Coming out to myself and friends
2002
Coming Out – initial awareness
Becky was living in Worcester,
when she came out in 2002, aged 23. “I kind of had lots of thoughts
about that sort of thing way before then. I decided I knew when I was
about thirteen or fourteen. I always said to myself that I was bisexual
but in a way that was a way of not making the whole gay thing too
strong. It was a way of saying that I was gay in a bit a way without
saying the whole thing sort of to soften the blow without going the
whole way, a half-way house kind of thing. I kind of suppressed it and
it wasn’t until I was 23 that I said ‘Enough is enough, I can’t do it
anymore, no, I’m sorry.’
Coming Out to friends and herself
“I
went to a gay night at a local club in Worcester that was on a Tuesday
on a weird day of the month. I ended up kind of screaming and running
home. It was all very dramatic. I was going along and I was kind of
questioning. I was walking home with a couple of gay guys I’d met in
the club and they said ’Why are you going to a gay night ‘cos you’re
obviously not gay? You left your boyfriend at home’. At first I was
defensive, and I was saying, ‘Yeah I am, don’t talk to me like that, I
am’ and it was sinking into my head what I was saying. I was thinking
to myself, ‘Bloody hell, I am’. I was like ‘Actually yeah, I am. Oh my
God, I am, I really am. Wow!’. It was this big realisation like an
explosion in my head. I was running home and I was crying, really
emotional. Everything just made sense. My head just felt like it
completely exploded. Before I ran home I went to my friend this gay
guy’s house I was shouting up in the street trying to throw stones at
his window going ‘Wake up, wake up I’m gay! I’m gay! He shouted out of
the windows ‘Piss off, shut up, you’re going to wake up all the
neighbours. Go home and tell your boyfriend.’ I was in tears when I got
home. Complete relief, total release, really weird.
"I had to come out to my parents. I came out to my parents about a week later. That was in 2002."
Contributed by: Becky Tebbett, 27