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 You Wouldn't Know
My entire working life had been one of secrecy and getting lost in the crowd. I was a good employee, but not great, I talked about the weather, the regular work gripes and what I did for Christmas, but never gossiped and got too personal. Work was a place that I went for money, so that I could live my life. But it was miserable. I wasn't me. I wasn't homosexual.
The effort that I put into my workday was split in two: half went to performing my assigned duties, and half went to looking as straight as I could. I'm not even sure why. As far as I could tell, there weren't any other gay people at my office. I had no idea how the people I worked with would react if they ever found out that I was living with another man, and that he wasn't just sharing an apartment with me, but my bed.
Because of this decrease in focus and my desire not to stand out, my career went nowhere for a very long time. I didn't think that I was an ambitious person. I convinced myself that I didn't need to be happy at work, as long as I kept getting paid so I'd be happy everywhere else. But deep down, I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted my friends at work to see what I was really capable of. I wanted to stand out and get noticed and be me!
So finally, one day, I gathered all of my courage and, in a conversation with a woman I spoke with the most frequently, I ever so casually mentioned going to a movie with my boyfriend. I tried to put much more stress on the details of the movie than on my boyfriend, but I also tried to make it clear that I wasn't just referring to a friend. She wasn't surprised!
Turns out that another one of my work-mates had seen my boyfriend and me together ages ago and it had confirmed suspicions they'd already had. Everyone knew! I felt ridiculous. I've been open and honest to others and myself ever since and now I'm happy both at work and everywhere else. Because I'm me!
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