There was a time when I extremely afraid of the world knowing I was gay. In fact, before I ever came out of the closet I was completely homophobic and even used racial slurs against those whose sexuality was no different than mine. But even after I did come out of the closet, I still struggled to be honest with the world around me about my true sexual preference. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore and that became quite evident lately when I was outed by a friend of mine at one of my AA home groups.
I belong to two recovery home groups in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in Toledo, OH. One strictly caters to the LGBTQ community, while the other is not specifically geared towards any specific subset of recovery. To put it rather simply, one is really gay, while one is really not. Obviously the meeting that I was outed at was not the one predominantly attended by gay people. Ironically though, that meeting is nonetheless attended by a small number of gay people who are also members of my LGBTQ home group. One of them is relatively new to recovery and is the same one who outed me during his share the other day.
Up until the day it happened, I had never actually talked openly in that group about my sexuality. There were several members who did know though only because they had either (a) read my blog where it’s discussed pretty openly, or (b) learned it through general conversations with me. Anyway, as my new recovery friend shared during one of those meetings only a few days ago, he spoke of our LGBTQ-based AA meeting and how happy he was getting to know others in it. Suddenly, he spoke of those he was referring to, one of which was I. In the past, this action would have utterly horrified me. Most likely, I would have felt like a tortoise that wanted to quickly crawl back into its shell. I might have even gone so far as telling white lies to disassociate me from what he had said. But I did none of the above when it happened. In fact, I did nothing at all other than take part in the meeting as I normally do. By the end of the meeting, I had completely forgotten about it until my friend approached and profusely apologized for outing me. I reassured him that everything was fine and that I wasn’t upset on any level.
I’m amazed sometimes when I take a look at how far I’ve come in just a short period of time, especially when it comes to being as open about my sexuality as I am now. The truth is that I don’t really care anymore what people think when it comes to my sexual preference. Ironically, I actually have compassion today for those who struggle accepting homosexuals, because there once was a day when that was I. I also inherently have found that the more I’m comfortable with that part of me, the more all others seem to be too, but the less I was comfortable with it, the less that others seemed to be as well.
I’m so grateful that I’m much more comfortable with my sexuality today than how it used to be for me. I no longer feel the need to cover up that part of me, neither do I feel the desire to use any bi-sexual or my jokingly tri-sexual (I try anything) labels I once used regularly with others due to my fears.
Life sure has changed when it comes to how I handle my sexuality nowadays. I’m quite thankful to my Higher Power for helping me get to this point in my life where a random outing in a predominantly heterosexual meeting did nothing more than show that fear no longer controls that part of my life.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson