Natalie Weiss

Three years ago this Christmas Day, I came out as lesbian to my parents.

For so much of the twenty-five-plus years before that day, I lived in flux between denial and shame. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that I finally worked through enough to find my honest self, alone and scared and neglected, but ready to start building herself back up again.

That day three years ago was a culmination, a climax of all those years I had struggled to accept myself. But even in my triumph of finally making myself known, I came out of that day with a new weight: guilt.

I had worked through the original guilt – the gay guilt. I no longer felt like I did something wrong that made me gay. I just was gay. I just am gay. But this guilt was new. I had a choice in when and how I did the coming out, right? Sure, I was drowning. Sure, I felt like I was being torn in two. But I could’ve waited. Christmas Day? Really? Surely I could’ve done better.

I knew my parents weren’t going to react well when I came out. But I’d wager that any gay kid would tell you that even though we know – we know – what the outcome is going to be, we still can’t help but hope. We can’t help but hope that despite how we’ve heard our parents talk about other gay people, they might come to their senses when the gay person is their kid sitting in front of them. We can’t help but hope that despite the religious and political rhetoric we’ve listened to, reality will be a strong enough dose to make our parents think again. We can’t help but hope.

And so maybe that hope played its role in my Christmas coming out. The hope and the tension and the anxiety and the way I felt like another second in the closet would destroy me.

I’ve since made peace with what happened three years ago, or at least my role in it. Part of that peace came from recognizing that suffocation I experienced was real. I wasn’t gaslighting myself. I wasn’t being dramatic or difficult or terrible. Every bit of terror and pain that led me to say “I’m gay” at the dinner table was real. And so I found peace in that.

But I also found peace in my name. I’m a writer, and writers are kind of weird. Yeah, sometimes symbolism finds its way into our works unintentionally. The curtains are blue because they’re blue, not because the author is depressed or melancholic (or maybe they are, I don’t know what they were thinking). But I do think most symbolism is intentional. I’m that way about names;. I love looking up their meanings. I guess I’m not always great about connecting the meaning of a name to its character, but it’s fun to try.

As someone who grew up in the Christian faith with a lot of biblical knowledge, I also believe in the significance of names. In Genesis 17, God renames Abram as Abraham and Sarai as Sarah to declare and fulfill His promise over their lives. There are countless examples of the importance of names in the Bible, including the name of Jesus. I say all of this not in an attempt to preach about Christianity, but just to say this: in the tradition I was brought up in, names are exceptionally important. Your name should fit you. You have to fulfill it.

And so it still gives me chills that my name, Natalie, given to me on a day in May, means Born on Christmas Day. And that, ultimately, is where I find my peace with my role at the dinner table three years ago. I’ve never felt feminine enough for a name like Natalie. When people call me Nat it feels better, but it also feels rough around the edges. But I am Natalie. I was born on a day in May, but I was also born on Christmas Day. It’s a day that signifies a before-and-after, a day that will forever be etched into my memory for better or for worse. And my name makes it better.

The holidays can be difficult for many people, especially those of us that identify as LGBTQ+. We are reminded that we are not respected, that our whole selves are not loved by the people who are supposed to love us. Even among friends and found family, there is an ache – or at least there is for me – that isn’t completely healed. Maybe someday in the future I will feel more whole and more healed, but for now, three years out, I still cling to those small things – my experience, my name – to remind me that, despite it all, I am where I am meant to be. And if I did fulfill my name three years ago, my life is just getting started.