moon in leo

Sometimes I wonder what Pride means to someone like me.

At 34, I thought I was done explaining myself—well, to myself. There are no lingering questions about my sexuality, no dramatic revelation waiting in the wings. I've done the self-discovery, the acceptance, and all the late-night existential audits. Yet I remain largely in the closet. Not exactly the inspirational Pride Month storyline. We've come to embrace a simplified narrative of what queerness is supposed to look like: come out young, find a community, fall in love, build a life. And while that's true for many queer people now, there are still plenty of us whose stories don't follow that timeline. Some people don't leap out of the closet; we just quietly renew the lease.

For much of my life, I believed coming out required the right conditions, that eventually fear would loosen its grip and courage would outweigh uncertainty. But I spent years waiting while life unfolded in front of me, filled with responsibilities, lower back pain marking the passage of time, and stretches of depression that made survival feel more urgent than self-disclosure. Waiting stopped feeling temporary, and before I knew it, I had become older without necessarily becoming freer. I know myself much better now than I did at 20, yet I'm still lugging around emotional baggage I assumed I would eventually outgrow. That realization often surfaces in ordinary moments, usually through harmless questions that most people answer without thinking. Family conversations become an Olympic event, and "when are you getting married?" remains the undefeated champion of recurring questions. It hangs in the air for a moment. I smile, shrug, and give the answer I've rehearsed for years. Then the conversation moves on. I don't. 

Meanwhile, my mind is running a rapid risk assessment: can I tell the story at all, edit the details, change the pronouns, or offer a version of the truth that feels safe enough to share? After years of practice, I've become a skilled compartmentalizer, incredibly efficient at revealing 95 percent of myself that actually means nothing while protecting the parts that do. Eventually, you start wondering what life feels like on the other side of that.

Maybe that's why Pride feels different to me now. For years, Pride felt like watching a party through a window. I wasn't jealous of the glitter—I don't have the upper-body confidence for that anyway. What I envied was the freedom: the ease of existing without self-policing, the ability to answer questions without running them through a mental obstacle course, the possibility of simply being known. As I've gotten older, Pride has stopped feeling like evidence of what I'm missing and started feeling like proof of what's possible. Sometimes it's something as simple as seeing two men holding hands, deciding what to have for dinner. They're not making a statement; they're just living. That's the kind of freedom I find myself longing for. 

It's that ordinary life I find myself drawn to now, not the moment of coming out, but everything that comes after it. Sharing a home, building routines, making room for someone else in the shape of your everyday life. These moments seem mundane until you remember how many queer people spent generations being denied the chance to experience them openly. The very ordinariness of them is the point. And the fact that those moments can exist at all is why I find myself thinking of the people who came before us. Sometimes I see old photographs of queer couples from decades ago and wonder what their lives looked like beyond that moment. Many weren't worried about being behind, they were worried about surviving—about losing jobs, homes, families, and safety. Some spent entire lifetimes carrying secrets they never felt safe enough to share. Some fought for visibility when doing so meant risking everything.

Pride exists because they refused to disappear.

That perspective doesn't erase my fears, but it reshapes them. When you hide yourself for so long, isolation starts to feel normal. You convince yourself you're uniquely stuck, uniquely behind. Shame thrives on that narrative, but Pride pushes back against it. It reminds me that countless people have stood where I'm standing, and countless others will stand here after me. Being queer isn't just an individual experience, it's part of a much larger story, and there's nothing shameful about taking longer to find your place within it.

I still don't know when I'll come out. Maybe next year. Maybe in five years. Maybe later. Maybe never. But this is the most honest I've been in a long time, and that counts for something.

In the meantime, Pride gives me what I need most: hope. Not the cinematic kind with fireworks and sudden breakthroughs, but something quieter—the reassurance that there's still room for me, that I haven't missed my chance, that there isn't a secret deadline after which your membership card gets revoked for taking too long.

I used to think Pride belonged to the people who'd already arrived, the ones dancing in parades with rainbow flags draped over their shoulders. Now I think it belongs just as much to the rest of us, the people still figuring things out, the ones watching from the sidelines, imagining conversations they haven't had yet, reading stories like this at midnight and wondering when they'll finally be brave enough. Maybe that's the point—not crossing the threshold, but continuing to exist, to learn, to hope, and to make our way toward ourselves, however long it takes.

And every June, when the rainbow flags start to appear, that's the reminder I carry with me: there's a place for me in this story. Not someday. Not after I become braver. Not after I've finally figured everything out. But now.

Even from the closet.

Happy Pride! c: