Coming Out of the Closet

Having read the title of this blog this is where my family are very curious about what is coming next. We traditionally think that coming out of the closet as being the announcement to the wider world or even to close confidants, friends, and family that a person is gay. Often when people recall the moment of coming out of the closet, they speak of a sense of relief and of a burden being lifted from them. To paraphrase they find it liberating. It is almost always a better experience than they imagined.

I was listening to a podcast today that took this as its theme, but what it went on to say made a lot of sense to me. The contributor said that coming out of the closet actually referred to any secret that we might have or anything that we might be concerned about others knowing. So it could be telling somebody that you are seriously ill, or that you have lost your job. In all cases it is better to be open about things for the liberation that this brings.

I experienced this with Marion today, and it proved that coming out of the closet is absolutely true, it is liberating. So those of you who know me will realise that despite being officially retired I am doing two or three days a month freelance work for the company I used to work for. Marion and I do not exactly see eye-to-eye regarding this, so I was really worried about telling her about an extra task that my former boss had asked me to do. I thought that Marion would “go up like a piece of fried bread” when I discussed it with her. So having heard the podcast I decided to be honest and share with her the worries that I had. Previously I may have internalised this and done the work covertly. I would have been screwed up, and Marion would have been suspicious. Instead we had a civilised discussion, we both now understand the ground rules, and neither of us is up tight about this. We may not agree but we are being honest with each other.

It is a maxim that I am going to take into the future. I would urge all of readers to come out of the closet; you have no idea as to how great you will feel.

APOLOGY – The infamous Book Club subject of yesterday’s blog is actually over twenty years old. I had underestimated the time and consequently the number of books that had been read!!!!