It began with a mistake.
No, that's wrong. It began before that, long before the mistake. It had never really occurred to me before, I had a girlfriend. I can't remember how it came about, but one day she made some comment to the effect of "oh no, you're gay, aren't you?" jokingly. I, not knowing at the time, replied with laughter and a "no". Outwardly at least. Inwardly I was sitting there wondering. Was I? Was I gay? No, was the inevitable conclusion. Inevitable only because I thought about it less than 30 seconds and then moved on. I got dumped by my girlfriend at about a month later, and I moved on with my life.

Over the course of the next year it had dawned on me that I was, in fact, gay. I knew the truth now, and was becoming comfortable with it. It, quite naturally, was not content for me to be comfortable with it. It wanted out. It wanted me out. So finally, alone at home one night on the computer, talking to a friend on MSN I just said it. I said it began with a mistake, this was the mistake. I don't mean to say that telling someone was a mistake, more the person on the other end of the conversation. Of course it was only a mistake in retrospect. He took it fairly well, it seemed. I made him promise not to tell anybody (this is the part where the mistake should be evident).

A few days later, he told my best friend. She didn't believe it at first. I confirmed that he had been telling the truth. She didn't take it well. She took less well the fact that she heard it from him and not me than the fact itself. It became clear that he had told others as well, but my best friend was the only one he'd told that I was in direct contact with. After yelling at him, he explained that it was an accident, and he thought she was asking for that specific piece of information (which she had not been). Over time I managed to patch things up with both parties, until he revealed that he had done it on purpose, which earned him an immediate cessation of contact. I resumed contact several months later, which made my best friend angry. How could I forgive him for that, go back on my word of cutting him off? It seemed alright to me at the time.

More and more of my friends learned about it, though I sometimes revealed it in ways that weren't preferable. One friend learned at the end of an hour long discussion about cannibalism (and don't get the wrong idea, I'm not into that sort of thing). But despite my inability to let people know in a gentle way all seemed to be going smoothly. Until, that is, one fateful night in May. Again, late night on MSN, again speaking to that same friend that I had come out to originally. It's interesting to remember, because it can be the tiniest things that push us over the edge. I'll admit I was being less than nice to him that night, we were arguing, though about what I don't quite recall. The last thing that occurred in the argument was that he told me not to "act gay" around him. Like I said, tiny things can push you over the edge. Nobody tells me that I'm not allowed to be who I am. Nobody. I blocked him, and have not had any contact of any sort with him since.

And the mistake came to a close. The coming out didn't though. More and more people learned, and more and more still are. I wrote my mum a letter. Actually more of a note, it read "I'm gay. Love, Colin Breck." I left it in her bedroom. The next morning she came to my room before I'd gotten up and talked to me about it, she was good with it. She gave me a chocolate, one of those valentines’ ones in the red foil and shaped like a heart. I still have it, and every time I see it I smile, because I know I'm loved.

The process is still ongoing, not everyone in my family knows yet. I don't know if I really care if my Dad knows. The process has had its ups and downs. Yes, I lost a friend, but from what I hear (through the grapevine) he's ridiculously homophobic. My best friend (she) came out to me about a year later, and we ended up closer than ever. Through bad a good, thick and thin, it was something I had to do.

It's not that I'm gay. That's not really the issue at hand. I'm not really telling people that I'm gay. I see it more as telling people that I'm me.