very gay friendly with plenty of queers living there.

Actually it was the same neighborhood my ex-girlfriend was living in. She’d wanted me to live close but at the point of my moving just three blocks from her, she broke up with me. So I’m living in this really queer friendly part of town, but still I wasn’t able to easily meet women for friendship and just to hang out. It was before the days of Meetup.com and dating sites were just coming online. It was a lonely place to be at that time for me.

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I’m sure one issue was that I looked too straight. I looked like someone who’d been married and was heterosexual. Well that makes sense right. I’d only been out for a year and I was still finding my way out of the old world and slowly walking into a new world with its own set of rules and expectations.