Late Bloomer

Coming Out Later in Life is a Beautiful Disaster

I’ve been working on this big essay about coming out later in life; what that experience has been like and what I’ve learned from it. It’s probably the most personal work I’ve ever written. And for me, that’s saying something. I’m a slut for feelings.

But I would have given anything to have read what I am going to share when I was younger. It would have saved me a lot of lost time, self-hatred, body issues, bad choices and a stunted adulthood lying to myself because of fear.

During the process of attempting to write about all this I’ve been talking to other queer women who have been going through the same things. What I realized is this there is so much to cover. It’s too much for a single essay. Or rather, I’m not good enough of a writer to condense it into a single essay. I’ll leave that job to the poets and songwriters. My job is to yip-yap-type my way out of a viscous cycle of panic attacks.

And while this topic is really important to me, I understand that for much of my audience, it simply isn’t. I don’t ever want to discourage readers with one type of content. So please know I am trying to mix up what I publish here, see what sticks. Your interaction will direct the focus of much of this, so please, vote with your likes and comments, share the feedback that makes this a better experience for us all. (I’m a lesbian. Communication is our whole thing.)

I am going to make my thoughts about coming out later in life an essay series. It’s called Late Bloomers, and once a month (or so) I’ll be sharing an essay on the amazing and terrifying experience of becoming who you always were, well into adulthood. I’m kicking it off today with the moment I realized I was queer. And because I’m me: it happened in the wild.

Over the next few months I will share more about the adult coming-out experience. About how every gay story is an isolation story. How dark things had to get before I finally gave myself permission to be happy. How we are all responsible for breaking free of our self-made cages, whatever they are.

You’ll notice in this essay I use the same imagery I’ve used before to describe rural queer women as coyotes. This memory is how that metaphor got hardwired in my brain.

Here we go.

Let’s bloom.

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17

I realized I was gay while standing on top of a waterfall.

That sounds intense, even poetic, but it wasn’t. I did not hike some great distance while wrestling with my truth, and then, upon reaching the glorious summit, gaze over the forests and distant mountains in an exhausted epiphany and realize I wanted to kiss girls. 

No. My realization didn’t come by way of grace. I was mugged.

If you’re not familiar with the northeast, it can sometimes trick you into believing you live in a deciduous rainforest. Every step on a wooded path is alive in an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way. Yes, there are a lot of rocks, but if you’re in the lower country, or near water, those rocks turn into moss-covered stones. Trails are lined with mushrooms and wildflowers. Caves, gorges, and hundreds of humble waterfalls abound. And growing up in small-town Eastern Pennsylvania, that was my backyard.

The region’s history of mining and logging left a wake of hiking trails to places once only trampled to extract coal and timber, not necessarily to take in the best views. Which means a lot of access points to wild places around me were less about the destination and more about getting lost on quiet, meandering paths. This was my Rivendell. 

On the day of the mugging, I was fifteen miles from the Appalachian Trail and on my way up the slippery winding path to Glen Onoko Falls, near the town of Jim Thorpe.

Jim Thorpe felt safe in a way I couldn’t understand at the time. It was a town the same size as my own (maybe even smaller) but the vibe was entirely different. If Palmerton was a radioactive Norman Rockwell painting; Jim Thorpe was Jackson Pollock splatters on a Charles Dickens novel.

Today it’s a tourist trap and the parking lot is a mile long. But in the nineties it was still our secret. The mountain village had row homes that seemed plucked from a 19th-century London side-street. There were actual cobblestones and apartments over shops with wine makers and art galleries below them. There were book stores and occult shops next to Victorian hotels. Shop windows had porcelain dolls and feathered masks. It was the first place I ever entered an “Internet Cafe” and the kind of place all the local theater kids and weirdos were pulled towards. It had books, mountains, witchcraft, and high-speed internet and I couldn't imagine a better life.

