I get it
You're angry
I get it
You've been hurt
Me too
It's not fair or right 
soooo many people 
take soooo long to become affirming
and even longer to "come out" as affirming

[yes, I know that phrase is going to annoy some of you
it kind of annoys me too when straight people use it
but we're more similar than we are different
and I'm rethinking my annoyance]

because tonight 
for the first time since I came out
I felt ashamed of my journey to figuring out I'm queer
and it wasn't the words or actions of 
a hateful Christian bigot that spawned the shame

it was vitriol directed at an ally who "came out" 
admitted he was wrong and 
apologized for what he'd previously believed
[and no, he didn't say he was "coming out" 
that's my word choice]

43 years it took me to figure it out
not broken and straight
queer and whole
and another 8 months to come out publicly

but before that 
41 years to become fully affirming
and only after I'd thrown church and faith away

I'd never walked away from friendships due to my faith
but I didn't know how to reconcile what I'd been taught 
with friends who'd come out (or were outed) years before
I loved them as best as I knew how
in the eighties and nineties and two thousands
but looking back it was ...
insufficient
because love the sinner, hate the sin always is
no matter how much you try to love the sinner
but I stayed and those friendships grew
and eventually I learned how to truly love them
and me

the person so many are mad at
he was honest 
it took him 9 years to get here

Can I be honest?
Or will this condemn me in your eyes?

I started asking the questions that eventually 
got me to realizing churches need rainbows 
when I was 17

so 9 years? 
that feels pretty short and pretty fast
24 years?
that's a lot of years I could have done things differently

so where does that leave me?
someone who is part of the community
someone who is queer
but also someone who took a lot longer on my journey 
to affirm and celebrate the dignity and diversity
of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community
than I wish it had

I can't change those years
You have no idea how much I wish I could
those regrets are mine to navigate

but please know when you rail against allies
who you think took too long
or didn't "come out" in quite the right way
I'm certain I'm not the only one who wonders
what you think of how long it took me

I don’t often link to my old blog, but I wrote about the moment when I finally became fully affirming. While I was specifically writing about a friend who was gay, my reference to the church needing rainbows was meant to include everyone within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community even though I didn’t have all the words for that back then.

Also, apologies, there are probably some typos in here that I’ll need to fix tomorrow, but it’s late and I need to go to sleep and, come what may, I need to say this out loud if I’m gong to have an likelihood of a decent sleep tonight.