You can’t read this article. But I still say these words in my heart to you. Coming out to you is so simple and natural. But behind it is my difficult journey of self-awareness.
Coming out to someone you once loved
I have known you for 14 years. From a very early time, you have been my teacher, close friend, sister, and mother. We have always talked about everything. But I know that the fact that “Yingya may be a homosexual” is a forbidden area between us that we cannot step into. In your heart, you must have used various methods to blur this gap. 14 years have passed, and I finally mustered up the courage to tell you: I am a homosexual. Telling you means admitting to you that my feelings for you back then were love; it means telling you that I loved you. After confirming my orientation, I have always wanted to tell you so that you can understand the real me. This means a lot to me. But I have been hesitating. This may be too shocking news for you. Born in 1972, you are open-minded and have a good mind, but you have too little knowledge about homosexuality. I don’t know what you think. I dare not touch that forbidden area, and I dare not confess to you many years later that I really loved you back then.
That day we went to see Harry Potter 7 with your daughter. On the way back, the topic of homosexuality came up. I finally said, “Me too.” I said it very naturally, as if I was saying that I liked the movie. But you don’t know that I was sweating inside. You accepted it in a very normal way, but I knew that you were in turmoil. Because your smile was a little unnatural, and you talked less all of a sudden. Soon you returned to normal. I looked normal on the surface, but my heart was in turmoil. I finally spoke to you, and I finally told you that I really do love women; I really have loved you. After that, I would often discuss with you about girls I like, and you would sometimes express your concerns, but generally speaking, you could talk to me in a very normal state of mind. I was very happy.
Three years ago, I was in Nanjing and fell in love with a girl who was a lesbian. Although it was just a hopeless unrequited love, this love made me finally confirm my sexual orientation after struggling for many years. At that time, I talked to you about homosexuality for the first time in a phone call. I can discuss this topic with many friends, but when facing you who is very close to me, I dare not touch this topic because of the existence of taboos. This phone call made me tremble with fear and walk on thin ice. As I expected, after I explained the basic common sense to you, you can look at this phenomenon with a very normal attitude. I wanted to tell you that I am the same, but I swallowed the words back when they came to my lips. I really didn’t dare. But I think, even if I didn’t say it, you would understand it to some extent.
Three more years passed after this preparation, and it was not until 14 years after I fell in love with you that I finally told you: I am gay.
Do you know how difficult this simple sentence is?
13-year-old crazy
I was 13 years old when I first met you. I had just entered junior high school and the first class was Chinese. I sat in the back of the classroom, aimlessly wondering what kind of teacher I would meet. Suddenly, you came in, with your chin slightly raised, and a majestic temperament. I was a little startled, and my first impression was that this teacher was quite pretty. After introducing yourself and talking about some related matters, you asked everyone to preview the text on their own. I was looking down at a book and was suddenly startled again. A hand suddenly appeared, flipped the notebook on my desk, and read out my name word by word: “Oh, Ying, Mi.” Then it disappeared, leaving me alone to comfort my frightened little heart because I didn’t understand the situation. Later I realized that you were remembering my name so that I could match it with the person. This surprised and touched me. How much energy does it take for you to remember all the names of the whole class, even me who sits in the corner of the last row? What’s more, how much thought does it take? How do you value your students, respecting them, a group of 13 or 14-year-old kids, as independent individuals?
I have been with you for three years, and I know that you are not just pretending. You value and respect your students as individuals, just as this episode shows. This is just one of your many strengths that impressed me at first.
At the end of this class, I was deeply impressed by you. There was another Chinese class the next day, and by the end of this class, I had fallen deeply in love with you. Yes, deeply in love.
For three years, I was crazy about you, and you were scared at one point. I didn’t hide it, and nearly 500 people in 11 classes in the whole grade knew about it. Now that I think about it, as a straight person, this must have been very troubling to you.
You are like a goddess in my heart. Being around you is like being bathed in spring breeze. You are smart, knowledgeable, humorous, considerate, interesting and cute. In my heart, you are the most beautiful woman in the world. I always stare at you in Chinese class and can’t get enough of you.
At that time, my whole life seemed to have only one thing left, which was the passion to love you. Every minute and every second I could see you was happiness, and when I couldn’t see you, I missed you every minute and every second. Every day’s Chinese class was my biggest expectation and the biggest motivation for me to get out of bed. After class, I always tried to talk to you. It was a great happiness to be able to chat with you. I wrote countless immature poems and love letters, all of which were stored in a drawer. There is no need to talk about those bits and pieces of crazy.
Your betrayal
You were 14 years older than me and had just gotten married. I guess you had never known about homosexuality and couldn’t completely identify my enthusiasm as love. You liked me very much. I was your favorite student and our relationship was closer than that of an average teacher and student. But of course you couldn’t love me.
One time, you suddenly invited my parents to meet. I was very curious about what you talked about, so I asked them when they got home. My father said nothing, and there was a dark cloud over his head. I felt strange. Seeing that I was asking so much, my mother forced a smile and said that you talked to them about my crazy feelings for you, and you said that you felt a little scared and even wanted to change classes. This was like a bolt from the blue. I couldn’t imagine that you actually “betrayed” me and told my parents; what was even more sad was that my infatuation only scared you. This incident made me sad for a long time. Although thinking about it now that time has passed, it was actually normal for you to do this, because my feelings were indeed undisguisedly fanatical, and you had no knowledge of homosexuality; you did this out of helplessness and more out of concern for me.
My parents are very reserved and are too shy to talk about “love” and “sex” in front of their children. After this conversation, they never mentioned it again. Of course, I would never bring it up myself. I still don’t know what they think about this issue. When I come out to them in the future, I will talk to them about it.
