"Love, Simon" and the Closet Monster

Simon says he's secretly gay. He hides himself from family and friends. Not because they'll reject him. Quite the opposite, in fact. He knows everyone will be fine with it. But the fear of changing how they look at him, of tampering with hard-won relationships that he cherishes, stops him from revealing the truth about himself.

The plight of the titular character in Love, Simon resonates with me. I've lived every day in much the same way.


Hi. I'm Rich (in name only.) And I'm gay. It's taken nearly four decades to say that out loud. Unlike Simon, my own story involves years of self-inflicted suppression. My brain invented comforting lies, saying "You're not attracted to that guy, you're just jealous." Beating myself up over these feelings became as vital as water. They seemed aberrant and wrong, and I just wanted them to go away.

They never did.


I eventually accepted myself, but I was nowhere near comfortable with it. When I came out to my family four months ago, I claimed the moniker "most likely" gay, the utterance of which nearly made me choke. Outside of support groups, only a half dozen people knew. I couldn't tell some of my closest friends, despite years of laughter and love.

Writing was my only outlet. As an aspiring screenwriter, I poured all my fears, hopes, and dreams into fictional characters ever so slightly removed from myself. My struggles were theirs, and their outcomes my idealized vision of that which I couldn't have. It seems easier to separate the art from the artist when the artist is you.

Last week, when I saw Love, Simon, everything changed.

An epiphany occurs when you see yourself in a work of popular art. For many, such a moment happened with the releases of Wonder Woman and Black Panther.

I never saw myself represented in media. Pop culture tends to gravitate toward caricature. Stereotypes that I didn't relate to. I never saw just a regular guy who happened to be gay.

When I met Simon and his world I thought, I know this kid. I've watched his face age in my mirror.

Those same fears, hopes, dreams.

That's me up there.

Me.

I wept.

And I resolved. I marched out of that theatre on a mission. To say how I felt. And I didn't care who knew. I wanted to yell from the rafters what this film meant to me. In the car I formulated my response. A tweet. A simple tweet at the director about how I wished this film existed 20 years ago, when I was Simon's age, to help me through it all.

But then, it returned. The monster. That goddamn monster.

My Life in Pencil

Panic is my co-pilot. My mind screams "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT" all day at 150 decibels.

Anxiety kept me in the closet for years. It crept in again as I typed the tweet. What if one of my 20 followers sees it? What if it gets retweeted and random people like it and it goes viral and some news outlet picks it up and publishes it and people I haven't told find out and OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP IT YOU MORON YOU CAN NEVER BE HAPPY.

My cursor hovered over the "Tweet" button for twenty solid minutes as my mind spiraled out of control. I deleted it. I knew if I sent it I'd never be able to sleep. But I reassured myself: if I still felt compelled in the morning, into the ether it would go.

I woke up at 9:25am.

Take that, closet monster.

A public admission, however veiled, that I'm gay. And the sky didn't fall.

A wave of empowerment flowed through me. I came out to seven more people. Had a wide-ranging discussion about my struggles with one of my dearest friends. Sought a pal's advice on meeting nice guys in real life. Inquired about volunteering opportunities with local LGBTQ organizations. Like a giant snowball with a Val Kilmer center, nothing could stop me.

But an idea I've pondered for months burst to the forefront.

Write This Shit Down

Coming out is hard. Living out is harder. Doing both at middle age is difficult in triplicate. It's unique, it's scary, and there's a lot to unpack. I deal with my problems through writing because I struggle to articulate them verbally. So I created this blog to document the pains of my coming out process, in hope that a chronicle of toil against my demons might help those who suffer the same, much as Love, Simon helped me.

I will not discuss dates or intimate details here. I am not a Millennial, and thus refuse to share every aspect of my life publicly, as that's not fair either to me or the people I meet on my journey. This blog will focus solely on the internal obstacles I attempt to overcome, and the social anxieties I am wont to encounter.

Also, this blog is not intended to solicit dates. I'm old fashioned. I want to meet somebody organically, through friends or social activities outside of the internet.

Regular updates may be intermittent. I'll try to post every few weeks, but I'd rather spend most of my time engaging life as fully as I'm able. When I hit a roadblock or conquer a mountain, this is where that experience shall live.

How Do You Fight Loneliness?

I gallivant with friends and cherish our time together, but everything comes to an end. I return to my empty car, my barren apartment, and it hits me. I've been alone for a very long time. I'm sick of it.

We're all puzzles with a missing piece. To solve it, we must locate that piece in the one person who complements our foibles. Somebody out there completes every one of us. But if I want to find him, I must fight back the monster, step out of that closet, and dive in, heart first.

I can't do it without being open with the ones I love. I can't do it without living honestly.

I've eluded this my entire life. No more.

Simon says he deserves a great love story, and I'm not stopping 'til I find mine.
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