In the beginning...

Here's a bit of an intro to give readers a sense of where I'm at. It's not an easy situation to be in, and I hope that any success on my part will come as encouragement for anyone to live in truth.

I am in my mid-twenties and living in Sydney, by myself at this time (well, with my 2 dogs anyway). I've been living away from my family for more than 6 years now, but due to geographical location and nothing else. My parents are loving and supportive of me to a fault; however, coming from an extremely conservative background, I have not told them that not only do I find myself attracted to women, but that I yearn to live as a man.

And this brings me to a question: why have I not explained this to my family? Each one of them have been fully supportive of nearly everything that I have ever done, and I know that in our family, nothing comes before our relationships with each other. I find myself too embarassed to say the words, and chicken out every time.

I've decided that I myself have to be more comfortable with who I am, before I will be able to include my family in this journey, and create new crossroads in their own journeys. As luck would have it, time is on my side.

As for my friends, a select few are aware that I am attracted to the fairer sex, although I'm sure that many suspect just as much. Sydney is probably one of the better places for a gay person to live in, and I come across many gay couples in my line of work. The difficulty here is that most of my friends are female, and I worry that our friendships will grow distant if they start to fear any "secret lusting" or "predatory lesbian activities" that heteros are so paranoid about.

Take my closest friends for example: it doesn't help that as jocks, we are very physically open when around each other. Because I have been friends with these girls for such a long time, I know that I have no romantic or sexual inclinations towards any of them, thinking of them more as sisters than anything else. But try explaining to people that you're not attracted to a bunch of fit and tanned leggy blondes: yeah, I didn't think so.

I feel that the time will come soon when I am open about this. I hate the whole "new year brings a new me" thing, because I think people use it as an excuse to put things off, but I can feel that 2006 will be one that I look back on fondly as the year that I really started living my life.

Posted in coming-out, family, friends, personal, sexuality