When I was 24, I got an email forward that changed my life.
I was working in middle management at a finance company and was increasingly listless at work. The company had just opened several offices outside of New York, where they were able to hire much more experienced people for less money. A pall hung over the office as we wondered about the implications of this. I welcomed distraction.
I opened the email. It was from a friend. It contained a thought exercise, bundled in some new agey something or other, but the thought exercise was -- if you don't know what to do, ask your future self.
I was bored enough at work that I gave it some thought.
All of a sudden, a burst of courage came to me out of nowhere. I stood up, all 24 years of me, and walked into my CEO's office. "You have a morale problem on your sales floor," I said. "And if you don't do something about it, I'm going to quit." His mouth was agape. But he listened.
Later that evening, me and my burst of courage were sitting in my father's living room, watching TV. My Pakistani father, whom I was not out to. We weren't especially close, but he had moved to New York the prior year and we had been spending more time together.
My mind ticked over to my future self exercise from earlier. I was still feeling the exhilaration of what I'd done that day.
A thought came to me, resoundingly clear, that took me aback: "Just tell him."
I argued with this inner voice. I couldn't imagine going through with it. The thought hadn't crossed my mind once before this. My father, a Pakistani man who had tried in recent years to coax me into meeting people with the possibility of marrying them because I was THAT age, who had simultaneously believed in and supported my education but tried to point me to medicine and learning the language properly and fitting into Pakistani culture-- because, I thought, he believed it would make me more marriageable-- my father with whom I had clashed terribly, whose stubbornness I had inherited, and whom in pushing up against him and running away from the things he wanted for me I found out who I really was... my father had given me no indication that coming out was in any way a good idea.
I had heard no good stories of coming out to Pakistani parents. In fact, I had heard no stories at all. It was hard not to editorialize into the silence. I can't do this, I thought.
"It's not like it's going to be different for you," the thought came back, "that you're ever not going to be like this. You've tried that."
I can't, I thought. But then, at least I was making my own money, even if it wasn't great money. I mentally prepared myself to walk out of the apartment and not walk back in again. I could always change my name, go into hiding. There were options.
This pitched debate was raging inside my head while I was sitting mute next to my father on the couch. He was placidly watching TV after his long day at the hospital, as usual. I was sitting next to him feeling, and possibly looking, like a shaken soda bottle about to burst.
He flicked through the channels. Quite often, he'd settle on a Hallmark or Lifetime movie-- programming oriented toward women, low-level life drama stuff. On this particular program, someone was pregnant who shouldn't have been.
Aha, I thought. Here's my opening.
"Dad," I said. "Would you ever disown your children for any reason?"
He looked at me. "What are you talking about?"
"Just answer the question," I said.
He got quiet. "Well," he said. "I might not agree with all your decisions, but you're an adult."
The answer surprised me. Even so, I spent the next what must have been thirty minutes fumbling for what to say. "We've had a hard relationship for a long time…" I said, and it went on from there. I talked about my stepmother, and the havoc she had wreaked on our lives and our relationship. I talked about how I had been afraid of him for most of what I could remember. These were sore topics, but still easier to talk about than telling him. Eventually, we were at the dining room table, him with his hand at his temple, his fingers a visor over his eyes as he looked at me. Mercifully, he interrupted.
"You're trying to tell me something," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"And you think I'll be angry if I know."
"Yes," I said again.
He shook his head. "Just say it," he said.
"Fine." I paused. Finally I choked out, "I'm gay."
A wry half-smile from him. "I know," he said. "I'm not stupid. Parents have intuitions about their kids. You I've known about for a year, your brother for 15 years."
This was so far removed from anything I expected from him that my head immediately started hurting. He spoke more. I don't remember much of what he said.
I do remember though how he walked me to the door that night, after I told him I was getting a migraine and I needed to go. I remember that he hugged me, and I remember marveling that even though the earth had shifted under my feet and I existed in an entirely new world, his way of being with me felt the same.
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