Quote of the Day

Over the next two years, I successfully conquered interactions too numerous to list here, and each time I said the words -- "I'm gay" or "This is my girlfriend" -- I felt a little lighter, the burden a bit easier the more I shared my truth.  At first I would have to force the words out of my mouth, like pushing a car uphill, practically sweating from the effort.  Now, the thought of lying about who I am makes me feel sick, the same way the truth used to.

-- Kate Fagan, The Reappearing Act, p. 182

Quote of the Day

Years later, a colleague would offer me the most beautiful analogy about the emotional impact of living this way, the pain of living in a glass closet.  You tell yourself that you're just wearing a coat, protecting yourself in public, against the elements.  You tell yourself it's just temporary, that someday you'll take off the coat and be the real you.  But eventually, years later, when the time comes and you're finally ready to shed it forever, you realize you can't.  The coat has become your skin.

-- Kate Fagan, The Reappearing Act, p. 173

Quote of the Day

This thing, my gayness, was not something I had chosen, I told myself in that moment; it was something that had happened to me.  It was as much a part of me as my brown eyes or my right-handedness.  I could buy myself blue contact lenses, pretend I was straight, put on a show for everyone ... but underneath, my eyes would always be brown.

-- Kate Fagan, The Reappearing Act, p. 163-164

Quote of the Day

I knew these feelings weren't [sudden, strategic temptations] from the devil, because in the moments when I was most honest with myself, I understood that I had felt this way all along; I just didn't have the vocabulary and framework to give my feelings context.  I wasn't "going through a phase," as my mother and father would later suggest.  I...was...gay.

-- Kate Fagan, The Reappearing Act, p. 116