In the run-up to #NationalComingOutDay tomorrow, I’m thinking about how “When did you come out?” is complicated.

It took 14 years from the time I told anyone about my sexuality until I changed my byline for the newspaper and wrote in my farewell column about my gender identity.

A *lot* happened in the years between. I was afraid of disappointing my family above all but I was also afraid of being picked on. and only being seen for being queer before anything else, like being funny or into metal or whatever.
I was afraid of what that label meant.

I can’t tell you I don’t have regrets for not coming out sooner. I do. I missed out on too much and spent too many years going to bed broken-hearted every night, wishing I could just live as “her.”
Yet the timeline of my transition led me to stop letting fear dictate my life.

My gender dysphoria peaked in 2012 when I couldn’t keep going on living a lie by presenting as male.
I didn’t want to go into my 30s feeling hopeless.

I needed hope, knowing that confronting the fear of the unknown was preferable to an unsustainable existence of doing nothing.

So often, what keeps us closeted isn’t ourselves as much as a fear of how others will perceive us, react to us, judge us or accept/reject us.
But why should someone else get to judge us while being themselves when we can’t?
It’s our lives, our identity and our truth - not theirs.