Being visibly Queer is exhausting
Hello all, I usually participate over in r/butchlesbians but I found this forum, and this experience may be more universal, so I thought I would post here.
For context, I was in the closet most of my adult life. Now at 50+ I have been publicly out and open for about ten years. I am "visibly queer" as a masc/butch. I am very lucky to live in a blue dot (not my hometown) in a reddish rural area, but I get looks and stares that aren't always friendly (both in my home city and when traveling), and I have had things yelled at me from passing cars. I am socially and politically active in my city, I work in a public facing position, and I attend as many events as I can, so a lot of people recognize me even if they don't know me personally. I choose to be visibly queer because after years of living in the closet, not only will I not go back, but I want people to recognize that I am just a regular person who also lives in this city going about my life. But it can be very tiring to be visible all the time, and sometimes I'm a little nervous before I go to a public event alone.
Last weekend I went to one of these outdoor events and spent some time just walking around, talking to people, listening to the band, etc. As I was walking toward a different part of the park, something suddenly hit my chest. In the split second it happened, all my brain could register about what hit me was that it was white and round. And it hurt. For a moment I thought someone had balled up some trash and thrown it at me, and my brain said "this is it" and for a moment, everything stopped. I even saw some shocked looks on the faces of the people around me. NOW, what actually happened was a kid was throwing a ball to his dad and it went wildly off course and hit me in the chest, and both the father and son apologized, and I laughed it off and said it was fine. But the shock and fear stayed with me and I left pretty soon after that.
*I know* in the grand scheme of things what I have experienced is mild, and my closeted passing protected me for decades. I just felt like I needed to write about these feelings somewhere, and I would also love to hear from some other older lesbians about your experiences and how you deal with the fear of being publicly gay.