Stepping Out.

AKA, "Fresh Outta Jersey: Straight Outta [the] Closet."

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Is there anything in your life that you're really good at, but hate doing?

Math comes very effortlessly to me(until I get to Calculus level math anyway) but I've always hated doing it. Maybe you have something like that in your life too, or maybe I'm just weird.

There's another thing I'm really good at, but hate doing.

Lying.

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I can look you in the eyes and boldface lie. I can misdirect you with double-talk and non-answers. I can convince you to believe just about anything with a confident tone and and the right posture.

That would have been a great skill for a trial attorney(used ethically, of course).

That will be a great boon as an actor/writer.

But it's a terrible thing in my personal life. It's not a part of me that I'm proud of.

It's something that stops now.

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My name is Jordan, and I am bisexual.

I lied to my family about it. I lied to my friends about it. I've lied to you about it. Hell, I even lied to myself about it for years.

And I am so sorry about that. Please forgive me.

It's something that is REALLY easy to lie about. It's just a lie of omission; barely even counts, right?

For many years I essentially had to lie. I was heavily involved in the church, most of my friends were religious, I did a lot of work with the homeschooling community, etc. that doesn't make it right, but for my own wellbeing it was something I needed to do.

But that hasn't been the case for a long while now. I left the church a decade ago. I haven't worked much with the homeschool community in a few years.

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So why did I keep lying?

There were two main reasons. 1. I was selfish. 2. To protect my family from any possible backlash.

I want to be liked. Always have; always will. I worry about how other people perceive me. That's fairly normal, I recognize that. I spend a LOT of time avoiding stepping on other people's toes.

You'll accept me more if you think I'm a good little Christian boy? Done. You want me to lead the group in prayer? Sure. Teach Sunday school? Ok. You'll think I'm a better person if I constantly censor my language? No problem. You have insane political opinions and keep telling me about them? I'll hold my tongue.

Any part of me that doesn't fit into your own particular view of what I should be? I'll make sure you don't even know it exists for me In the first place.

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For many of you, me coming out will be no big deal at all. For others... Well, you've probably stopped reading already...

I might not be part of "that" world that's going to have a problem with my sexuality any more, but my family is...

I didn't feel like it was right for me to invite any thrown stones when l was still living with my family. No need for any of them to have to deal with the deplorable behavior of others on my account.

Im sure they will still be forced to have a few uncomfortable conversations because of this post, but at a certain point, I can't live a lie forever just because certain people might take this news badly.

And if that person is you. If somehow, you're up-in-arms about learning that I'm bi, but are still reading for some reason: leave my family out of it. They have nothing to do with this(besides providing my genes, of course). You want to be an awful person about this? Direct it my way. I'm not lying any more, and I'll be more than happy to tell you exactly what I think of your sentiment to your face.

But let's back up here for a minute. I'm not here to be angry at possible behavior by hypothetical people. I'm here to tell a story.

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I've always known. Or for at least as long as I've been aware of myself, I've known. It was incredibly confusing. I lied to myself about it for a really long time, but I knew.

You see, here's the thing, if you're a little gay kid growing up in the church, it sucks on just about every level. You're constantly taught how evil you are. How sinful a huge part of your brain is. You grow up having to lie to yourself and everyone around you for fear of being cut off from everything and everyone you know.

You're taught that it's a choice you're making. That you are straight, and that the devil is tricking you into acting otherwise.

That's horrible. It horrible because the people saying it [wrongly] believe that it's the truth and that they are only operating out of love. It's horrible because the kid hearing it now believes that they're broken somehow internally. That their brain is lying to them. That God will cast them out if they can't manage to fix a problem that doesn't exist in the first place. They know they're not straight, but every person around them, every person with decades of life experience, every person who they can go to with questions, is telling them that they're just flat out wrong about themselves. That they are crazy.

My heart goes out to every gay kid who is going through this right now.

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But Jordan, I thought you said you were bi, not gay?

Correct, and let me tell you, that made things even more confusing.

Because you know what every gay kid has that I didn't? They know they're not attracted to the opposite gender. Now, that creates its own set of problems, I'm sure, particularly when it comes to the fear of being crazy, but at least deep down they have a good chance of recognizing that the people telling them these things might simply be wrong. I'm not saying I had it worse, not by a long shot, but at least, hopefully, they could look down deep into themselves and know that there was a complete disconnect between the truth of their own physiology and the lies they were being told by other people. Hopefully they had a chance to understand who they were early, even if they still had to hide it.

I was not in that position.

I knew I liked girls. So no problem, right? And since young me knew that I liked girls, then that meant that the church was probably right. Sure, I liked guys too, but that was just the big bad devil messing with me. This simply must be how it is for everyone, right?

Everyone is straight, and some people just "choose" to let the devil tempt them, right? It was true for me, therefore, it must be true for everyone else, right?

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I could write many, many, paragraphs on the very simple reasons that viewing sexuality as a choice doesn't make the slightest bit of sense when looked at logically, biologically, sociologically, etc. but that's not my goal here today.

That incredibly stupid mindset, that it was a choice, screwed me up for years.

It screwed up how I treated members of the LGBTQ community. It screwed up how I thought about myself. It screwed up how I behaved politically.

And even after I grew up and left the church behind, even after I stopped lying to myself about who I was, that feeling of "wrongness" instilled in me from an early age stuck around. I was wrong, I was bad, I was evil, I was crazy. I was broken. Catholic guilt for a non-Catholic.

That fueled depression and self-hatred for years. It was awful. It only got worse as I got older.

I left that depression in NJ. I left that self-hatred in NJ. I'm leaving those lies in NJ too.

My life from now on will be loved honestly, as me. It took 28 years, but I'm finally ready to be myself.

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If you read all of this, thank you. It felt really good to finally get this off my chest.

If you're one of the handful of people who already knew, thanks for helping me get to the point where I can be comfortable with who I am enough to post this.

If you're one of my many LGBTQ friends, I'm sorry if I ever treated you in any way less than awesomely because of my own issues.

If you're one of the people I ever lied to about myself, implicitly or explicitly, I'm sorry.

If you read all of this and still don't get it, think I'm sinful, think I'm wrong, I'm sorry. Don't pray for me, pray for yourself.

If you're reading this and you're in the closet yourself, I'm sorry. Please reach out to me, I'd love to help you in any way I can.

-Jordan