Learning to Belong to Myself
I used to think coming out would fix everything. In my 20s, I felt invincible - young, fit, finally out, new city, new friends, no curfew, no fear. I said yes to every night, every plan, every photo. From the outside, it looked like freedom. Inside, anxiety crept in. I drank to smooth the edges, then drank to make the edges disappear. When a long relationship ended and a string of anticlimactic dates followed, I quietly decided that maybe I’d be single forever. I put on 15 kilos, stopped answering messages, and built a routine around not being seen. Alcohol became a friend that never judged - until it did.
This is a story about what came next: the slow work of quitting the performance, learning to sit with the void, and discovering (against my own expectations) that connection was closer than I thought - not in louder rooms, but in truer ones.
The second closet: when “out” still feels like acting
When I first came out, I traded secrecy for performance. If I could be charming, helpful, impressive - I’d be safe. But comfort isn’t connection. That’s the lesson I heard echoed by the cast of Boots, the Netflix series about a bullied teen who enlists and finds unexpected brotherhood. Miles Heizer put it so cleanly: “His arc isn’t about discovering his sexuality, it starts with him being comfortable with that. Once that fear of being discovered goes away, he’s able to grow and create real bonds with people.”
I was “comfortable” being out - but I was terrified of being known. My party persona was Teflon; nothing stuck. I kept choosing loudness over closeness because loudness felt safer. The nights got fuller. The mornings got emptier.
The gate I didn’t want: loneliness
There’s a line from Zen teachers Koshin Paley Ellison and Robert Chodo Campbell that stopped me: loneliness can be a “gateless gate” - a passageway you walk through if you’re willing to face it, not a wall you’re condemned to stare at. When my life shrank, I finally sat still long enough to feel the thing I was running from. The first few weeks were brutal: no numbing, no noise, just me. But presence began doing what presence does - it told the truth. What hurt wasn’t only the breakup or the dates; it was the constant pretending. And what I needed wasn’t another scene. It was another story.
Meditation didn’t “fix” me. It gave me a place to sit while the storm passed through. Therapy helped untangle the knots. Movement got me out into daylight. And one very honest GP appointment gave me numbers I couldn’t spin: sleep debt, bloods off, the trend line of a life that didn’t love me back.
A wake-up call (and what the research says about the bottle)
Part of my reset was facing alcohol. I had bought the myth that a nightly drink was basically a health food with a cork. Newer research says: not so much. A large analysis found that even light drinking is associated with higher lifetime dementia risk, using genetic methods to get around the usual self-reporting issues; every threefold increase in drinking prevalence correlated with a 15% increase in risk. That snapped something into focus for me: I wasn’t just trading tomorrow’s energy for tonight’s mood - I was also making long-term bets I didn’t want to make.
And yet, as Derek Thompson writes, the science of “moderate” drinking is messy - a thicket of confounders, caution, and contested meta-analyses. His bottom line isn’t puritanical; it’s humble: alcohol isn’t especially good for your health, and what matters are both absolute risks and the life you’re trying to build. He even offers a cheeky rule of thumb he attributes to Tim Stockwell and Euan Ashley: every drink might “cost” about five minutes of life; every minute of exercise might “add” five a rough arithmetic for moderation, not a moral code.
For me, the point wasn’t perfection; it was alignment. Less booze, more mornings. Fewer hangovers, more hikes. I didn’t swear off restaurants or rituals. I just stopped outsourcing my nervous system to a glass.
“It’s easier to fight the whole world than to fight yourself”
When I read Lia Thomas’s line - “It’s easier to fight the whole world than to fight yourself every day” - I felt seen in a way I hadn’t expected. In her interview, she talks about grief, public scrutiny, and the relief of living in alignment even when it’s hard. That was my pivot: I could keep arguing with reality - or I could stop fighting myself.
Stopping didn’t look heroic. It looked like deleting numbers, declining “just one,” blocking hours for sleep, and letting the first kilometre of a run be embarrassingly slow. It looked like choosing people who knew how to sit with silence. It looked like being the boring friend who leaves early because tomorrow matters.
The surprise: most people care more than we think
Here’s the twist I didn’t see coming. I assumed that if I pulled back from performance, I’d lose people - and I did lose some. Actually, a lot. But I also discovered a social truth the Stanford team behind the “empathy perception gap” keeps finding: we underestimate how much others care. In their studies, simply correcting misperceptions (via posters and gentle app prompts) nudged students to take social risks - saying hi, sharing struggles - and the result was more connection, not less.
When I stopped curating and started telling the truth faster - “I’m anxious today,” “I’m cutting back,” “I don’t want a late one” - my real friends stepped closer, not away. I didn’t need a bigger crowd; I needed a braver few.
Desolation as teacher (not verdict)
I used to treat dark seasons like evidence I’d messed up. Arthur C. Brooks calls those stretches “spiritual desolation” - the slump after the high - and argues they can be gateways to growth if you don’t panic and blow up your life mid-storm. His advice from Ignatian wisdom is practical: don’t make big changes in the trough; get on the same side of the table as the problem; do the work). That mapped perfectly onto my recovery. Desolation wasn’t a verdict; it was a syllabus. My homework was consistency, community, and care.
What actually helped (unromantic, reliable)
Daylight plans. Saturday morning commitments I didn’t want to miss. Night me resented them; morning me was grateful.
Containers over crowds. Book clubs, running groups, volunteering - rooms where rhythm builds safety. (Boots reminded me: brotherhood is built in training, not shouting.)
Micro-truths. One honest text a day. “I could use a walk.” “I’m off the sauce tonight.” “Can we do early?”
Body basics. Sleep, food, steps, sunlight. Boring. And quietly life-saving.
Softer self-talk. When the old voice said “you’re failing,” the new one said “you’re learning.”
Where I’ve landed
These days, I feel… steady. Not euphoric. Not invincible. Steady. I still go out, but I don’t go missing. I still love a celebration, but I also love leaving. I write more. I move more. I show up for people without needing a photo to prove it happened. I try to be the kind of friend I needed when I was pretending I was fine.
The irony is beautiful: when I stopped chasing “belonging everywhere,” I started belonging to myself - and that made room for the right people to find me. The empathy was there all along; I’d just misread the room. The gate I dreaded turned out to be a door.
If you’re in your own dark night - anxious, heavier, hungover on the inside - you’re not broken. You’re being invited. Pick one tiny change and give it six weeks. Tell one truer thing to one safer person. Make one daylight plan you’ll protect. And remember Lia’s line when it gets hard: it’s easier to fight the whole world than to fight yourself - but fighting yourself is the fight you can actually win.
I didn’t get my old life back. I got a better one. Quieter. Kinder. Mine.