Three
"Grateful for all that flowed/and even for all that ebbed."
This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter about the late blooming queer experience and the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
My friend Chris Denny wrote the prose below in recognition of it being three years since he came out, just a few weeks after I did.
I still remember the first video call he joined in one of the online support groups we participated in. He panicked when he realized that his real name rather than the pseudonym he’d been using appeared under his name, having neglected to change it in the settings before joining. The realization that someone would know who he really was terrified him.
For all the struggle and doubt and pain I’ve felt and worked through since embracing my queerness, Chris has felt all that tenfold. As he writes below, his life now is very different from what it was. His choosing to be authentic brought its fair share of loss.
But I think anyone on a similar journey can appreciate what Chris has to say about what all it has led to.
-Ty
Heart throbbing from scalp to soles. Fear so cold it slowed everything down beneath the adrenaline. The deeply unspoken finding its light for the first time.
These words could destroy me, my marriage, my life.
I would later discover they would. But not as I feared. And not yet how I could have hoped.
The silence was already destroying me. Avoiding the potential deconstruction of my life was no longer an option. Forward was the only path.
“I think I might be bi.”
The storm that followed upended every aspect of my life — my understanding of God, relationships, humanity.
It came in swells and feeder bands. Heart-shattering depths. Cracks of joy and hope and light. Rage. Fear. Despair. The great unknowing.
The dread ebbed first. The weight I hadn’t fully grasped until it lifted. The visceral fear that if I were fully known, I would be unlovable. It receded and never returned.
Every relationship changed overnight. Some shattered so fundamentally I would never feel them the same again. Others deepened into something more honest. More vulnerable.
In the quiet loneliness, in the void of what was, the voice of the boy was heard again.
For decades I had turned my attention from him — toward who others demanded I be. Promises of healing, love, success. A relentless pursuit of validation.
As those communities, congregations, and covenants I once dedicated my life to receded, so did the allure of conditional love. In the void, the boy’s voice grew clearer.
As so much ebbed, something new began to flow.
Into the deep end, often with the grace and poise of a teenager.
How to be a single dad.
How to build a home of my own.
How to make friends again.
How to be a queer man.
Like a child, trying things on. What I liked. What I didn’t. Where I belong — and where I don’t. What makes me steady. What feels like me. Sorting the fear of trying from the fear of losing myself.
The parts of me the years quieted but never silenced flowed back. Playfulness. Creativity. Wonder. Goofiness.
And yet so much stayed steadfast — my heart, my values, my faith, baseball and butcher’s knives.
When the compass had long been set to the expectations of others, and those people receded, all that remained was the voice of the boy.
Six years ago, I knew I was queer.
Three years ago, I said it aloud.
Today, I understand more clearly what it means to be queer.
But even more than that, I understand what it means to be me.
Under blue skies and calmer winds, the chaos has ebbed. Dreaming has begun again.
I am less certain of what lies ahead than at any other point in my life.
I am the most steady I have ever been.
A quiet farewell to surety and control.
A dawning steadiness of the boy who never left.
I’m proud of him.
I’m grateful I finally listened.
I missed him.
Today my life is unrecognizable. Nothing like what I feared.
And yet, in so many ways, deeply familiar. Native.
The joy of being seen and known.
The freedom of not knowing and simply being.
The hope of dreaming again.
Grateful for all that flowed
and even for all that ebbed.
 | A guest post by
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“The silence was already destroying me. Avoiding the potential deconstruction of my life was no longer an option. Forward was the only path.”
That sentence carries so much truth. Many people think coming out is about courage in one moment, but often it’s really about survival, about realizing that silence itself becomes unbearable.
“In the quiet loneliness, in the void of what was, the voice of the boy was heard again.”
That image of the boy returning… it’s beautiful. Almost like meeting the original version of yourself again after years of living for others.
“How to make friends again.”
Being in that part of the journey, rebuilding friendships, rebuilding community, I just want to say I’m here. Truly. I would be very happy to spend time together and get to know you more. Sometimes friendship is exactly the kind of quiet ground we need while everything else is shifting.
Thank you for writing this with such honesty.
It keeps getting better, more and faster all the time. 🤗