Coming Out for Athletes - 5. Telling my ex-girlfriend

Being a teenager is hard. There’s all these different people putting all their expectations on you, and most of the time you feel like you’re going to explode from everything that’s happening. I don’t just mean the stuff going on with other people, I mean the stuff going on inside your head too.

I hated it. All the expectations from family and friends and society and myself. It was all piling up. Worse, I was realizing I was gay. This wasn’t something I wanted to realize when I was only fourteen years old. I knew my family would never understand and accept it, and I needed a way to get people off the scent, so to speak.

Thankfully, an opportunity arose through curling to at least put my mind at ease that I could stop people from thinking of me as gay. My team was a mixed team that year, two boys and two girls. The other boy and one of the girls had started to date, and I found out that the remaining girl on the team had a crush on me.

This is great! I can date Tanya and everyone will think I’m straight. This is perfect, and I didn’t even have to look for anyone.

After practice one Saturday afternoon, I took my team outside and had a chat with them. It was actually sort of predictable that Brandon and Emily stood together and Tanya stood close to me. I wanted to get everything done quickly, before all of our parents figured out what was going on.

“So, this is interesting, isn’t it? Looks like we’re all dating each other. I want to talk about a few things before we decide this is a good idea for us.”

The three of them looked at me and nodded, signaling that I should keep going.

“We can’t let how we’re feeling about each other get in the way of how we curl. Anything that’s going on, we leave it at the door when we get to the rink. I don’t want any fights or anything else to be distracting, that’s not fair to the rest of us.”

Again, no one said anything or complained about it.

“Anyone else have anything to add? If not, we should get back inside before our parents start wondering what this is all about.”

The three of them walked back inside, with Tanya giving me another look before closing the door behind her. I stayed outside for a few more minutes savouring the warmth of the sun before heading back in to find my parents.

After a few months, I couldn’t keep pretending. At the end of the season I told Tanya that it wasn’t working, we fought too much and I didn’t think it was going to work out between us. Tanya was younger than me and didn’t take the news very well, even though she also noticed that we did nothing but fight.

Fast forward: Three years later.

I’m sixteen. Tayna’s fourteen. We’re both curling on different teams; we’ve moved onto competitive teams that let us showcase ourselves much better than our mixed team did three years ago. We’re both happy, and I’m starting to come out to more people all the time.

My team practices with Tanya’s team every week. It’s a bit weird to see her and remember that we’re sorta friends but sorta not friends. I mean, we talk to each other and everything, but I can tell she’s still pretty upset about before. And now that I’m coming out to people, it’s probably going to get worse.

I decided that I should go talk to her and let her know, so after practice one day I asked her if she wanted to go grab a coffee at the Starbucks across the street from the curling club. She agreed, and once practice was over, we both walked there, leaving our gear at the club where we could pick it up after we were done talking.

Once we had both gotten our drinks and found seats, we enjoyed some small talk and talked about how our respective seasons were going, and how it was funny that we were both training together again after a couple years away from each other.

Knowing we didn’t have too much time before we had to go back, I broke the ice and broached the topic of when we were dating.

“So, Tanya…. Remember our team from a few years ago? Back with Brandon and Emily?”

She looked at me with one eyebrow raised, stopped what she was doing and put her drink back on the table without drinking from it.

“Yes, I remember that, what about it Hunter?”

I flushed a little, because it sounded like she was still pretty annoyed by that, at least by the way she was talking to me right now. Still, we were here, so I should get on with it.

“I was thinking about how we were dating back then. I have something that I need to tell you, and I hope you’re not too upset about it.”

I took another deep breath while she stared at me.

“About that… you know I’m gay right? Which means I was gay back then. I’m sorry. I hope you’re not too surprised by this.”

Having known Tanya for a few years now, her reaction was both out of proportion, and also totally predictable. She went as ballistic as possible inside a public venue.

“Of course I knew, Hunter. But I didn’t find out from you. I had to hear about from Olivia last year. How am I supposed to feel, knowing you told my teammate before you even thought about telling me?”

She stood up and walked over to dump her coffee before she came back to sit at the table with me.

“I’ve been waiting for months now for you to come and tell me, and it bothers me that you didn’t think you could tell me. Thanks for the coffee, was there anything else you wanted to say?” She asked.

“No. So glad we had this chat. Are you going to be this angry about it for a while, because I can go back to the team and make sure not to bother you.” I replied.

Tanya got up and walked away without a word. A few minutes later, I threw the rest of my coffee into the garbage and walked back to the curling club, just in time for my parents to come drive me home.

I didn’t say anything on the drive home, not really sure why Tanya had gotten so upset, and also wondering if that was going to be how most other people would start reacting when I came out. I had been hoping that she would be kinder to me about the whole issue, but it seemed like she still had some anger about how the relationship ended.

It wouldn’t have been too hard for me to stop coming out to people then and there, assuming that it’d be too dangerous for me to do so and to stay a nice, closeted gay for the rest of my life.

That’s not my style. I’m proud of who I am and I’m glad that I keep coming out to people. I still see Tanya at the curling club. We’re both adults now, and we have learned a lot in the intervening years.

We weren’t right for each other when we dated, but we’re older and wiser now, and I don’t regret coming out to her, even if it was a horrible, painful experience at the time.