Journey to coming out
EDITOR'S NOTE: Wesley Colford uses the pronouns they/their. WRITER'S NOTE: This is the second part of Colford's story, the journey to their coming out. Part one about their coming out can be found in the July 31 edition of the Cape Breton Post or online.
SYDNEY — It took Wesley Colford 29 years to find the words that properly describe their identity.
Gender fluid, non-binary, panromantic, asexual - someone who doesn’t identify male or female but might flow between the two, who is attracted to people regardless of gender for romantic relationships, not sexual ones.
“Panromantic basically means I enjoy flirting with anyone. I am attracted to people of all genders or sexes. I don’t particularly enjoy or want to have sex with anyone. And that’s a very odd distinction. I think that’s why it took me so long to be able to articulate it,” explained Colford, the artistic and executive director of the Highland Arts Theatre in Sydney.
“That was maybe the biggest epiphany, that it was okay to like people, to be in love with people, to flirt with people, to be attracted to people, to want affection from people, to want validation from people, all of these things were okay and it didn’t necessarily mean they had to include (sexual intercourse) … If I had of realized before, that these things were possible, I think as a teenager I would have gotten to the endpoint I’ve gotten to 20 years later. “
Since getting to this endpoint in March, Colford said there are memories they have which are making “more sense.”
“Obviously, all of these things and all of these components of formulating my gender identity have been part of my life since I was born. And I have experiences I can remember from when I was four, of connecting dots that have led to where I’ve come to now,” they said.
“I remember being four years old and telling my grandmother, unprompted … That I’d decided, at the ripe age of four, I never want to drink, and I’m never going to smoke and I never want to have sex. That’s something I’ve remembered all my life and I really had no idea where it even came from, why I would (say it) … And even up until I was 13, I was very determined I was never going to have a relationship. I didn’t want to get married.”
With puberty came Colford’s realization they were attracted to women romantically and after moving to Ontario to study theatre at
Sheridan College at 16, Colford said they started coming to more realizations.
“Living in Ontario by myself … surrounded by a huge variety of diverse people and backgrounds compared to a pretty conservative upbringing in Cape Breton, I went through a huge period of just educating myself and … just having an awareness shattered,” they said.
Around this time, the television show “Glee” came out with gay high school characters who had serious storylines instead of being “the butt of the joke or punchline”.
“There was this openness that made me question am I gay, am I bi, what is my own sexuality? It’s funny, throughout my life I would make jokes about being asexual and I thought I wasn’t because I was attracted to women, and later, I came to the realization I was also attracted to men,” they said.
“The difference was I didn’t have any desire to have sex with men so I felt this conflict where I felt like maybe I should be gay but I didn’t want an intercourse relationship. And so I figured I must just have a low sex drive or I’m just straight.”
Colford has now realized, at that time in 2007, they were assuming they wanted to have sex with women. They still hadn’t learned about the identity that truly encapsulated them.
“Even then we weren’t really talking about non-binary or gender fluidity and I think if we had been … I think I would have connected those dots a lot sooner,” they said.
“This is part of the education I had to go through, because I think I had no concept, until much later in life than I would have liked, the fact that people can have differences between their sex - like, just their physical anatomy - versus their gender, being their personal identity, versus their sexuality being who they are attracted to and what they want to do to those people. It seems like such obvious categories now, but growing up I never had that defined. At 25, I’d not had that defined to me as clearly as it is now.”
Colford credits a group of close friends for guiding them down the path of self-realization until they found the name of their identity.
And Colford hopes, as the chapters of their story are told, they’ll also help someone connect their dots to their own person epiphany.
“The relief I feel wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for people who had done this already,” they said. “If I can help do my part to whatever extent to be a pillar to give people one example and to hopefully give them the confidence that they can experience and embrace themselves without consequence, that’s a very powerful tool. I think that’s a really important responsibility.”