Excerpt from When Did You Know?
by M.D. Neu
People ask and are curious about my coming out. I get asked this a lot by my straight co-workers and friends. It’s kind of funny because if you flip the questions to, “When did you know you were straight?” It's silly. Anyway, I don’t mind sharing my story, so here it is.
I always understood I was different, at least on some level.
I grew up in the 80s, so yep, I’m old. Anyway, I never gave much thought to sexual feelings or identity in middle school. Sure, I was ‘sensitive,’ but I had a wonderful group of ‘nerd’ and ‘stoner’ friends, so I never suffered from any personal angst. I couldn’t figure out what the big deal about girls was. Sure, they were pretty, and some were friends, but I wasn’t interested in kissing them or anything like that.
I suppose there were a few girls who liked me, but honestly, I had no clue. I wasn’t super popular in school, but I wasn’t an outcast either.
I didn’t really deal with my sexual identity until my later teens and early twenties. I had a few girlfriends and even was engaged to be married, but something didn’t seem right. Again, I didn’t really know, clueless as I was, what the ‘it’ was. I found guys so much more attractive than girls, but I just thought I was normal.
Once, my engagement fell apart (her doing and not mine) that was when everything crashed in around me. I realized I had all these fake walls and barriers up. For the first time, I had to take an honest look in the mirror and accept that I spent my younger years in deep denial. I had major crushes on guys and I denied it… Hid it. I had even fooled around with a few friends, but again, it was all pushed behind these walls I created, and this life I wanted to live—I needed to live in.
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