But the truth is, I needed help so much at that time. You don’t know, in those three years, the positive side was my obsession with you, and the negative side was my pain and despair.
The path to self-awareness
When I was little, I was always called a “tomboy”. I liked to hang out with boys and had the same mentality as a little boy. I looked down on little girls and never considered myself a “little girl”. But I also liked to look at beautiful girls. When I was distracted in class, I was looking at the beautiful girls in the class. She was the most beautiful girl in the school. Every time I saw her, my heart would stop beating for a while. But I was so young at that time that I didn’t know anything.
After falling madly in love with you, I never dared to assert that this was love. You are my goddess, how dare I use love to blaspheme. I told myself that it was worship of the teacher, that the student loved the teacher. But I knew in my heart that my feelings had gone beyond the scope of “worshiping the teacher”; but I never confirmed it. Everyone was the same as me, no one could be sure that I was in love with you, and no one could assert that it was not. I also deliberately kept it vague and deliberately did not confirm it.
But the doubt about my sexual orientation always followed me. Whenever I encountered something related to homosexuality, I would think of myself. I went to find some books about homosexuality, but I still couldn’t or didn’t dare to confirm my orientation. How desperate I was during that time. I didn’t know who to ask for help, and I couldn’t tell anyone about my doubts. I felt that I was probably a homosexual, and I would probably have to bear pressure all my life, and I would never be recognized by society and my relatives; there should be very few people like me, and I was afraid that I would never find a woman to accompany me in my life. When I graduated, the smartest and most profound girl in the class wrote me a long paragraph in the yearbook, which said that there are many helplessness in life, and we may not be able to compete with our meager strength, so we can only compromise many times. I think my mood in those three years was probably the same.
After that, I tried hard to like boys, and it seemed to be successful, even though the boys I liked all had pretty faces like girls, because I really couldn’t accept anything very masculine. After that, although I would be attracted to some girls from time to time, I could always use excuses such as “friendship” and “appreciation” to get by. In fact, how could I not tell the difference between friendship appreciation and affection in my heart. Coincidentally, I didn’t meet another girl who I could love deeply. So I thought I was heterosexual. But that kind of feeling and tendency will always follow me like a shadow, and at some unexpected moments, it will open the bottle cap and ask me: Do you remember me? It was not until I fell in love with the girl in Nanjing that I finally made up my mind and stopped struggling.
How can I satisfy everyone? I just want to live up to my heart
Now, in just over a decade, people’s attitudes towards homosexuality have changed greatly, and society has gradually begun to accept this group with a normal perspective. Especially the younger generation, although some of them are “friendly curiosity” or “self-centered fantasies”, after all, young people who think homosexuality is rebellious are no longer the majority. Thinking of this, I always feel relieved. If I were born later, I might be able to accept myself and recognize myself calmly, and I wouldn’t have to go through such pain.
But at that time, in my young heart, I didn’t know how to expel the despair and fear of not being recognized and accepted. If you knew that I loved you, what would you think? Would you think I was abnormal? Would you think I was terrible? – Every time I think of this, my heart aches.
But despite such despair, I was very clear about one thing: homosexuality is not wrong. This kind of feeling is no different from heterosexual feelings, and it is involuntary and cannot be chosen. Moreover, if you love someone, you can ignore the other person’s beauty, ugliness, wealth, age, height, so why can’t you ignore the other person’s gender? My feelings for you are so pure and sacred. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever encountered. It helps me grow and enriches my soul. It is extremely absurd to say that my feelings for you have any dark, obscene or perverted elements. Such feelings are homosexuality, so what’s wrong with homosexuality? Why do some people despise it? I have not hindered anyone, I have not hurt anyone (maybe it has caused you some trouble, but the root of these troubles is not homosexuality, but that you don’t love me). I just love what I love. Why would such a feeling be criticized?
I also realized one thing, how can I live up to others’ expectations, but I just want to live with a clear conscience. In this world, if you care too much about other people’s eyes and opinions, you simply can’t live. Homosexuality is extremely normal, harmless, and just different from most people. It is still criticized and opposed by many people, so perhaps the opinions of many people are not worth caring about. Life is only once, and we don’t know its length; others can’t know what is the most suitable and happiest for you, so you can’t waste your precious life on considering the eyes of others. Those who accuse others just because they are different from themselves, those who want to decide your life for you, and those who sneer at things they don’t understand, their eyes are even more unworthy of consideration. And wasting your life in a pseudo-heterosexual marriage, deceiving an innocent person for a lifetime of happiness to support a paper-like fragile protective shield for your weakness, in exchange for your own deeper pain and your parents’ temporary false prosperity “reassurance”, is an even worse approach. In the end, it will not solve the problem, but will only make the problem accumulate.
I had thought through all these things before I was 15, even though I was still not sure of my orientation at the time. The process of thinking clearly was really hard and painful. But after thinking clearly, I became determined and open-minded. The difficulties of life, the helplessness of life, and the misunderstanding of others are not only encountered by homosexuals. Even if you are no different from most people in terms of sexual orientation, you cannot avoid these hardships, or even more and heavier. In the face of these things, the only way to achieve happiness is to fight hard, build a fortress with your own hands, and hold on to the most important things in your heart.
Thank you very much for your understanding. I know that although you don’t say it, you are worried about me. You don’t want me to take a harder road than most people; you may not fully understand this kind of feeling. But you once told me: Life is short, grab what you really want. I will, and I will never feel sorry or ashamed for my feelings.
