Kristian | 27 | Kent, England | Aspiring Writer


This story contains some graphic images of  Kristian's post-operation scars. Although they are a really important aspect of his inspirational story we understand that some of you may be a bit squeamish so we thought we would just give you that warning!
So, when, and how, did I first ‘come out’? Surprisingly enough, when considering that I now have a website that openly declares my sexuality (among other things, obviously!), am in the process of  writing a book in which the subject features heavily, and have been featured in Attitude magazine’s for the whole world to see (well, their whole readership, at least), it wasn’t actually that long ago. I was, I think, about twenty-three – though, of course, I’d known I was gay for a long time before that. However, I was dealing with a lot of other stuff at the same time, and struggling with my sexuality on top of it all proved too much to handle. So, for about eight years, I did the next best thing: nothing. Confused? (No pun intended!)

Well, follow me down the rabbit hole and let me explain just how deep it goes….
When I was eleven years old, following a nasty bout of glandular fever, I developed M.E (Myalgic Encephalopathy to all you Google-happy types!), a chronic long-term medical condition with symptoms similar to severe flu. Amongst its seemingly endless list of reported symptoms, the most common amongst sufferers is a feeling of complete exhaustion – not sleepiness, drowsiness, could-do-with-an-extra-hour-in-bed-ness, I’m talking absolute chronic exhaustion – the kind where you’re too tired even to move your own eyes (which is a rather unusual sensation, to say the least!). These symptoms, which also included joint and muscle pain, sensitivity to light, migraines, nausea and cognitive function (to name but a few), fluctuated rather a lot – although any exertion could bring on an attack that would last for several weeks. Unable to do much else, I found that the least symptom-inducing activity was sitting in front of the television.


I had M.E for seven years, until the ripe-old-age of eighteen (trying to feel less resentful towards teenagers now that I’m skidding towards thirty….), and during this time I couldn’t attend school, socialise, or do very much of anything – except eat. And eat, I did; through loneliness, through sadness, for comfort, for pleasure, for something to do: eating was, in hindsight, my favourite pastime – and being the only thing I really had the energy with which to wile away the time. I did it rather a lot. I’d describe myself in those days as a skilled over-eater; I was Gastronomically Gifted, a Connoisseur of Confectionery, a Don of the Dunkin Donut and a Master of the Midnight Munch (as you can imagine, this is not how people who saw me in the street regarded me – or if it was, it’s not what they hollered from their car windows as they drove past). So well-versed in the Gluttonous Arts was I that, by the time I recovered, I weighed in excess of twenty stone.
So, smack bang in the middle of all this was when I realised I was gay, aged fifteen (thanks in no small part to a frustratingly slow dial-up internet connection – this was also when I realised I had no patience!), I experienced all the emotions that are all-too-familiar for those who come to this realisation – shock, denial, fear of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, depression, anxiety, etc.

I employed several techniques to help me deal with these emotions,
but my most-favoured was the old ‘I’ll just ignore it and it will
go away on its own approach’.


This method, for a while at least, worked pretty well. In a twist of denial-enabling irony, my circumstances at the time were my saviour, making this approach somewhat easier to get away with – after all, I wasn’t going out, didn’t have any friends, sported a hippy-hairstyle that often led to me being referred to as “Miss” at most places I went, and had a frame so ample that I never dared to take my t-shirt off on the beach for fear of being accosted by members of Greenpeace presuming I needed help to get back into the ocean. My life wasn’t going anywhere - did it really matter that I was gay?

Evidently it did, because from the moment the realisation dawned on me until the day I finally ‘fessed up, I was unable to think of anything else. I was a terrible individual. I was pathetic. I’d let everyone down. I was a massive disappointment…

 For nearly eight years, I actually managed to convince myself of all that bollocks. Let’s skip ahead to when I was twenty-three; having lost eight and a half stone in weight (120lbs for those of you reading this from across the pond), I’d wound up physically disfigured by my (former) obesity. Stretched beyond all recognition, skin hung loosely from my body in great sagging folds; I could stretch my belly out a clear foot in front of me. I could hide cans of (by this point, Diet) fizzy drink under each of my man-boobs – in short, I had the physicality of a partially-deflated zeppelin.

"By the time I came out, I was part-way through a process of multiple
major surgical reconstructions to remove excess skin and tissue from my
chest, ribcage, stomach, back, buttocks and legs."


After four initial operations to reconstruct my chest and abdomen I looked considerably more “normal” in clothes, and had built-up enough self-confidence to start going to the gym while I gave my body a chance to recover. About six months before my next bout of surgeries (I’ve lost track of exactly how many I’ve had) I finally bit the bullet and told my friend that I was gay. I couldn’t keep it in anymore - if something happened to me during my next operation (insert jovial Grim-Reaper-style music here!), I wanted to have shared my dark and terrible secret with at least one person. I sat in her car, chatting idly, heart pounding in my chest, urging myself to say it. I was going to. I was absolutely going to.

