Coming out at 50

I so envy young people today who are coming out at younger ages all the time. I am 65 and when I was growing up I didn't even know that there was such a thing as gay people. It was just not talked about. I had crushes on older girls and teachers when I was in high school but had no idea what that meant. I was not particularly attracted to boys but felt like I needed to have a boyfriend to be "popular" with the girls. I just assumed getting married was the thing to do so I got married right out of college. My mother tried to talk me out of it. I sometimes think she might have been a "sister" but she died before I came out so I will never know. I knew almost right away that I had made a terrible mistake but stayed with him for 8 years and had a daughter.

When I finally got a divorce I was pretty sure then that I was a lesbian but had no idea how to meet other lesbians. Some women I was working with at Washington University told me about a women's festival at Cuivre River State Park so I went up there with my 3 year old daughter. I didn't really know anyone there and no one really talked to me. I often think if someone had befriended me there I would have come out much earlier. I was painfully shy at that time as I had been constantly berated by my husband. I did pick up one of the first issues of Lesbian Connection and subscribed so I was reading it for years before I actually came out. I spent many years mainly raising my daughter and half-heartedly dating men.

When I was 50 and my daughter was away at college I decided to try and do something about coming out. At that time they had personal ads in the Gay News Telegraph and I met some women that way. Some are still friends today. Around that time I went to my first Charis concert at COCA. I had been asked to go by my straight boss who sang in another chorus. After the concert I stuck around as there was a dance and that was my first experience at a women's dance. Unfortunately the only person I knew and talked to was a straight woman, Jane Clark, as she had been my parents' minister at one time. There was a lesbian dinner group advertised in the gay paper and you called a number to find out where it was. I called several times but couldn't get the nerve up to go. I used to drive down on Manchester and look at Attitudes but it looked too scary to go in. I finally got the nerve to go to the dinner group and it was there I met my first girlfriend. She was very much into the community so through her I met lots of lesbians. She took me to the National Women's Music Festival and the Michigan Music Festival, both of which I had read about for years in Lesbian Connection. We went together for about 2 years and broke up mutually and are still friends today. Shortly after that I met my 2nd girlfriend Kathy who I was with for 7 years and who died of breast cancer 5 years ago. Since then I have been single. I sang in Charis for a while. I am one of the founding members of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC) St. Louis chapter and of SAGE Metro St. Louis. I have never regretted coming out because I knew that I had finally found myself and who I was meant to be.

Oh, and by the way, when I came out to my daughter when she came home from college she wasn't upset at all. I tried to soften it by suggesting I might be bisexual and she said "Why don't you just say it that you are a lesbian?"