MACEY
COLORADO | SERIES #3
Coming out was strange for me. I can’t relate to the perfect coming out stories, but I also can’t relate to the horrendous ones either.
My name is Macey Moyer. I am 18 years old, and I came out October 8, 2013. I was 13 years old, and I swore I was the most defenseless person in the universe. The biggest issues sitting on my plate were how I was going to buy my new shoes and how I was gonna tell my mom about my online girlfriend. To me, those were the scariest things I could possibly imagine. Growing up in a town where being “gay” wasn’t a thing, I didn’t know how to go about BEING gay. Not only that, but I wasn’t sure about how to go about telling people I was gay. I remember watching YouTubers such as Tyler Oakley and understanding that being gay wasn’t something that all people hated.
October 8, I sent a text to my mother. I wasn’t sure how I would word it to her. Sitting on my best friends couch, I sent a text that said, “Mom… I’m bisexual. I like girls.” That was all. I didn’t respond afterward, and I didn’t explain myself further. I received a text saying that I could stay at my friend’s house for a few days because she needed time to think. At that moment, I was truly devastated. There wasn’t a greater disappointment than to know that your own mother doesn’t support your lifestyle. That same day, I came out to my friend, whose house I was staying at. Her reaction settled the nerves created by my mother’s response. They were the only two people who knew I was gay.
Sometime later that year, I was ‘outed’ on a classmates Instagram profile. My secret was exposed to the world. I took the outing a lot worse than I imagined. I locked myself in my room and didn’t come to school for the following week. It wasn’t something I was embarrassed about, but rather it was something I wasn’t ready to talk about. The bullying followed by those in my town. I had my inner circle of friends who supported me, but I also had those who sent me death threats. It wasn’t until high school that I realized that those who were intolerant didn’t matter.
After dealing with over 2 years of intensive bullying, I surrounded myself with people who supported my lifestyle. Since then, I have solidified my identification as someone who is pansexual and gender-fluid. The people I surround myself with have continuously supported me and will continue to do so.
The greatest lesson I have learned is that coming out isn’t really that important. There is no need to explicitly tell people who you are, as long as you are comfortable with your identification. There, truthfully, is no “right time” to come out. What I wish I would’ve known as a 13-year- old bisexual is that labels do not define you. You can be gay and not have an exact label for that. It is perfectly okay to live your life without a definitive label.
5 years have passed, and being open and vulnerable about my identification is so incredible. It has definitely gotten a lot easier in the past 5 years.
