Preparing to Come Out

I’ve written about changing your deadname with Git before, but I haven’t written about how to come out to other people. I’m getting ready to go to college in the fall, so I’m continuing this series as I go through the steps to come out not just to my family, but to my college and friends.

The Plan

No matter what, you should have a plan to come out. Just rushing into it will rarely go well in my experience. You need to make sure of the following:

1. You will be safe if anything goes wrong
2. You have a backup plan
3. You know how you’re going to tell them

The first two are kind of related, so I’ll be talking about them together. You need to be sure that whatever happens, you’ll be able to have a roof over your head and a way to get food and water. This is obviously a worst-case scenario, but given the insane number of stories of gay and trans kids being kicked out of their homes after coming out, it’s a fair thing to prepare for.

The third one is important too. If you don’t know how you’re going to tell whoever it is you’re coming out to, your coming out is going to be disjointed and you might not get your point across. Whether it’s a note left on a desk, a post on $social_network, or a heartfelt conversation, you need to be prepared for how you’re going to tell the person.

I’ll get more into executing the plan in a later post. I hope this one helped, though!