Late Bloomer: Change is Scary
What Keeps Women In the Closet & Why You Can Let That Go
This is Late Bloomer, an essay series about coming out later in life. This is not an academic dissection. This is a pig farmer talking about how long it took me to catch up, and what that experience has taught me. I hope writing this series helps build allyship and understanding and saves some of you the time I lost.
Last post in this series I talked about why it takes some of us so long to figure out who we are. Today I’ll be talking about what to do after you realize you’re not straight. How fear of change is the root of so much suffering and stagnation in closeted people. I genuinely hope none of you have to experience what I did, the isolation and trauma, the fear and self-loathing. And I think I have advice that can help.
Reminder to anyone reading this, if you don’t like consuming essays this way, there is always the option to just listen, click the podcast link at the top of this substack or hit play on the post in your email, you can listen anywhere, anytime.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in sexuality or psychology. I am a memoirist sharing experiences and opinions. Do not read this post if sexuality is challenging for you to think about or question at this time.
New to this series? Here are the archives so far:
Part 1: Lesbian Coyotes Mugged Me at a Waterfall (When I realized I was gay)
Part 2: Why Women Take So Long To Realize They’re Queer (Comphet is hell)
Part 3: Fear of Change & Moving Past It (Being brave for yourself & others)
Part 4: Body Issues (Getting over ourselves so we can be happy)
Part 5: Building Community (How to make queer friends)
Part 6: Coming Out (The work of changing identity in adulthood)
This essay is an invitation to anyone questioning who they are. While I am mostly writing to women questioning their sexuality, I hope anyone dealing with fear rooted in giving ourselves permission to live an authentic life, finds encouragement here.
Fear of Change
I’d like to start by admitting how unqualified I am to talk about the Fear of Change. Because anyone reading this, right now, even if you aren’t questioning your sexuality and just enjoy reading about other people’s lived experiences…You are braver than I was for most of my adult life.
People know me as the woman who quit her corporate gig in her late twenties to pursue her dream of being a full-time farm author. They see me publishing books, galloping my horse, training hawks, running a farm alone and assume I am this confident 21st-century homesteader.
Despite being this person, you need to understand that everything you have come to respect about me: the farm, the books—ALL OF IT—was less about being brave and more about regret management. I had to do the work of building esteem and confidence to not live a life I’d regret.
Since high school I’ve been trying to escape into a braver version of myself. I had to prove to myself that I had the ability to change my identity and own it. I had to come out as a farmer before I could come out as gay.
If that’s confusing, try and understand that I was supposed to go to college, get a high-paying job with a 401k and health insurance, marry a nice man, have kids and take them to mass every Sunday. Instead I left all of that security behind to become a full-time farming memoirist. Plenty of parents would prefer to have a lesbian attorney.
I did go to college. I did get a good job with a 401k and health insurance. And I did try to meet the man that was supposed to sweep me off my feet at 23 and build a life with children and puppies. Not because I wanted him, but because that was “the next step” and what that’s everyone else was doing.
Without going into too much personal detail, faking being straight was emotionally reckless and soul killing for me. I get physically ill thinking about certain men in my past.
I was so desperate to be straight I’d rather be a toy of some emotionally-unavailable asshole than deal with myself. Because even if they were using me, I was still being desired in the moment. I had some purpose in the heterosexual experience. I thought it was what I was supposed to do to be good. To be worthy of love. To be tolerable.
All that destructive behavior was how I dealt with the pain of pretending. And here’s the worst part: no one was making me. At any point, I could have dealt with my internalized-etched-in-granite homophobia, but I didn’t. Because I figured being unhappy, disordered, anxious, sexless, but with the approval of society and family - especially in my northern thirties, was easier than just dealing with coming out.
Why?
Because of the fear of change.
What If I’m too Afraid to Ever Be Happy?
I am in a position to have this life (and write about it so openly) only because of what I gave up. There is no office I am walking into tomorrow, no in-laws to side eye me at Thanksgiving, no concern of parent’s opinions or the general public’s. I’m also 41, and no longer give the tiniest shit about what anyone thinks of me.
Not everyone has that luxury. There are women reading this who know they are gay, but the idea of doing anything about it seems impossible as flight. Maybe they’re financially dependent on a husband or parents. Maybe they’re living in a country where being gay is illegal. Maybe you’re an Amish gal sitting at the public library’s computer. It doesn’t matter what has you trapped right now. You can’t come out, even if you wanted to.
Because as bad as things are now, you’re still eating three meals a day and have an address. Your kids have a roof over their heads, a roof with two loving parents paying the bills and taking turns driving them to soccer practice. You have a nice house. You have a great life, anyone would say so. And, you still have the reputation you’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. You have a story, even if it’s not true.
