National Coming Out Day

In case you haven't seen, today is National Coming Out Day. It's easy to miss something like that, since every day of the calendar has something attached to it. I think today is also an international day for girls. The UN webpage says today is World Mental Health Day, so there's a third thing to add to your calendar.

All of these things are important, which is why people have assigned a day to them. It's a good way to draw attention to the cause du jour. It provides us with another reason, beyond all of the people affected by whatever the cause is, to talk about a problem and try to work towards solutions.

I want to talk about National Coming Out Day because that is the cause that affects me the most today. I don't want you to think that I think coming out is more important that girls and mental health; it's just that I am not a girl, and I don't think I have too many mental health problems in my life right now. So, coming out is the more applicable soap box, as it were.

I'm glad that we have established a day for coming out. I've already said that I think it's important, but the real reason I'm glad is because of the world I see this day trying to create. It's a dream, a vision of a reality that isn't quite here yet, but towards which we are working. It's a hope: a faith in a world not yet seen, but which could one day be true.

This day was created to celebrate coming out. It was created to celebrate difference and diversity. Ultimately, I think, it was created to celebrate truth. It's the truth about who we are as people, what our lives are like, and how we are choosing to live now. It's the truth that we are exactly who we are supposed to be, that we are no longer going to hide in shadows and lies, half-truths and deflections.

It is, quite simply, truth.

From my own experience, I am far happier now that I have come out. It was a difficult decision for me, though. When I got to the point of personally accepting that I was gay (took me a good long while), I knew I wanted to come out, but I wasn't sure of how that would be viewed by friends and family at large. I knew my closest friends and immediate family would still love me, but I had no idea how anybody else would react. Eventually, spurred on by the then-recent Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, I just thought, "To hell with it." As soon as I published the blog post detailing everything, I texted one of my best friends and asked him to play video games with me as a distraction because I was super anxious about it all (note: the gaming DID NOT help my anxiety).

But then the messages and comments started pouring in: everybody loved it. Not only did they love the post, they loved me. As a person. An individual.

As Luke.

Since then, I've been much happier. I no longer hide who I am. If I want to mention how cute that guy is walking down the street, I do so. If I want to talk about how LGBT discrimination is alive and well, and how much that bothers me, I do so. If I want to talk about how much I actually like Hillary Clinton, not just because she's not an orange manatee (thank you, Stephen Colbert), I do so. I realize that at least one of those things doesn't relate to The Gay, but coming out as gay taught me that I don't really need to hide any aspect of my life. So, I don't.

National Coming Out Day, I think, has as its ultimate goal the creation of a society where coming out is not necessary. It is a goal of a society where I don't need to write a blog post and publish it to Facebook to explain to people why I am suddenly going to seem and be a different person to them. That society is one that celebrates people for who they are: people. Human beings with real dreams, desires, and passions. Real people who care about real things. Real people who are accepted and included, even if they are in a differing minority.

It's a society of happiness.

If I can misappropriate a Mormon scripture, I will. So, I'm going to: "Men are that they might have joy." I ponder on this phrase a lot. It's snuck into a larger discourse on sin and happiness, and I think it gets kind of glossed over. It suggests that our whole reason for being, our very reason for existence, is so we can experience joy. It's so we can be happy.

Coming out made me demonstrably happier. Living true to myself made me demonstrably happier. I cannot think anything bad or evil that makes people happier like this has done to me. And the society, the world that I want to create is one where everyone is happy being who they are. Where everyone is safe and loved while being who they are. And National Coming Out Day helps to further that goal.