Come out, come out wherever you are...

There are a lot of good, practical reasons that we keep our status as TG a secret, most of them based on fear: fear of being disowned by our parents and fear of being shunned by our families. Fear of losing our jobs and our insurance. Fear of being abandoned by our friends and ridiculed in public. Fear of being attacked and beaten, or worse.

But tonight I found the best reason of all to come out.

It's hard for us to be friends with those who don't know about us. We can't go out to dinner with them and enjoy ourselves. We can't discuss our love lives and our latest shopping finds, or talk on the phone all night about the important things in life. Not when everything about us, even our appearance, would be a lie.

We each tend to have one or two close friends that we've come out to, and others in the TG community (if we're lucky enough to live somewhere that has one). But what do we do when our one or two friends are busy, when they're out on dates or visiting family? When there's no one to go out to the TG bar with? And there's no support group meeting until next weekend?

We sit at home and think about how wonderful it would be if everyone knew and accepted. If we could go to a movie or a bar or the grocery store without worrying about being outed. If we could call up our best friend from high school days and just say, "Wanna talk?"

So we slowly plan how to tell this person, what to say to that person. We fret over the exact wording of the letter to send to our ex-wife or our colleagues at work. And we have hope that they will accept us.

We know that not all of them will, but the possibility of having a few that do makes all the difference in the world.

We come out because it's damn lonely keeping it to ourselves.