Transcript: Coming out (Reading)

“I’m 43 years old and I’m gay. I am open about my gayness right now, but it hasn’t always been this way because I was born in religious surroundings. Even when I was a little boy, I was always a little bit different. (…) That wasn’t really welcome and I always felt a little bit unwelcome in this world.

Then I grew up. I mean, I constantly stayed different. Of course, it became more obvious when I started going to school. Then when I was a teenager, when I was about 11 years old, I started to figure out why I felt different, that I was attracted to someone others weren’t, and it made me extremely confused. Especially, the other part that made me even more confused or, I would say, even afraid, was me being part of this religious community, faith community, where this wasn’t accepted at all. It was rather discouraged or even thought of as an illness and something that needs to be cured. So, in these surroundings, I actually decided that it’s going to be a secret, it’s going to be something that’s my story, a hidden story, and I can’t tell anyone. (…) I definitely decided that no one would ever find out my secret. And it was extremely difficult to carry this secret… (…) I was always wearing glasses and I didn’t have sunglasses, so when I got sunglasses for the first time, where others couldn’t see my eyes, I remember the relief (I felt) that I could actually look at a guy who I liked, who was handsome. That was my huge fear: if they found out, it would be the moment where I lost everything. I could lose my family, I could lose all my friends. And it was out of the question. And because I was also within this religious community and I was a person of faith at that time, it was important to me to live a life that I thought I should live to be a good person.

I really hoped that I would change, that I could change my sexuality. At that point I even thought: OK, maybe I’m bisexual. And, again, because I was in religious surroundings, sex before marriage was also out of the question, so it was even out of the question to try and see, to test it for myself if I could be attracted to women or not. So I actually decided to get married to a woman. (…) And I fell in love with a woman. It’s something that is really hard to explain because later, when I let myself be who I am and came out as gay, I realised what it actually means to be in love. So I would say maybe I liked her a lot as a person. (…) After several years we decided to have a child. I was afraid of how that would turn out if we ever got divorced. But sometime two years into our marriage, I actually started having depressions. And these depressions, I would try to work them out. Luckily, six months before we got married, I told my wife-to-be that I experienced same-sex attraction and I don’t know what it means. We both somehow thought that maybe we can change it. If we love each other enough, it’ll be possible to change. So she knew that I struggled with this. I mean, I struggled with not accepting myself. I would try to talk with her about the depressions that would come. She knew why I was depressed and what was happening. So we always tried to find other ways of pulling me out of these depressions and we managed somehow. But these depressions came back every year and each year they were more and more severe. (…) Of course, our sex life suffered more and more. It was harder and harder for me to sleep with my wife. (…) It was more like an obligation than something I really wanted, enjoyed.

And then I met this guy who worked for the community. He was open at his workplace. He was open about his sexuality. (…) And this is where he actually put a different question into my head: Would it be possible to do meaningful work, to invest my life in something that I enjoy and be openly gay? And this is actually where my process of deciding to come out started and also my process of coming out. It was filled with huge fear. I didn’t know how people would react. I actually expected to lose all my friends, especially the ones that are connected to the religious community, faith community, that I was connected to back then. That was a scary time. Also, my parents… I was living with my family in the house that my father had built and I was expecting him to say to leave the house and not show up ever again in front of his face. So it was a question of… I might lose everything that I know.

Coming to that point where I actually decided to accept myself, but being aware of what that might cost me, the first thing that I wanted to do is to feel safer. (…) I needed at least a few people that would be beside me, and to know that I wouldn’t be completely alone. So, first of all, it was very important to have this one friend who was with me in this whole process and it’s actually the friend that was the first person in the whole world that found out about me being gay when I was 21. So she was there again when I was 36 and (when) I made this decision to come out. This is also something that made it very hard. I am 36, I lived this whole life that was for many people a lie. I mean, it was also for me. I was living partially a lie about who I was. I was trying to live the straight life. There were the children. I was scared. What will happen to my children, how will the divorce affect them when I get divorced? So there were so many questions coming to my mind. And then there was my friend. When I was on this trip and happened to get to know this gay guy in New Zealand, my brother was with me, luckily, and I decided to come out to him. And he had an amazing reaction. He was extremely supportive. And when I came back to Croatia, I started to come out to some friends, few of who became my allies and stood beside me while I was going through this process of coming out.

It was really hard for me and my wife back then to go through this process. I was really trying to do my best to listen to the pain my wife was going through, to take care of her and her feelings and also to take care of the people who actually I came out to. I remember it was extremely hard to come out and at the beginning… Every time I started coming out, I was crying. It was just such a difficult thing to do, which nowadays is very different. But even when I came out to my parents, I had the whole support system. My brother was there with me, my friend was there with me. So that made a huge difference because my parents didn’t react that well, especially my father. It was hard to take. (…) After about six months he called me and told me he wanted to talk to me and he told me that he loves me no matter what. So slowly it did become easier.

I must say the hardest part was the divorce and taking care of the kids, especially my daughter because she was about eight back then and it was important for her, for us, that she understands that she is not the reason, that she’s great as she is, and that we still love her and that she’s not going to lose either parent, but that her parents are going to be here. And then (there is), of course, the story with my wife. I would say there was an important sentence my wife said. She said: “You know, as a friend, I want you to be happy and to accept yourself as you are, and I want to support you as your friend, but as your wife I’m extremely angry with you. And I really tried to give her the freedom to be angry because I know it wasn’t easy and I could understand that it isn’t. But I’m very proud of how we handled the whole situation and the divorce and the children, and how we are still in a good relationship as parents to our children. We are there for our children, we can spend time together and talk to each other, which is a very important thing.

Now there is the question of whether it is better being out or not. I would definitely say it’s so much better to be out. I remember when I finally came out, when I already came out to several people and to my family, this first summer I remember telling my friends: “I feel like I can finally breathe, like I’m actually, for the first time, taking a real deep breath in my life.” (…) It was the most important decision. And having a partner now and just knowing and feeling so much more authentic and (feeling) who I am. And it’s just so much easier also to discover who I am, who I want to be, and where I want to go in the future.”