Happy #NationalComingOutDay !

Today I will tell the embarrassing story of how I came out in high school in part because of a piano exam I did not want to take.

1/n

As a stereotypical Chinese-American teenager growing up in the aughts, I took piano lessons from a young age. I was not very good and did not practice enough, so it wasn’t until senior year of high school that I was scheduled to take the Level 10 Certificate of Merit exam.

2/n

Senior year of high school was extremely stressful. I had a lot of extracurricular commitments, and was also experiencing panic attacks and existential crises, partially b/c I was coming to grips with knowing I was gay while living in a socially conservative neighborhood.

3/n

I had signed up for the exam in the fall, but when the spring came around and exam date approached, I was not ready. I did not know the pieces well. I was increasingly stressed. And so I asked my parents if I could just skip the exam.

4/n

Even though I told them I was not ready, they told me that I had no choice to take the exam, because they wanted me to experience failure. (I won’t get into how fucked up a motivation that was)

5/n

I told them I just really didn’t want to deal with that. That I had a lot of things going on that they didn’t know about. After some back and forth, they pressed me on what it was that was happening.

6/n

Unable to actually say it out loud, I wrote the words “I’m gay” on a piece of paper, set it face down on the table, and ran into my room to cry.

I have no idea why I thought this was an appropriate response, but well, that’s life I guess.

7/n

After some time, when I finally calmed down, the first thing my mom said to me was:

“You know, we’re not surprised.”

8/n

The next several months, my parents got me into therapy to treat my anxiety attacks while they came to grips with my coming out. I won’t say it was easy. There were brutal conversations we had that still hurt to think about to this day. But in the end, it worked out.

9/n

My parents are seemingly ok with my queerness bows They’ve met my partner and ask about him. They haven’t asked me to change myself (although I am still not out to my very old Chinese grandparents). Rather than abandoning me, as I’d feared, they’ve continued to support me.

10/n

I still had to take that piano exam though. Somehow I thought in my panic-brain that me coming out would give me a pass on that ordeal. Well. I was wrong about that outcome. But so were my parents.

11/n

The day of the exam, I came into the exam room and told the evaluator very frankly that I was not ready for the exam. I knew probably 2 of the 5 songs and half of the other 3. But I sat down and struggled through it anyway.

12/n

After I finished what felt like an eternity of horribly bad performance, I turned to the instructor. He told me that, after I told him I wasn’t ready, he had expected me to stand up and leave. He was surprised that I had gone ahead and played anyway.

13/n

Because I had played one piece particularly well (a Scriabin prelude I think), and I had tried my best with the rest anyway, he ended up passing me.

I guess my parents were half-right about failing that day.

I failed to fail that piano exam.

14/n

Here are some tips I’ll leave you with:

1) Your family might surprise you in positive ways when you come out to them. It’s likely they already know.

2) Coming out isn’t necessarily something that is planned. But even without a plan, things can end up okay too.

15/n

And finally, most importantly:

3) Don’t expect your Chinese-American parents to accept any excuse whatsoever when you want to get out of doing something you’ve signed up to do.

16/END