OK, if you are reading this, you have obviously come out enough to be reading The Blade. But how out are you? At work? With straight friends? To your family? In your religious community? To that co-worker for whom your Gaydar is going off? To your health care providers? At that hotel you and your sweetie just went to where the clerk gave you a room with twin beds — “You want ONE BED? But there’s TWO of you!”?

It is always something, this coming out process, isn’t it? Here we go, celebrating Coming Out Day yet again, and yeah, the world hasn’t become a totally safe place in which to come out and be out. Some of us still lose our jobs or custody of our kids, and too many of us are still rejected by our families, simply because we are lesbian, gay, bi, or transgendered. We probably all know that flutter in the stomach and the lump in the throat that emerges with some of those “opportunities” to set the record “gayly forward” in others’ consciousness. So what if we choose to stay safely in the closet?

Interestingly, some of the research has suggested that there really can be deleterious effects on our mental health from staying IN the closet. Research of one LGBTC member found that lesbians who were more in the closet had higher levels of internalized heterosexism than those who were more out. And those who carried around heavier burdens of that internalized oppression had lower self-esteem, more shame, and more symptoms of psychological distress, such as depression, anxiety, hostility, and paranoia, than those with less internalized heterosexism. These results were consistent with similar studies with gay men.

We are all worth too much to have the closet and the shame about being different rule our lives. We need to support one another in the ongoing process of coming out as we encounter the fears of ourselves and others along the way. So, Happy Coming Out Day. If you are out, keep on coming! If you are not, be gentle with yourself, get support, get armed with education about the process. It’s a great big world out here, and we deserve to be living fully and fearlessly in it!