This woman recently lost a close friend who had come out to her. He was planning on coming out to everyone but passed away before he got the chance. Now she wants to help him come out to ensure he is remembered for who he was. Here’s the full story.
She Lost a Close Friend
The Original Poster (OP) is a 25-year-old who lost her dearest friend, Daniel, who she described as her soul mate three years ago.
Daniel has shared with OP that he was gay, confiding in her as OP is bi.
He thought it was easier to come to her initially and that he was ready to start coming out to his friends and family gradually.
But this was before his diagnosis.
He Was Ready to Come Out
OP assured him that he had her full support and offered to assist him if he wanted to tell their friends about his sexuality. He thanked her but stated he would handle it on his own when he was ready.
He chose to wait as he wanted to do it in person because everything shut down in March during the pandemic, and they were restricted.
By the time October rolled around, they were still under lockdown, and Daniel was diagnosed with cancer and began treatment. His health became a priority because he fell ill so quickly.
He Passed Away Before He Could
Sadly, Daniel lost the fight and unexpectedly passed away in January 2021, which was a huge shock for OP.
Currently, OP and her friends talked more openly about Daniel, and things have calmed down a bit.
Daniel and OP were very close, and she loved him a lot, but they never experienced any sort of attraction because OP had no interest in men and Daniel was gay.
However, many others mistakenly believed that Daniel was attracted to women, and both OP and he were in love as they constantly were together, talking, laughing, and more.
People Had Misunderstood Their Relationship
OP says they didn’t have that kind of relationship at all, so when her friends and other people who knew them started making comments about them being together, it made OP feel uneasy.
Even when OP told them she wasn’t interested, they continued to make comments about how he could still have been interested in OP. She attempted to shrug them off by telling them they weren’t like that, but others didn’t seem to believe it.
Now OP thinks that the only way to make them understand is to let them know he was gay and end the “what if,” but OP is not sure if it’s her place to out him in that way, even to their close friends who have been nothing but supportive of OP.
She Wants to Set Them Straight but Doesn’t Know if Its Her Place
OP says she is sure he would have wanted to tell them himself if he were still here. But, now that he’s gone, she’s one of the few people he trusted with this information about him (he came out to his family and unintentionally to one mutual friend before his diagnosis). OP is still unsure of her authority to share it with them.
So OP took to Reddit to ask for opinions and whether she would be wrong if she did it.
Several Redditors supported OP and said that she wouldn’t be wrong for outing her friend.
One Reddit user wrote, “As a queer person, my first thought was you will let him be remembered and loved as he truly was. He deserves to live out of the closet, even if it can only be in memories.”
Another Redditor commented, “Honestly, given that your friend intended to come out to this group of friends and was stopped from doing so only by the pandemic and then his illness, I don’t think he would mind if you quietly told them in order to stop their intrusive and incorrect assumptions.”
So what do you think? What would you do if you were in OP’s situation?
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The post She Wants to Help Her Gay Friend Come Out. He Passed Away Before He Could Do It for Himself and She Wants Him to Be Remembered for Who He Really Was first appeared on Wealthy Living
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / Roman Samborskyi. The people shown in the images are for illustrative purposes only, not the actual people featured in the story.
Source: Reddit