Around 40% of the hours I spend awake every day are dedicated to Instagram scrolling. Given that I follow over 6000 different accounts, most of which are memers, and given my incredible generosity and willingness to spread joy and laughter and irony to my friends, as well as my crippling need to cast attention towards myself due to childhood traumas I’m still unraveling with my therapist, I repost a lot of content.

Whenever I see something funny, I tap on the share button and select all the friend accounts that need to see that. 2, 5, 7 accounts at the same time — friends that probably think they’re the unique and special recipients of my messages, but even more probably don’t really have these thoughts crossing their minds like I do.

For particularly funny or heartwarming content that needs to be put on display to build and reinforce my online façade, there’s a special place in my stories.

I see a nice meme thirsting on the current hot actor, mainly Jonathan Bailey in this period, I tap on the share button, scroll towards the right, see that circle with that plus sign inside, with my mind already set on selecting a quirky caption, with a nice font, a nice background color. It’s all ready, I can share it. I click on the bottom left, there we go. Up for all my followers to see, friends, family, colleagues past and present.

Oops.

Panic.

WAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT HOLD ON.
DELETE DELETE DELETE PLEASE DELETE.

A story can’t be deleted while it’s still loading, so I have to be on that edge of risk for a couple of seconds still before I can delete and post it again, this time using that safe, green, close friends alternative.

Only some selected friends, those outside of my family circle, are there. Only those who have seen me in full glitter and with painted nails, only those who have seen me thirst over boys, only those who have heard the words “I’m bi” coming out of my mouth are there.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my family, and I think it’s thanks to my parents and my upbringing that I can call myself progressive, even radically leftwing. I’ve always attended Pride parades, I wrote a thesis on LGBTQIA+ rights, and wore a rainbow pin at the graduation ceremony. I have queer friends and they have always been extremely welcomed by my parents and sister. I’ve never heard my parents say anything remotely homobitransphobic, not even a slur, and although they are sometimes a little bit outdated on the proper terms, they are open to learn.

BUT.

Since the night I came out to my best friend, 7 years ago, I decided to come out in my own way. I decided that there’s nothing I need to confess. I’m gonna live life as I always do, and if people wanna know, they can ask. This led to funny moments: when I used to live in a dorm and I wasn’t openly out, people would sometimes ask me if I was gay. “No”, I replied, but I kept that “I’m bi, actually” to myself, and I still giggle at that technicality that allowed me to not come out and at the same time, not lying about myself.

And to be honest, I never really lied to my family: they just never asked. I never brought anyone home, never cried over a breakup in front of my mum, and they never asked if I planned on having someone in my life. I don’t know if they know, and I don’t want to ask, but I suspect they kind of guess that I’m queer, in some sense.

Yet still, even though I feel like it’s incredibly tiring to be closeted to my family, to live two online lives, to carefully select what I can say about myself around them and to worry about how much my friends can tell them, and even though I know they’d be ok with me being bi, I dread the moment of coming out to them.

I just worry about the looks that my mom would give me should she know. I just worry that she might accept me with words but look at me differently. Maybe they all would resent me for keeping it from them? Maybe they would embarrassingly hide the topic over discussions? And how about the family dinners? Out of 16 uncles/aunts and over 30 cousins, I would be the very first openly queer person in the family. I, who at the verge of my 30s remain the “youngest one” out of all the cousins, would probably be treated like a child who doesn’t know better and is just going through a rebellious phase.

Maybe I’m too paranoid, and maybe I’m projecting too much, but even though this whole situation drains me and even though I’d have no valid reasons to fear this, coming out to my family is off the table.