Jim Thorpe embraced the arts in a way I had not seen a town do before. It had playhouses that hosted regular performers that after-partied at the diner, which was actually made out of a diner rail car. It had historic spooky mansions so picturesque Walter Elias Disney saw it himself and based the Haunted Mansion in Orlando on them.

This town had an abandoned jail, ghost stories, local legends, and eccentrics; all tucked into a hidden slice of mountain called the Lehigh Gorge with a working passenger steam engine. You could hike all morning, take a dip in the river, then ride that train along the edge of the gorge and retire for the day to the occult shop to buy a book on magical herbs and read it while checking email in the cafe. In the late nineties this was my Diagon Alley. 

I adored this place. I didn’t understand why anyone in the area wouldn't want to live here? A town where the best bits of our collective nostalgia and whimsy met with gritty outdoor adventure: heaven! People often traveled up from the city to hike and whitewater raft. As a baby dyke (who had no idea she actually was a baby dyke) it was a place that seemed to accept and tolerate me as I was. I never felt odd in Jim Thorpe. I felt like I had found the place where my heart could turn around three times and lie down.

Back home and in school I was dealing with a lot more quiet turmoil. I had turned down a chance to attend the Pennsylvania Governor's School of the Arts for writing, a prestigious summer program. I turned it down because I had a boyfriend and wanted to spend my summer with him. But a part of me knew—the same part of me that would avoid absorbing any remotely queer media—that going to the program meant making a hard decision about more than just my future.

I was terrified of spending a summer with a dorm full of smart women writers with no influence from my hometown. I knew I’d fall in love with it all, forget about my boyfriend and fall for some brooding brunette in thick glasses that would have some dog-eared copy of The Bell Jar in her back pocket. So I got a lifeguarding job at the community pool and  hung out with a 16-year-old boy instead because I wanted to, needed to, convince myself I was straight.

I was a coward. 

And what do cowards do? They hide. They run away to safe, hidden places where nothing remotely dangerous will affect them. And so I hiked up the winding and wet stream side trail to the Glen Onoko Falls one afternoon for what had to be the twentieth time.

I can still remember how that trail started. You had to walk near the river, duck under some concrete underpasses, and find your way to a warning sign that begged anyone in a pair of Reeboks and poor balance to turn around. People died at the falls all the time. They’d dance too close to the edge, plummet to their deaths. I assumed they were foolish, or drunk, or didn’t understand or respect the rocky, unforgiving ground Pennsylvania had taught me to respect. Nothing bad could possibly happen to a prepared, sure-footed, healthy young woman who could dance across rocks. 

The mountains of the mid Atlantic are gentle. Almost kind-looking from the patio furniture arranged on backyard decks. But all wild places—even those a few minutes drive from a Pizza Hut—may hold dangerous secrets if you dare to go looking for them. I thought I headed to the falls to be alone and hide away for a few hours. Maybe draw mythical beasts or read a book about Wicca I was hiding from my mom. I didn’t think I’d meet a pair of coyotes that would tear me apart.

As I made my way up the waterfall trail I let myself get lost in thought. I could hear distant voices ahead of me. I was expected them, based on the vehicles in the parking area. When I reached the top there were a few other young people - a group of high school kids from another district. 

The view from the top of the falls. This is where the women were sitting, on that edge on top of the world. Photo credit: Matt Derrick

They ignored me. I was not the kind of teenager anyone paid attention to based on appearance. I was practically invisible. Too chubby to be considered attractive by my glossy-magazine-and-television influenced peers, but not heavy enough to call attention to. I was short but not dwarfed by the average girl. I dressed like every other late-nineties teenager, which is to stand out as little as possible. I was probably in my usual uniform of an oversized sweater of my dad’s and hiking shorts, a backpack meant for technical bouldering slung over my shoulder, a purchase made at the mall’s EMS branch with my lifeguarding money. I tried really hard. 

My general invisibility to these other kids meant I could sit back from the crowd and observe them while silently praying they would all pack up their picnics of subway sandwiches and soda cans and leave me alone to my werewolf sketches.

They didn’t. They kept talking too loudly and moving towards the rim of the falls. The boys played a game of chicken near the edge. Their skinny girlfriends with shiny hair that reminded me of Pantene commercials that made a show of being worried they’d fall off. It was hormones and bravado and I was exhausted by it. That’s when I noticed there was someone else up there with us idiots at the top of the falls, a couple. 

It was two women, tan and fit, and undeniably together. They were sitting on the flat rocks near the drop-off of the falls, but far away enough to be safe. In my memory they were sandy haired and steel eyed and looked like the Appalachian Trail thru hikers I idolized in town, but harder, wiser. There was something about them that had me frozen, stuck between terror and awe. They did not make eye contact with me, nor did they acknowledge the testosterone-infused games around them. No one else in the world mattered to these women.  

This was their Mount Katahdin. Not the hike, their lives. They had accomplished something together I could not understand, but instinctively knew was sacred and powerful. I knew they had come up here for the same reason I had, to feel safe.

I grew up obsessed with animated movies and anthropomorphic novels of any sort. Stories told from the perspective of animals resounded with me so much more than those about people. Which is why I think my brain clocked them not as lesbians, but as two coyotes in their prime.

Some people see Auras. Some people get vibes. I assign people a phylum and species in my brain and act accordingly. I was a chubby husky that dreamed of being a wolf who had stumbled upon real wild dogs by accident. If I had a tail it would have been between my legs in subordinate awe. 

It makes sense that a housepet would practically shake as she genuflected to a coyote, but to most people coyotes were not desirable creatures. In fact, they were an animal most considered a pest, even a threat. I considered them the closest thing Pennsylvania had to wolves, and therefore, I loved them.

Coyotes were survivors. A species that had always been here and yet managed to thrive in a country that historically despised them. These two women had that energy. They knew exactly what other people thought of them and did not care. They didn’t need to say a word to any of us. Even the teenage boys cut them a wide berth, aware of something they didn't fully understand but dared not threaten. 

They held hands and watched the view of the mountains spread out before them—looking defiantly forward. Us teenagers were extras cast in this amazing moment starring two women boldly in love before the eyes of gravity, altitude, death and god — which made me quietly shake. I knew they were a couple. I knew they were stronger than any of us. And I knew, deep down inside, that this was home.

They were gay and so was I. 

That was it. That was the moment I was sure about who I was. It was unexpected and terrifying, but finally, all the feelings about best friends and celebrity crushes started to make sense and add up towards a terrifying identity I was not ready to accept.

Beholding them was like seeing my people for the first time, a representation sorely lacking from my entire previous life’s experience. I wanted them to know I was a coyote, too. Or would be some day, if I ever managed to cover the same ground they had. I wanted so badly to be seen by them, acknowledged in the wild space as a member of their pack. But I said nothing and slowly backed away from their moment and the other teens. Stunned, and unsure what to do with all this, I started heading back down the trail to my van. 

I told you I was a coward.

I am ashamed of how quickly the purity of that moment was lost. Any beauty or self-knowledge was quickly thwarted by panic. I was terrified of being gay and whatever they lit inside me was pushed into a corner and then beaten into submission.

By the time I made it down the trail to my white Plymouth Voyager I had inherited as my teenage wheels, what had just happened already stopped feeling like happy acceptance and mutated into every insecurity I had about myself.

Walking faster down the trail, I forgot about the warning signs. I was recklessly stumbling and starting to cut myself on thorns and brambles. I started listing all the boys in school I thought I liked because they weren’t scary or mean. Or male celebrities I thought were hot. I tried to remember that moment Brad Pitt leaned back in his chair in Meet Joe Black, the only time in any film I could remember a man seeming sexual to me. How could I be gay if I could list those contradictory “facts”.

Nobody liked coyotes except other coyotes. They were animals that lived on the outskirts. They were filthy, scavengers, vermin and hunted for sport. Nobody with a correct brain wanted to be a coyote.

I would learn to forget. 

