MY COMING OUT STORY: MY COUSIN

            For as long as I can remember, my cousin and I have been a dynamic duo.  We would call each other to plan visits to our grandparents’ house at the same time, I joined his Cub Scout pack when mine folded and we moved up the ranks of scouting together.  It would have been very rare to see Peter and I not together at a Boy Scout function back in the day.  Peter has been like a brother to me, we hang out every weekend, he has a toothbrush in my bathroom and he even exchanges gifts with my family and I on Christmas morning.  He is clearly more than a cousin to me; he is also my best friend.  Peter, Justin, Marissa and I are a dynamic quartet of people who I will talk more about throughout this blog.  Each one of us has extremely different personalities that somehow complement each other.  They are some of the only people in this world that I can just ride in car with for hours and never run out of things to talk about.

            Peter has a very outgoing and daring personality and I have a timid and cautious one.  I don’t know how or why we can have such different personality traits and still be friends but somehow it works.  I have to be honest that I was a little nervous about telling Peter that I am gay.  He was my best friend that was a guy and I didn’t want to lose that, he was a fellow scout and I didn’t want any of this news to leak to the Boy Scouts leading to my termination of membership and I didn’t want my entire family knowing before I was ready.  However, I knew that the benefit of telling Peter outweighed the cons no matter how severe they may have seemed. 

            One night while driving Peter back to his house, we had a discussion about secrets that we had and I told him that I had a huge one.  He promised me that he wouldn’t tell a soul if I told him my secret, so blurted it out, “I’m gay.”  I had never felt such a rush of adrenaline in my life.  He honestly didn’t believe me when I told him and it took some convincing to tell him that I wasn’t lying.  After I dropped him off, I had wondered if I had made a mistake.  Should I have risked him telling my family and the Boy Scouts.  However, Peter proved to be a loyal friend.  The next time I saw him, it was like nothing had changed, because in reality nothing had, I have always been this way.  Peter was also one of the biggest contributors to my support system when I was coming out.  I could talk to him about everything from the stresses of coming out to other friends to coming out to my parents.  That is what a true friend is, someone who is loyal, helpful and will support you no matter what.  I realize how hard it must have been for him to keep this secret for so long, but I am extremely appreciative of it.