Coming Out to My Grandmother
Coming out seems like the door opening to a new era in a relationship. The closing of one chapter and the opening of another. This wasn’t the case for me.
My grandmother and I are extremely close. I mean, I would call her my best friend. I know she loves me no matter what, and for a very closeted lesbian in an extremely religious/traditional/heteronormative environment, that doesn’t come easily. She half-raised me throughout my childhood. I lived at her house during the weekends, and during the summer I would be with her in our cabin in northern Arkansas. She taught me how to swim, canoe, fish, and how to get through life in one piece even with all the odds against me. She inspires me, and I look up to her. She is one of the most important people in my life.
I realized I definitely wasn’t straight after trying to force myself into a heterosexual relationship which went south fast. It took a four-hour-long FaceTime call and hundreds of held back tears before I finally said those three condemning words: “I’m a lesbian.” People always say coming out to other people is the hardest, but coming out to yourself is a whole different battle. At thirteen, I went through confusion and self hatred and disgust until I found acceptance.
Three years later, and I haven’t told any of my family that I only like girls. I knew my grandmother would be okay with it, but I wasn’t ready to tell her. I wasn’t ready for someone that close to me to know something so intimate about me. I was waiting for the right moment—for a little spark to alert me it was time—that it was okay. Obviously, no will-o'-the-wisp appeared to tell me what to do, as that’s not how life works.
I was sitting in the kitchen in the cabin while my grandmother cooked dinner. She and I often have deep, long conversations. The subject of this conversation turned to religion, which is a bit tough for me. She didn’t understand when tears welled up in my eyes when she started talking about her religious beliefs. To me, religion had become what was going to take my family away when they found out a certain truth about me. I hinted at that slightly out of pure impulse, and she caught the bait. We talked for two hours before I was staring at the oven when she asked that fateful question, “Are you gay?”, to which tears spilled over as I nodded.
She immediately stood me up and wiped away my tears while saying how she knew, she had known for a long time. I couldn’t stop crying, so she made me dance around the kitchen with her while she told me how happy she was and how proud she was of me. She sat me down and started planning my wedding and imagining my future wife.
While I knew that she would be the most accepting person in my family, that night filled a hole in my heart I didn’t know was there. I could breathe a bit easier and smile wider. This person I love so fiercely loves me, despite this truth I’ve been hiding for three years. Feeling that love made all the difference in the world to me, and I hope that one day, everyone will be able to feel the kind of love and acceptance I felt that night.