No turning back now; here I go!  I only went and said it.

As soon as the words came spilling out of my mouth, I dissolved into floods. I should have known this was how I would react, so why I chose to have my moment in the middle of a multi-storey car park I’ll never know. After much consoling, cajoling and several hash browns (by this point we’d relocated to our regular table at a café in town), she convinced me to tell my family, insistent that it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

Of course I was absolutely convinced that she was wrong. But now that I’d told somebody, it wasn’t an ignorable secret that existed entirely within the confines of my own head. I had brought it into the world and made it reality - I was gay. I had said it. It was at this point that the walls I’d built in my head began to crumble into pieces…

With much encouragement from my friend (love her!), I decided to bite the bullet and confess all to one of my brothers being the youngest of four children, I had grown-up idolising the pair of them, and was absolutely convinced that this would drive a massive wedge between us, effectively ending our extremely close relationship. Despite my insistence on this, my friend reassured me that everything would be fine.
I told myself that I KNEW she was wrong, and by the time it came to the crunch I had accepted that this would be the moment that my brother, and eventually my entire family, would disown me. He was probably the person I was most afraid of telling (always good to start with the hardest job!) – we were extremely close, and I think he saw a lot of himself in me – I honestly thought that I was letting him down; a builder, a hard-case and very much the masculine-type, I feared his reaction, and his rejection, most of all. Nevertheless, I sat down with him one afternoon before I went to work and told him that I needed to talk to him. Shaking and welling up, I chain-smoked several cigarettes before I was finally able to force the words out.

"I think I’m gay, bruv."
I waited for my world to come crashing down around me – but it didn’t.

I couldn’t hear what my brother was saying; I was vaguely aware that he wasn’t telling me to leave, or vehemently expressing his disgust. He was still just talking to me as normal – reassuring me that it didn’t matter, telling me to relax, chatting, joking, being the same reliable and supportive big-brother he’d always been. It took a few minutes for everything to sink in; I had confessed to my big bro that I was gay, and he wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered. I was overwhelmed and emotional – but when he turned to me and jokingly remarked “don’t start coming round here in a dress, will ya” I still managed to laugh. We sat and chatted for about an hour. I smoked several more fags and drank lots of tea. After dropping my bombshell, I teetered off to my evening-job and left him sitting rather stunned in front of the telly. Hours later when my sister-in-law came home from work, he broke the news to her – and didn’t get quite the reaction he was expecting; no shock, no surprise – she was just chuffed to finally have someone she could go dancing in a gay club with!

After this initial flood of relief, I decided to snowball my way through the rest of my family and friends – suddenly on a roll, I came out left-right-and-centre like a sub-machine gun. BANG! Eldest brother. BANG! Parents. BANG! Eldest sister. BANG! Friends from college. BANG! Everyone at work; when it was all over, I felt completely shell-shocked; relieved, and quite disoriented. 

I think, to be honest, the person who found it the hardest to accept the truth about my sexuality was myself. Before I came out, I had hard-wired it into my head that I didn’t have the freedom to be gay – it was outside the realms of possibility that anyone would actually accept me for who I was, and so I never thought ahead to a time when I would feel free to be me. But once I’d put the truth out into the world and the world hadn’t kicked back, there were suddenly no obstacles between me and the life I secretly knew I wanted and needed.

Yet I had harboured these feelings secretly for so long that I had convinced myself that if I tried hard enough, I could ignore them and make myself straight. I’d looked forward to the family I would eventually have – one of four children, I’d hoped to end up with an equally large brood myself - would that happen now? Could it? For a few months after I came out, I went through a process of grieving for this imagined family life that would now never be. Everybody had accepted me readily and unconditionally. For me to do that, however, it was apparently still going to take a while. Despite this emotional upheaval, life went on. With everything out in the open, I slowly began to feel like I was working towards a different future – one in which I would eventually want to take part. I hit the gym with renewed vigour, got back on the healthy eating wagon and arranged with my surgeon to continue with my reconstructive surgery.

Over the next two and a half years, I had major operations to remove skin and tissue from my back, buttocks and legs; I had further reconstructions to my chest; I had multiple revision surgeries in an attempt to flatten scar tissue and achieve a more natural appearance. Each procedure left me with more scars, and I had to wait for months after each operation to see if everything had healed flat or if the joins in my skin still needed more revision to help them sit as naturally as possible.
My poor surgeon – I’ve lost count of how many times I went back to see him, insistent that there were still more skin tags to remove; that this bit or that could still look just the tiniest bit better. He was an absolute star – he always took the time to listen, paid great attention to detail, injected a sense of humour into proceedings and treated me with great kindness and patience. I think he understood my reasons for being so picky – having had so much of my body reconstructed, I wanted its contours to look as natural as possible. But my surgeon, like me, knew when enough was enough – in August 2010; I had my final scar revisions under local anaesthetic.

"As I progressed through this period of reconstruction, my attitude towards myself began to change. After each operation, I’d spend ages in the mirror re-evaluating, re-assessing and slowly coming to terms each time with my reflection being different to before. This time spent getting to know the new me allowed me the opportunity to finally learn to love and accept the person I was, inside and out."


I began to understand how little my sexual preference mattered. Yes, it was integral to my character, as is anybody’s sexuality – but did it shape me? Change me? Define me? Did it, in actual fact, make any difference to anything at all?

As I slowly came to terms with my new physical appearance, I became steadily more determined to accept the person I had always been on the inside in much the same way. In an attempt to come to terms with my scarring and newfound sexual liberation (though I have no desire to dress-up under any other circumstances!), I went with my sister-in-law to see a stage production of The Rocky Horror Show in full fancy dress, sporting a corset, suspenders, high heels and Frank-N-Furter-style wig and make-up with all my scars on display for everyone to see. I did the Time Warp, had a great night, got asked to pose for a photo with someone and was told by several strangers that I was “brave” – which can’t be good!

Throughout this time, I had come to terms with who I was, and through necessity I’d learnt how to enjoy being myself. I had accepted my past, dealt with the grief of losing my childhood to an illness without becoming bitter or resentful; I had come to terms with my scars, my newly reconstructed body, my re-created belly button and my freshly-installed nipples. I had found the strength and determination to endure the hospital appointments, the stitches, the months spent in compressive bodysuits, the scar management massages and the interminable waiting for it to all to be over. After surviving all this and still managing to come out smiling on the other side, I owed it to myself to be honest about who I was underneath it all.

 A month after my final operation I started a Foundation Degree in Professional Writing at Greenwich University. During a group discussion about society and the class system, one of my tutors (an ‘expert’ in body-language, nonetheless!) asked me what type of women I found attractive – although I hadn’t even been trying, I was apparently still a little too good at disguising my sexuality!

No longer ashamed to be honest about who I was, I replied instantly “Well, I’m gay actually, so none”. My tutor was taken aback, and the class laughed – but, most importantly, so did I. In that little moment I realised how much progress I’d made. Like a stranger now, I could feel the memory of my old-self - ashamed, depressed, distant, self-loathing and anxious – haunting the chair beside me, and I saw for the first time just how different we had truly become.

"That moment taught me something else very important - that nobody ‘comes out’ just the once."
Whenever you let new people into your life, there will always be that little moment where you say who you are - and whether in doing so you simply confirm someone’s suspicions or totally blow them away, the most important reaction to that little nugget of information is your own.


My time at University helped me to come to terms with a lot of stuff. As well as my sexuality, it also provided me with a platform to be open and honest about my illness, my weight loss, my disfigurement, my operations, my scarring and my physical and psychological recoveries. Several assignments I was presented with required various forms of engagement with the working world, and I used these opportunities to share my experiences as best I could in order to help me gain more self-acceptance.

In May 2011, I shared my story with Attitude magazine and was featured in their real-life section ‘Context” (Summer 2011 edition). The response I received was amazing – strangers who’d read my story suddenly began to contact me through my profile on Gaydar (among other social networking sites!) to congratulate me, to ask for advice, or simply because they could identify with my experiences in one way or another. I spoke to some really great people, and got to dispense some information and advice about M.E, weight loss, disfigurement, reconstructive surgery and scar management to people who really needed it.

I relished the chance to help and support people dealing with situations similar to my own – so much so, in fact, that I am now writing a book about my experiences, and also run a website that will, once it’s finished, provide practical advice and support for anyone dealing with or coming to terms with similar problems. These responses also gave me some inner peace about my experiences – putting myself out there and getting such warm responses back helped me to feel even more validated and accepted than I ever had before, and made me even more determined to help people in similar predicaments.

"My advice to anyone still struggling to come to terms with their
sexuality is to take it one step at a time – remember, the most
important person to be honest with is YOU, before anyone else."


So, get used to saying it. Write it down. Type it on your computer. Text it to your own phone number. Whisper it under your breath – or shout it out-loud if you feel the urge! What’s most important is that, however you do it, you coax that little home truth out of your head and into the big wide world. The instant you do, you’ll be at the start of an amazing journey. And who knows - you might just learn a little something about yourself along the way…

Follow Kristian on Twitter - @KristianNorman
Visit Kristian's website - www.me-myself-and-I.me.uk
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