I'm From Driftwood

by Felix Moeller

I was around 14 when I discovered that I was gay. I just began feeling attracted to my classmates in a way I had never experienced before. Though the feeling was somehow exciting I was terrified because homophobia became more and more present at the same time. In a class of religion the teacher asked us to write on a sheet how we imagined heaven. Some guys wrote down, “No gay people.“

I accepted eventually that this is who I am and that I have to deal with it. I came out to my friends first, whose reactions were very positive. I also got a lot of support from my sister. Then I told my parents. It was difficult at first because of all the worries but they accepted it too. After school I went to Frankfurt to study political science and romance languages. That’s where I met the love of my life. After two broken relationships I found the man with whom I want to grow old. The feeling is mutual so we got married in summer 2010. My mother had tears in her eyes at the wedding but they were tears of joy. She gave me the name Felix when I was born which is Latin and means “happy.” The meaning became true.

I hope that my story gives hope to those who struggle with their identity and their environment and that it shows them that as a gay person you can live a happy life as well.

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by Nils Spehr

I was sixteen when my parents decided to move to another city about 600km from where we were living then. My father got a new job so it was a necessity for us to go there if we wanted to see him more than once every couple of months. About a month before we moved I came out to my best friend which worked out really well. Even though he pretended to be straight I had my first kiss and first time with him. Now I was going to be taken away from him and the strength I found when I finally found someone to talk to about my real self.

A couple of weeks after the move my aunt and grandmother came to visit for a few days so my mum and I had to share her bedroom so they could use mine. I didn’t think much of it since I’ve always been very close to my mum. One day I was taking a shower and when I stepped out of the bathroom, which was directly connected to her bedroom, she asked me when I was going to tell her that I’m gay. I was really relieved that she asked because I tried so hard to tell her but the words would never come out. That night we talked a lot and I told her everything about me and that best friend of mine.

The morning after that we were having breakfast when suddenly my mum came in and said “FYI, Nils is gay. If anyone has a problem with that he’ll have to deal with me”. At that moment I felt as if the weight of the world was taken from my shoulders, that suddenly I could breathe more easily—I felt that I had become the real me.

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by Karo

I have always been gay. I knew actresses were gay before I knew I was and before I even knew what gay was. So coming to terms with it was quite easy for me, especially considering I was growing up in the 90s, a time when lesbian relationships weren’t constantly featured on TV. But I do think, even without lots of LGBT storylines it was a good thing I had the opportunity to watch a lot of TV to make me become the open-minded person I am today.

Don’t get me wrong, my parents are not overly religious, racist, or sexist (how could they be–my father raised me as he would have raised a boy so I know how to change a flat tire and stuff, but when it came to same-sex relationships they were a chip off the old block.

You can probably imagine the horror I thought coming out would be when I was 17 and finally was able put a label to my sexuality. Because of that, I just didn’t come out to my parents at all. But when I was 20 I fell deeply and madly in love with a girl from London on the Internet and when I came back from visiting her for the first time, my father came to pick me up from the airport. I figured it had to be now or never, I just had to come out to him, but I was more afraid than I had ever been in my entire life, especially since my father had ranted about “those people” just a couple of weeks earlier.

While we were waiting for our train and I didn’t know what else to talk about, I got really brave and said to him: “You know, the girl I was visiting – we’re more than friends. I love her.” I was expecting silence, anger, denial, a sermon… But for the first time, my father really surprised me. I mean, I could have known that he would just tell a story instead of really conversing with me, because that’s just the person he is, but I didn’t expect the story to go like this. He said: “You know my one colleague from the fire fighters? She came to me two weeks ago complaining about the others. They were bullying her because she was gay. Since I was the only one who went to university, she thought I would be open-minded. So before I could tell her that I think it’s wrong and sinful, she was crying on my shoulder. All I could do was take her in my arms and tell her that everything is going to be alright. And at that point I understood that “those people” (he literally still said that) just want to be happy like everyone else. Who am I to take that away from someone?”

And that was it. We never talked about it again. More than a decade later I am still together with that girl from London and whenever I talk to my father he asks me: “Are you happy?” I answer yes and he says: “That’s all I ever wanted for you, my child.”

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