Can You Love Yourself When You Hate Being Gay?

Several weeks ago, I awoke with a question on my mind:  Can someone who is gay learn to love himself even if he hates being gay?  Or do you need to make peace with being gay first before you have the ability to love yourself?    

As I see it, the answer to this question is key to what I'm trying to do with my blog of late, which is to help gay people raise their self-esteem and increase their ability to love themselves.  So I think it's seriously worth taking a look at to find out where it lands.  

As I've written before, how one feels about oneself--that is, whether or not one has a healthy sense of self-esteem--is always a matter of choice.  Thus, at any point in our lives, we can consciously decide to love or to loath ourselves, regardless.    

But, of course, that fails to take into consideration anything in the external world that could influence how we feel about ourselves.  It's shameful our self-esteem could ever be based upon what's going on around us or how others feel about us, but that's often the case (see the post titled "Other Esteem").  I would be naive to think it's not.    

So, as gay people, can we love ourselves if we hate being gay?  The simple answer is yes, and we should, no matter what, but I think the answer is necessarily more complex, especially for many, many people, who never have the opportunity to make peace with their sexual orientation.

I'm thinking of people right here in Canada, the same country where same-sex marriage has been legal for a number of years, whose religious beliefs, or those of family members, have led them to accept that being gay is wrong and deplorable.  And I'm thinking also of those in countries around the world not as progressive as Canada, where homosexuality is still very much culturally closeted.

Admittedly, in those cases, being gay is tough, tougher than it is for those living in large cities, with lots of daily challenges--from not being able to be yourself, to hiding what your life is about, to difficulties meeting someone like yourself, to shame, to not feeling like you're a valued member of society.

If feeling good about yourself (that is, loving yourself) is directly related to how you feel about your sexual orientation, then what?  

I wish I could make being gay a non-issue for every human being on earth, where those who aren't gay have no issue with those who are, and those who are gay have no issue with it because those who aren't don't care.  Unfortunately, I'm not God, and I can't do that.  All I can do is emphasize once again that, despite what's going on in the world around us, we can, and always should, make the choice to love ourselves and never allow that to waver, no matter what.

If I were honest with you, I'd have to admit coming out at the age of twenty-five was, for me, pivotal in helping to see myself differently from before.  This does not mean, however, the self-loathing I'd experienced for years suddenly disappeared overnight.  In fact, even though I started feeling more positive about gay people, and myself, prior to coming out, which were probably instrumental in prompting me to take that bold step, coming out and loving myself as a gay man had little to do with each other.

The reason for that is obvious.  Self-loathing was so ingrained in me for so long, I didn't know anything else.  My life was one continuous routine of finding something wrong with me and putting myself down as a result.  And, believe me, did I find things wrong with me--from my physical appearance and my mannerisms (too effeminate, not masculine enough); to being unable to stand up for myself (from years of taking, rather than resisting, the bullying at school and potentially making matters worse); to hating that my life would never be as simple as it apparently was for straight men, whose course of finding girlfriends, getting married, and having children was set, and symbolic of living a "normal" life in our culture.  

So if coming out didn't turn around my low self-esteem, what did?

By the time I turned thirty, I lived in Vancouver's West End (which I loved), I was still alone and lonely, I had progressed nicely in my career with one of Canada's major financial institutions--and, oh yeah, I was still gay.  No denying that.  I could no longer rely on being an adolescent, searching for who I was in all respects, including sexually, hoping like hell I'd grow out of my attraction to other men and start to see girls as they did.    

The age of thirty was a turning point for me.  I was under the impression older gay men--read, any gay man over the age of thirty--was washed up:  his looks were quickly diminishing (if he had them to begin with), and the hope of ever finding someone to share his life with was fast dwindling.  Yet, there I was, in the exact predicament I'd hoped I'd never find myself--gay, single, and thirty.  What was I supposed to do?

Around this time (the early '90s), people's consciousness was being raised around low self-esteem.  Self-help books were more popular than ever, on every conceivable subject--from feeling the fear and doing it anyway, to learning to re-parent yourself if your own parents hadn't done such a bang-up job. I admit, I've indulged in more than one self-help book over the years, I'm not the least bit ashamed of that.

And I was maturing, too, leaving my frustrated and aimless twenties, and wondering what else was out there for me.  If my thirties, forties, and beyond were going to end up being more of the same, I wasn't sure I wanted any part of it.  What was the point?  I still wasn't sure I wanted to work for a financial institution (my passion to be creative virtually stifled), and my personal life was empty and presumably hopeless. What were my options?

I came to the realization if anything was going to change, I had to change it.  No one, least of all the man of my dreams, was going to sweep me up (pardon the romance novels reference) and take me away from everything I hated about myself and my life.  I had to do it myself, and I'd already wasted too much time. I had to get on with it and work my ass off, at least as hard as I'd ever worked on anything to be successful at it.    

Mentally, I began to realize for perhaps the first time, I didn't deserve the bad rap I'd gotten from all the kids at school who'd bullied me.  I began to see the discrepancy between what they said I was and what I knew of myself--in other words, I couldn't reconcile being a fucking faggot with the good and decent person I knew myself to be.  I had believed what I'd been told more than I believed in myself, and I suddenly had to ask myself how I'd allowed that to happen for so many years.    

The road to self-esteem is long--I suspect it’s as long as a lifetime, constantly demanding us to pay attention and to work hard--but, at that point, I started by taking small, definite steps toward manifesting the future I wanted, regardless of whether or not I was gay, regardless of whether or not I was single or partnered.  Diligence and baby steps started me off.  Not long after that, I met Chris, my partner, and, as far as my relationship is concerned, the rest is history.

I’ll conclude by repeating what I stated previously:  Without a doubt, I believe gay people can love themselves even if they hate being gay, because the choice is always ours to make.  But you can take steps today toward making peace with being gay (or accepting it, if you like), regardless of what those around you think of gay people, or what the religion you were raised in teaches about gay people, or how closed and unprogressive your culture is toward homosexuality.  Because you always have control over what goes on in your mind and how you choose to feel about everything, especially yourself.  Nothing else, no person, institution, culture, nothing, should have control over that.   

The way I look at it, what choice do we have, if we are gay, but to accept it, and, as chaotticGRRL (or Heather) says, to love ourselves because of it?  As I’ve gotten older, being miserable about my sexual orientation and hating myself as a result has become unacceptable.  I have only one life on earth, as you do, and I've wasted far too much of it already hating myself and the hand of cards I was given to play.    

My number one goal now is to get on with the work I’m meant to do--that is, loving myself, gay or not, and making a contribution to the lives of others.  And, dare I say, your goal should be the same.