When I think of women who are stuck in doomed marriages, raising kids alongside these men they are growing to resent, scared of what family and friends and coworkers will think of them… I keep picturing that piece “Trapped” by Beth Cavener. The fox is snared but the foot it’s trying to bite off isn’t the one in the hunter’s noose. It’s the one with the ring.
Someone reading this was as gutted by that sculpture as I was the first time I saw it. Because to look at it and understand is to know the true threat isn’t death, but regret. Real suffering isn’t the unknown, it’s the well enough.
You’re allowed to be afraid of change, darling. Change is really fucking scary. But it’s not as scary as regret. Change is uncomfortable. Regret kills.
I ache for women feeling guilty about coming out. How they feel trapped by decisions they made before their brains were even done developing, choices made out of feeling safe and fitting in and not authentic love and happiness.
How many sleepless nights have you spent worrying about what other people would think of you? How many months, years, decades did you think bout being “bad” or “doing something horrible” to your family? Because all that dread isn’t making you the silent martyr you think it is. You’re just terrified. And if you think leaving a marriage, a relationship, a homophobic workplace is an act of selfishness, please ask yourself what you would want for your daughter in the same situation. I will never understand why so many women live their lives for the approval of the past, and not for the betterment of the future?
Change is not a prison sentence.
Sadly, for some closeted women, being scared and angry about this will be a burden for the rest of their lives, even if they never allow themselves to recognize why. Their isolation, compartmentalizing, and denial of love was the slow poison of happiness suicide.
And for what? For people who would rather you live a comfortable lie than enjoy your one human life? For people whose opinions and beliefs you have zero control over? Because those people are not being anywhere near as considerate about your happiness as you are of theirs, if that is how they truly feel. I swear, women would rather die than appear selfish.
I know it’s easy to dwell on the horrific, but just entertain me for a minute. What if coming out would be the best thing that ever happened to you? Did you consider that you’re putting off a lottery-winning level of relief, connection, and joy? Did you ever just let yourself feel good about it? We’re so trained by shame that we expect the worst, but the glorious truth is that, for a lot of women, coming out was what saved their lives.
I say this a lot, but only because it’s heartbreakingly true. The worst day of my life since coming out has been better than my best day beforehand. All the things I enjoyed in life before were being consumed by an imposter. Entire past lives I’ve lived pretending to be someone I wasn’t. People, lovers, hell maybe the love of my life has been lost to not having the courage to come out at 25 in Knoxville, or later in Idaho, or even living alone in the middle of the Vermont woods. Don’t waste decades like I have.
My life as a single, gay, 40-something is the most alive and authentic I have ever felt. After I came out, everything got better. It’s amazing seeing all the ways you start to blossom.
After coming out this fog lifted I didn’t even realize I was living in. That’s how depression is sometimes. Like you couldn’t know how bad it was until you started feeling better?
I had to come out to notice how many cobwebs were all over the house and dust had collected. Little things like that, the smallest failings my brain blocked, were no longer lost in the haze. And slowly, as I started becoming who I already was, I started to feel like happiness was possible.
I had a reason to vacuum.
Unexpectedly, but of course it makes perfect sense—I no longer needed to drink. Or rather, drinking was so easy to quit. I didn’t have to numb the part of me I was holding back. No more nights quietly drinking away the ever-repeated mantra;
“what if I am too afraid to ever be happy?”
So here’s the raw deal. You shouldn’t have any fear about coming out, but you should be terrified of staying closeted. And if you still can’t imagine having the courage to do so, allow yourself the grace to cook a little longer, to grow in confidence, in care, build queer friendships, volunteer with your local Pride Center, talk to your therapist, talk to your god, and heal.
Change is not a prison sentence. It’s a chrysalis.
Coming Out
We’re going to talk more about coming out in more detail later in this series, but I would like to put this in your brain before we do:
99% of coming out has nothing to do with other people. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but coming out is not about gathering friends and family we’ve known for decades to tell them our deep dark secret. It’s about telling yourself.
For most of us, all the work of coming out happens long before we sit down with our boyfriends or parents. It’s looking yourself in the mirror (literally if necessary) and saying “I’m gay” and being okay with it.
Because the first time I did that. I cried. The second time I did that, months later after kissing a girl for the first time, I smiled. The third time, I laughed with absolute joy. Which is something 17-year-old me would stare at in awe. “I’m gay” went from haunting me, to holding me up. I both pity and love the past me that needed a better version to come out. I think that’s what I’ve been farming this whole time.
Getting to that point took me, 35 years, five states, abusive male relationships, avoiding kind male relationships, fleeing a conservative upbringing, building a safe place to blossom, and then hiding there for decade of isolation on the side of a mountain. I am so happy that for young women growing up today, they don’t have to fight like this to feel okay about who they are. Most of you just need to accept you think girls are hot.
Congratulations on being magnificently cursed.
Now go live your life. She’s waiting for you.
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"regret management" oof.