Coming out has cost me £27,000 – but I have no regrets

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As I looked at my bank statements one day in August 2017, I was horrified to see the figures.   

I was 27 and had spent £50 on a meal here, £60 on a massage there, several £100s on new outfits. The upside was that I felt more me than ever.   

But in the eight years since then, I’m flabbergasted. I’ve totted it up, and while I think I spent around £7,000 on the basics of ‘coming out’ – like going to gay clubs and buying new outfits that represented the new me – in total, the price of living as myself is closer to £27,000. 

That’s factoring in things like lost earnings, moving, and the price of overcoming my conversion therapy trauma.  

But the cost of being able to be me, and the value of my happiness at finally being free? Priceless.  

Until the age of 26 I was living a lie. Well, when I say living, I really just mean existing.  

I was gay. I had known I was gay since my teens, but as a member of an evangelical branch of the Christian church, the fear of admitting my sexuality was overwhelming.  

The last time I had confessed my feelings to a ‘friend’ when I was 18, I had been forced into conversion therapy and undergone months of counselling and aversion training in order to quash my true self.  

It involved renouncing any homosexual tendencies of my own, and allowing people to put hands on me and ‘cast out demons that were trying to make me gay’. It meant resisting any form of sexual desire.

It made me believe for a very long time that sex was bad, to the point where I still felt like I was condemning myself to hell when I eventually did come out and have sex. 

I was petrified to tell anyone else the truth after that experience.  

As an ordained pastor and trained counsellor within the church, my love for God and my community was deep, but so were the emotions that filled me with both passion and terror.  

I knew I was attracted to men, but I knew I must never admit it.   

As anyone who has hidden their sexuality knows, it can become overwhelming. I hit rock bottom. I despised myself and everything I was. I hated myself for lying to God, to everyone, and I despised myself for these ‘unnatural’ feelings.   

But one night in 2016, I decided I had had enough. Having cried myself to sleep for months, and even having considered ending it all, I finally experienced some kind of wake-up call.   

I had to give ‘being me’ one last shot. I was going to come out.   

Telling my parents was not as hard as I had expected. It felt awkward talking about this with them, but was a weight off my mind knowing they now knew the true me. 

It started the process of letting our relationship grow deeper and better, and they affirmed that they love me for who I am; they always have, and always will.   

But my church community did not feel the same. I told my pastor, and then my best friend. Their reaction was terrifying.    

My pastor told me I would spend the rest of my life with demons inside me, that I was an embarrassment and should be ashamed of myself and my ‘urges’. I was cast out by the whole community and lost my job in the church in the process.  

My life was the church; all my friends were in my church community. Though I had recently started working in a department store to begin some sort of separation from my all-encompassing life within my religion, it was a small step – I still relied on my congregation for survival.  

I felt that for the first time since my young teens I had nobody looking over me. No God, no community, no support. But I was wrong.

My parents and sister had my back and encouraged me to progress in my retail career and be true to myself.   

I started buying new clothes, not the stuffy conservative ones I had grown used to, but sleeker, sharper suits and outfits that expressed me as a gay man.   

I felt confident, I felt attractive, I felt like I was embodying myself even if some of my choices were questionable when I look back on them now.  

I began going on dates, three or four a week – actually sometimes three a day – and I curiously broached the world of gay nightclubs.  

Over the next three months I overhauled my look, my lifestyle, my life… tapping my credit card as I went.  

To overcome my anxieties about somebody touching me I booked a massage. To accept myself and my body, I booked a holiday to a nudist resort in Cape Town. And to overcome my trauma, I started seeing a private therapist.