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And I did. Kind of. I wouldn’t allow myself to consider women as a romantic option. I wish I could give you the reason why, the kind of reasons I have heard other women tell me. But it wasn’t about religion or my parent’s politics. I was not raised in a home where being gay was a bad thing. But I was raised in a home where being gay made you “other.”

This wasn’t a Woginrich-family-specific issue. This was how things were. I was a preteen during the AIDS crisis. I was starting to feel romantic feelings towards best friends at the same time, and I did what all queer women do: told myself I didn’t want to be with her, I wanted to be her. I didn’t want to kiss the pretty, tall, thin girls at summer camp. I wanted to wear makeup and heels and be skinny so people would feel about me the way I felt about them. And anytime I felt any sort of romantic feelings towards another girl, I pushed it down until it faded, kept my humble role as my popular besties’ funny fat friend.

I was too chicken shit to kiss them, so I would make them laugh. It was positive attention. It made them smile, which made them even more beautiful to me. And I kept hiding those feelings, only letting them escape through little things like having to call my best friend after a new episode of Dawson’s Creek, because I could talk to her about feelings behind the mask of television characters.

P.S. I still know all the words to On My Own from Les Mis because of that Joey Potter solo I probably rewatched on VHS so many times I ruined the tape.

And so I went on with my compulsive heterosexuality. I “liked” my boyfriend because I was supposed to. Because he was kind and funny and smart, and because the male body doesn’t disgust me in any way. I think men are beautiful, wonderful, human beings. But they weren’t what brought music out of me. They were who kept me from making my own.

I can’t tell you how intense the internalized homophobia was inside me. I had openly queer female friends. I had openly gay teachers. I had parents that invited their gay friends into our home. I didn’t believe the Catholicism that discouraged homosexuality and I didn’t have any problem defying my parents intellectually about religion or politics. I am sure they are confused why I stayed closeted so long, too.

And at the risk of making this too long, or over explaining, I will put this as plainly as possible:

If I was gay, I was other.
If I am other, I’m not loved.
If I am not loved, I must not deserve it.

All I ever wanted, my entire life, was love. But I felt, since I was a little girl, that love, as I understood it, would make me separate from everyone and everything I ever knew. So to feel apart of your family, your high school, your everyday life you go with what has been shoved down your throat every single day of your life. You want to talk about grooming? Every fairy tale told me a princess was supposed to want a prince. Every romantic comedy taught me the love of my life would be a funny clever man. Every tv commercial, greeting card, every adult couple I knew focused entirely around women (or men) adoring men.

And I just wanted to love a woman.

Love is still the only thing I actually care about. I don’t care what any of you think of me, that’s none of my business. I don’t care about travel. I don’t care about marble kitchen counters. I don’t care about having the newest car or phone or any of that shit. There is nothing a human can accomplish with a credit card I am impressed by.

What I care about is finding the love I have been looking for since I saw those two women on top of a waterfall.

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Next time I write about this I will talk about how these feelings of fear I made me run to places physically and mentally. How it lead to to a farm in Idaho, then Vermont, and then here in Jackson. How trying to not be gay lead me to a young adult life of self-hatred, unhealthy relationships with men, with food. How it lead to an eating disorder and addiction and all the cliché ways we try to control the uncontrollable through self medication instead of doing the hard, uncomfortable, work of healing the root of the problem.

I am no longer someone who respects or desires that kind of distraction.

I hope that the way I carry myself now resembles those women. I hope I am a coyote for some other scared young pup. I hope they see me living the life of my dreams—however hard won and difficult—and sees a future outside of what they were told was possible for them.

You don’t have to be rich, beautiful, straight, Christian, or a mother to find meaning and happiness in the human female experience. All you have to do is trust that who you are, at your core, is good. That being different isn’t inherently a flaw, nor is wanting a different life than your parents and society planned for you.

I’m not a coward anymore.

So I’m going to tell this whole story over the next couple of months, and hope someone else finds strength inside it. Because that’s the whole point of being a writer. To help other people feel less lonely until they find their way home.

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