Steven LaChance Blog

Friendships and relationships. Missed, hidden, and mourned

There’s a part of coming out no one really prepares you for. People talk about the joy, the freedom, the sense of finally stepping into yourself. And that’s real. But there’s another side too. A quieter, harder side. One that lingers.

It’s grief.

The Ones I Never Got to Have

Not just for what you lost. But for what you never got to have. The friendships that could have been something deeper. The relationships that might have meant something real. The moments you never got to live because you were busy trying to survive.

When you grow up hiding who you are, you become someone else. You don’t even realize you’re doing it at first. You adjust your laugh, your walk, your voice, your gaze. You learn how to be acceptable. How to stay safe. You perform.

And while you’re performing, life keeps moving. You’re there, but you’re not really living it. You’re missing things. Big things.

You miss the kind of friendships where you can actually be known. The ones where you don’t have to keep track of what you’ve said or edit yourself in real time. Where you can cry without fear, laugh without checking who’s watching, love without pretending it’s something else.

You miss the relationships that were never allowed to start. The people you admired from a distance. The longing you buried. The times you told yourself it was nothing, even though it was everything. There were connections that might have become love, if only you’d been free enough to try.

I look back sometimes and think about the people I wish had known the real me. The one who was scared. The one who stayed in the shadows. The one who couldn’t find the words yet. Because maybe if they’d met that version of me, the real one, we could’ve had something honest. Something lasting.

Instead, they got the version I built to survive.

There’s no ceremony for the life you didn’t live. No obituary for missed friendships or unrealized love. But the loss is real. It builds up in you, quietly, until one day you’re sitting with it and realizing just how much it hurt to not be seen.

Coming out doesn’t erase that. It doesn’t give you those years back. But it does give you a shot at something new. Something true.

Now, when someone knows me, they know the real me. The one who made it through. The one who doesn’t need to pretend anymore.

And I hold that close, because I know what it cost to get here. I know what I missed.

And I don’t want to miss a thing anymore.