Last Dec. 6, Asia’s longest running Pride March marked its 20th anniversary in Malate, Manila. The theme was “Come Out for Love.” In the LGBT community, coming out is equivalent to an 18-year-old’s debut, albeit less celebratory and more depressing. As much as possible, we avoid coming out to family and friends. Often the experience is filled with heartache and misunderstanding. It rips families apart. It tests the limits of friendship.
But I’m not here to scare you if you plan to come out. I’m here to encourage you. Let me tell you how I came out to my family one by one in 2012.
My sister was the first to know. I sent her a message on Facebook saying I might be a lesbian. Her reply? A smiling emoticon. I told her I wasn’t joking and sent her a long narrative of my decades-old struggle which culminated in my coming to terms with my sexuality after watching a Swedish film about a closeted woman who was engaged to a man but fell in love with her stepmother’s daughter. My sister’s reaction? “How do you pronounce the title?” I gave up talking to her and drowned myself in three bottles of beer and a bucketful of tears.
But the next morning, she left a piece of sisterly advice in my inbox: “Sha, once you come out, there’s no going back. I love you for who you are but people won’t … give you the same treatment. They will judge you. Acquaintances will look down on you. Some friends and relatives might even turn their back [on] you. Be strong.” It’s a harsh reality, and my sister wanted me to be prepared. Had she known that I would become a lesbian? No, but she wasn’t surprised that I did. She assured me that whatever I go through, she would always be there for me.
To me, her words were gold. She was my sister, after all, the one who would prepare overcooked noodles for my brother and me when our parents were away. I felt emboldened to continue my coming-out process. But most of all, I felt love in her willingness to accept me. She thanked me for telling her first, and said it must have been very hard for me to confess it to her. She advised me to prepare for what our parents might say and feel.
Our parents’ reaction was peculiar when I came out to them. It started with a joke over the phone. I told them that if they wouldn’t pay for my airfare for my Christmas vacation, I would find a female lover. My mom laughed and gave the phone to my dad, who nonchalantly said, “I like women, too.” I told him I might be a lesbian and that I needed to explore to know for sure. He muttered, “OK,” and gave the phone back to my mom, who then asked how to buy airplane tickets online.
When I got home, though, I earnestly opened up to them about my sexuality. Did they throw me out of the house? Nope. Were they angry? They were calm and rational. Did they cry? I heard my mom sniffling a few times but then she sneezed, so I guess not. Did they quote the Bible and say homosexuality is wrong? My mom tried, but she stopped when I told her that I used to cry in church when the priest would say being gay was an abomination but that my feelings for a girl in class were anything but. But were they hurt? Regrettably so.
I felt my dad’s pain when he stopped working on his laptop and said, “I am so sorry but I might never understand why you chose to be like this.” He said he had been raised in a very strict household and taught that a man was meant to be with a woman and vice versa. He had very few friends who were gays; lesbians were even unheard of. Still, he said he wouldn’t stop me from becoming who I am. His only advice was to not hurt anyone and to always pray to God for guidance. My mom, the kind of mother who gets sick when her children fly out of the nest, was awfully silent the whole time. When I asked her to say something, she said: “You will always be my daughter. And I love you very much.”
Was it difficult for me to hear those words from the two people I dearly love? Yes, because I hurt them, because I realized that their dreams for my future might not be fulfilled, because I did not expect them to be so rational yet irrational at the same time. But love is both, and that is how my parents love me. It was not within their comfort zone to hear their daughter say she is a homosexual—a term so full of prejudice and hate. But they took a big step when they said I would always be their child, lesbian or not. I had the greatest love a child could ever hope for, and I am grateful to them for it.
My brother was the last to be informed but he took it very differently. When he learned that our sister and parents had known for months, he felt left out and said it was probably because he had been a very good kuya. He told me I had been dating the wrong guys, and that was why I turned to women!
He was serious. I, on the other hand, was amused. He was going through a breakup at that time, but he was resolved to find me a good man to love. He even recommended two friends of his (one of whom had a crush on me), but when he saw me rolling my eyes at him, he cleared his throat and said, “At least find someone pretty.” My brother, my arch nemesis in arcade games and math, accepted me right away. I found an ally in him. He had never been the expressive sibling, but that night was the first time I heard him say, “I love you, sis.” He even joked that it was bad that we have the same taste in women for he now has a competitor.
Did I regret coming out to them? I would regret more if I didn’t. I owe them this most personal part of me that I denied myself for a long time. To not come out and live in the closet is to be completely mistrustful of an institution that has kept me safe and healthy since the day I was born. As I came out, my family members began to come out of their cocooned belief that homosexuality is abnormal and wrong. They have become aware that LGBTs are such a minority in this country, less represented in our laws, and discriminated against.
My dad told me of his fear that I might become the joke of the community or that I would grow old alone, used by gold-digging straight women, and bankrupt. He was starting to understand the plight of LGBTs and the reality that his youngest child is among them. There was a most poignant moment that made me realize that my parents were slowly accepting my sexuality: when my mom told me that they saw a butch lesbian spoon-feeding an elderly woman. My mom then said that she could see me doing the same thing for them in the future. My dad smiled.
Coming out is indeed the start of a new chapter in one’s life. It can open up to a lot of opportunities, and new friends and lovers, but it can also close a few doors. The process is hard and painful, yet if you value the freedom to love, I assure you that the result is liberating. I have friends whose struggle was harder than mine. But that didn’t stop them from coming out. Some of them were accepted without too much drama. Some were kicked out of their homes but were accepted back by their loved ones. Those who were shunned have found new ways to cope, and found the courage to become successful in life.
Come out when you are finally free of your very own judgment. Come out when you are ready to face the harsh reality we lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders face on a daily basis. You are never alone in your struggle. Come out for love, and I will celebrate with you.
Breccia Zerda, 25, is a blogger on weekends and French/German financial analyst at FactSet Phils Inc. on weekdays.