What Pride Means to Someone Who Once Protested Himself

A story of fear, freedom, and the coffee that changed everything

I almost didn’t go.

It was my first Pride after coming out, and I spent far too much time trying to think of reasons to stay home.

What if someone recognized me?

What if I didn’t belong?

What if everyone else looked like they knew exactly who they were while I wandered around looking like a tourist who had taken a wrong turn?

For years, I had lived inside a world where Pride wasn’t something to celebrate. It was something to warn people about. Something to debate. Something to fear.

And now I was driving toward it.

Terrified.

I wish I could tell you I arrived full of confidence and immediately felt at home. I didn’t. I felt like an imposter. Like someone who had accidentally wandered backstage before the show started.

The funny thing about fear is that it rarely tells the whole story. Because somewhere in the middle of that overwhelming, noisy, colorful day, a man asked if I’d like to get coffee sometime. That man is now my husband.

Life has a wicked sense of humor.

The place I had once been taught represented everything wrong with the world became the place where my future quietly introduced itself. Not with fireworks. Not with a choir of angels. Just with coffee.

…

Looking back, I realize my fear that day wasn’t really about Pride. It was about identity. For years, I had believed the greatest act of faith was protesting the very person I was. I didn’t stand outside Pride with a picket sign. I carried something much heavier.

I carried the belief that if I prayed long enough, surrendered hard enough, and obeyed faithfully enough, God might someday make me someone else. I wasn’t protesting gay people. I was protesting Randy.

…

These days, when June rolls around, I think about that frightened man walking into his first Pride carrying more fear than confidence. If I could find him in that crowd, I’d probably put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to breathe. I’d tell him that healing isn’t nearly as loud as fear makes it sound. I’d tell him that one day he’ll stop negotiating with God over whether he’s allowed to exist.

And then I’d smile and point across the crowd. “See that guy over there?” “Go have coffee when he asks you to.” You never know how God is going to answer a prayer.

Sometimes the answer isn’t becoming someone else.

Sometimes it’s finally becoming yourself.

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Welcome to Mugwump Ramblings, where one week I’m untangling decades of religious trauma, the next I’m laughing at myself, and somehow it all ends with coffee.

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