I came out just on ten years ago.  I thought at the time it was the hardest thing that I had ever done.  Little was I to know what the future held but those are other stories and I just want to talk about my experiences back then.  I think mainly because I have read a few blogs lately  by girls in the midst of coming out but also because I have been running into all my old friends from then.

     I thought it was the hardest thing I had ever had to do because I was married at the time to a fairly decent guy, he seemed that anyway.   I think I came out to myself about a year before I finally left him.   The trouble was I just didn’t know how to do it.   I had married because it seemed like he was the right guy and my family desperately wanted me to find “Mr Right”.  So for a couple of years I was able to get the nagging thought of something not being quite right in the world out of my head.  I guess I just ignored it more. 

      It wasn’t like I didn’t know that I was attracted to women before I got married and so I had a massive attack of cold feet about three months before the wedding and went to a counsellor.  Unfortunately I lived in a large rural city and she was an extremely straight and as I found out later pregnant counsellor who just happened to be the wife of the JP who was to marry us.  But I trusted her ethics and went anyway.  Well she just patted me on the hand and told me I was doing the right thing.  I actually believed her somewhere although that nagging feeling was still there.  Hindsight!  I guess you don’t have much of it in your mid twenties. 

     Eventually I worked out that to come out I just had to leave him.  I was working in Melbourne at the time and only going home on weekends.  He knew something was wrong with our relationship,  he had been renovating the bathroom for six months,  but he wasn’t listening to the obvious signs either.   So it was a big shock to him when I rang one weekend and said I wouldn’t be home, I was not happy and I was taking the time to do some thinking.  I actually went and fucked my brains out all weekend with a girl that I knew from work.  I knew then I was doing the right thing. 

     So the next weekend I went home and filled the car with everything that I could get into it and left.  That was all I managed physically to take from a bit more than the last ten years of my life.  We did a property settlement and even though he owned three houses and half a million in super I got about $40,000 in cash and shares.  Even the lawyer said I should go for more but I knew if I did he would kill me.  I was that desperate to be me and be alive that I would have walked away with only the clothes on my back.  After we had done the property settlement, which happened within three months of me leaving I was hopeful he would just move on but no such luck.  He harassed me in any way he could from a distance of 150kms  and even threatened and tried to kill me.  After I took out an intervention order he finally got the message and to this day I haven’t heard from him.  I don’t fully trust that he won’t try anything so I’m not on any public registers as such or in the phone book or anywhere else he might be able to trace me.  He was 12 years older than me and had gotten diabetes shortly before I left him.  He hasn’t looked after himself and as such suffers a fair bit of ill health  apparently because of it.  How do I know this?  I have a sister who still stays in contact with him even though she knows it upsets  me.  Even the argument that he followed me and tried to kill me doesn’t disuade her.  He only did it once she says.  I know it was enough for me  to never trust the bastard again and I know I will never be fully free of the thought that one day he may come after me again.  Most of the time I don’t think of it but it is part of my coming out so when I think back to then is when it surfaces.