-Raj Sanghavi
As far as I can remember, I was always attracted to men. If someone had told me a couple of years ago that, ‘Hey, you know what, you are going to come out to a friend’ (or to anyone for that matter), I would have laughed on their face and told them they were crazy. Something changed around two months back. I started watching this sitcom in which one of the characters was gay and decided to come out to his friends and family. It’s as if something clicked and fell into place. That’s when I decided it was time someone close to me had to know the real me, know that part of my life which I had been hiding from everyone for the last 23 years.
I chose to tell a very close friend of mine. I had known her since school and we were in the same class. I must have tried at least 3-4 times and I chickened out each time, unable to muster the courage to come out to her. Finally one day I called her home for dinner. After we were done I called her to my room and told there was something very important about my life which I wanted to share with her. Then I just sat there in front of her for the next 5 minutes till she told me I was making her worried. That’s when I told her I was gay.
At first she thought I was joking, but when she realised I wasn’t and that I was dead serious, she was totally supportive. She told me I was very good at hiding the fact that I was gay because in our friend circle nobody suspected me of being gay. She then went on to tell me that she knows that it was a humungous step for me and she was honoured that I chose to come out to her first. She also said she would always be for me no matter what and asked me to promise her that I would never live a lie or cave into a false marriage. Immediately after all this I felt this sense of freedom and felt all light and happy. It was as if huge weight had been taken off my shoulder, like the shackles had been broken.
I know I’m just an amateur and that I’ve come out to only one person, but I must say it felt very liberating. However, only you can decide when you are ready to come out and it’s never too late. If I didn’t muster up the courage to come out to my friend, I would have never got the courage to join a site like Desiboys, where I made a ton of friends and met lots of genuine people. Here’s hoping my coming out to my other friends goes just as well