A Brief Emancipating Moment

If you've ever gone out for a run or a jog underneath a blazing sun wearing too many layers, then you know the feeling of liberation well. It comes once you extricate your body from the clenching of the sweat-drenched workout clothes and your anatomy can finally appreciate a zephyr caressing your moist skin. You've been longing for that exact moment all throughout the treacherous workout and when it arrives, it's unfettering.

The experience of being alone (most probably), naked in your room, completely exposed after having suffered through your workout is a brief emancipating moment. This is you, in your own skin, concealing nothing, with the suffocating workout clothes in a pile before you. This is you at your most vulnerable and your most truest form.

Moments like these don't come often.

That's exactly how I recall feeling as I stood in my room at my parent's house after having snuggly placed a letter underneath a napkin holder at the dining table. I was 15 and had just textually made what I thought of as an incredibly valiant confession. In the letter, I came out as gay to my mother, relaying the information through written word. Writing letters to my mother was nothing new to me. I had been leaving her handwritten letters inside her purse since I was around five-years-old. They were short notes full of adulation, usually in hopes of receiving small tokens of appreciation in return like a toy not purchased at the discount store or a delivered pizza.

It had taken me a significant amount of time to muster the courage and to construct the words needed to inform my mother about my sexuality, let alone anyone else. Aside from myself, of course. There are fuzzy memories from my childhood when I allowed myself to live authentically, whatever that meant at that place in time: Playing with my sister's dolls, pretending I had long nails painted red, femininely dancing to disco tracks, fixating my eyes on a young Fred Savage. Now,–on the verge of mid-teenage years where I was certain that the world would begin to unfold and reveal a much broader scope than the one I was accustomed–I was eager to experience the world without having to hide from it. I decided to come out to the person that mattered to me the most and the one person I was most tired of hiding from. My mother was and continues to be a strong inspiration and presence in my life and I wanted her to know me for the person I truly was and genuinely love me for being me.

While nervous, perhaps even slightly frightened, I felt emancipated. I was excited and thrilled as I left the letter behind and stood in the middle of my childhood room, naked, in a sense. Naked and free, liberated from the past which had long kept me from living as my most authentic self. And whilst clothed, I felt proudly naked. Having taken off the metaphorical exercising clothes after being under the scorching heat of the pressure and the burden of heteronormativity, I felt reborn. No, I felt finally born, more accurately put, and finally in my own skin. Being "in the closet," as most people refer to your life before publicly addressing your sexuality and identity, is quite the workout. It's strenuous, gruesome and requires consistent effort.

Now, as an adult and an occasional runner, I experience the liberating experience of wanking my drenched workout clothes off and enjoying the feeling of being exposed and bare. That is me in the most truest and rawest form, literally and hypothetically. That’s exactly how I felt when I came out via the letter, metaphorically releasing myself from the binds of fabric; societal fabric that isn't inclusive of LGBTQ+ identities, household and cultural fabrics that encourage repression and concealing and the fabrics that we weave ourselves; interlaced fears, misconceptions, miseducation and self-doubt.

It's quite interesting what happens to us when we release ourselves from what binds us down. There's an apparent weightlessness, an internal, almost metaphysical flow to your presence. And while it would still take a few extra years to fully feel like the person that I truly am, I was beginning the journey when I left the letter at the counter and, thus, began to take off my drenched workout clothes. I believe many people who have came out as LGBTQ+ would agree that you experience a catharsis once you've finally excrete your most intimate secret. And while not everyone makes the comparison of enjoying their bare bodies and finally freeing themselves from clenching clothes to coming out, I'm confident that most understand the analogy.

At that point in time, age 15, standing "naked" in my room after having worked out under a blazing sun, I could finally feel a small breeze caress my face and body, and felt free. I felt hopeful and confident that the future was promising. I felt like myself. I don't always feel similarly after I work out. If I do, I remember that moment so many years ago and feel emancipated, if only briefly.