Natalie Weiss

I find it easier to write creative nonfiction than I do fiction. I have the story already, after all. I just have to figure out how to tell it. Fiction, to me at least, is one extra step. I have to figure out the story too.

But this is also why fiction is fun. There is so much discovery. I get to meet my characters. I get to put them in situations that I may never find myself in.

Like coming out.

In the 2018 draft of my novel, I wrote for the first time a scene in which my character comes out to her parents.

Fiction also intersects with nonfiction. We draw upon the elements and the events that we know to be true in order to craft universes and scenes that are not. When I wrote the scene of my character coming out to her parents, I drew upon my vision of what that scene might look like for me.

Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, expecting things to happen that way, so they did.

Or maybe I spent so much time observing and listening, and I knew what the outcome would be before the event even happened.         

I’ll say one more thing for fiction. The characters aren’t real. Sure, as readers, we all want the characters to be real. And a lot of the time, it feels like they are real. But the characters that we love and hate are not people we will see walking down the street today. So as a writer, I don’t have to hold back.

I don’t have to, but maybe I should.

Because in nonfiction, in the events in my life, in the struggles I have faced, it would be easy to tell a story with a clear-cut heroine (me) and a clear-cut villain (anyone against me). But it would be naïve. It would be simple. It would be false. And it wouldn’t be nonfiction.

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“I’m gay,” I say. “I’m attracted to women.”

My sister had to have known that this was what I was about to say. I had been badgering her for the past week or two about a good time for her to come over so that I could tell our parents. We hadn’t landed on anything concrete. And I wanted her to be there when I did it. I needed her to be there. A witness.

When I think of their faces now – my sister, my dad, my mom – as we sat around the kitchen table that Christmas afternoon, they are blurry in my mind. I don’t want to paint a picture over them that feeds my narrative. So I’ll let them be blurry.

“No,” my mom says.

I swallow hard. “I just wanted to tell you guys, because I want you to know all of me. I don’t want to keep anything from you.”

There’s a growing feeling inside of me; I have officially ruined Christmas.

“All I need to know is whether or not I am still welcome here.” I say something to that effect. I just want to know – can I stay? Will you let me explain? Would you one day meet my girlfriend?

My dad says something like, “You will always be my daughter.”

I appreciate his words, but I have to ask. “But would you want to know about my dating life?”

“No,” he says.

I expect more words out of my mom. If I have to guess, her mind is whirling, her world imploding around her. She does say something. I can’t remember exactly what. And then she gets up from the table. She starts taking the Christmas lights down that are wrapped around the banister of the staircase.

Whatever the words are that she says, whatever actions follow the removal of the lights, I have the distinct feeling that I cannot stay. Honestly, I don’t want to stay.

I go to my room and pack a bag. No one stops me.

It takes nearly two years to make the connection, when I am in the midst of writing my novel and looking up the meanings of names for different characters. I like my names to have meaning, most of the time. I am looking up names, and I remember something. I look it up to confirm it. The name Natalie – my name – means “Born on Christmas Day.”

That Christmas Day, in 2018, I get in my car and drive to my best friend’s house, the house just a few months prior I had drank the bottle of wine on the deck at. I call my friend on the way over, let her know what happened. She knew it was probably coming soon. Maybe not on Christmas Day. But soon.

The rest of the day unfolds like this: I sit with my best friend’s family at their dining room table as they eat Christmas dinner. I play board games with my best friend and her sister. I try not to think about what has happened. I try not to check my phone obsessively, to see whether or not I have any texts or missed calls. Where are you? Come home. We’ll talk about this. I want to see these texts. I want to check my phone and see missed calls from my mom, from my dad, from my sister.

My phone is silent.

Until I get notifications, several in a row, that my mom has texted me.

And then I wish she hadn’t.

I do not get a text that says Come home.

I no longer know where home is.

That night, and the next day, and the next night, and the following days and nights, are awful. I go back to my parents’ house with boxes and packing tape, and I am ignored as I make my way up the stairs to my old room and start packing. I sob as I construct the boxes and empty the room of its contents. I hear my family talking downstairs. They don’t talk about me. They talk as if nothing has happened. As if I am not there.

As I am almost finished, my sister comes up and asks if I need any help. She helps me carry the boxes downstairs, through the garage, and to my car.

I have to go back to the house another time or two, and each time it is the same.

I move my money around at the bank too. Just in case.

I see my dad again on New Year’s Day. We have tickets to the NHL Winter Classic at Notre Dame. It is him, me, my sister, and my best friend. It feels normal, even if it isn’t.

My best friend’s parents are generous hosts. I live at their house for nearly a month. They tell me I can stay as long as I need to. But I feel so bad that there are boxes crowding their basement. I feel so bad that I am eating their food. I just feel bad about the whole thing, even if they truly don’t care. I still care. I still feel stupid that I hadn’t already gotten an apartment before coming out to my parents. I still feel like everything is my fault.

So in January 2019, I move into my apartment, the one I am still in now.

I barely have any furniture. I buy a mattress. My mom lets me know my things are in the garage. My girlfriend sees my old house for the first time as she helps me load dressers and a nightstand and a table into the trailer hooked up to her truck.

I don’t have a couch yet. My girlfriend and I make a makeshift one out of blankets and pillows. We sit on the floor – on the couch – and watch TV together, eat dinner together, fall asleep together.

It is not the 2019 I envisioned, and, yes, it is still difficult, but it is also good.

I have a girl who likes me, and friends who know me, and this is it. This is the start.