Why we need to stop ‘coming out’
On Saturday, I read a wonderfully beautiful interview with Hanna Bervoets in Volkskrant Magazine. That last one is definitely my favorite on Saturday mornings (that slip-up with Jeroen van Koningsbrugge aside), because I skip from the ‘finally weekend’ column via Eva Hoeke past Cécile and Arno (who I must say I found much more enjoyable as a duo than as a solo act, so please guys, revive that column) and by the second caffè latte, I sit down for the big interview.
So, Hanna Bervoets. And that was a good decision for several reasons. For one, I now know that she has two guinea pigs that have an Instagram account and that they can also do tricks. But that wasn't the essence, of course. For me, it navigated between her chronic illness and the acceptance of it and the non-sexy aspect of a chronic disease. Kluun once mentioned in an interview that his surroundings had a hard time dealing with the interlude that clung to the illness of his wife and her death. People want healing, and if that doesn't happen, then death. But that vague gray area, what do you do with it? With a chronic illness, it's the same, and that immediately makes it difficult material for a novel. Because the classic beginning-middle-end pattern is missing. Anyway. Hanna broke the silence about her illness and also took on the task of writing a, undoubtedly beautiful, novel about it.
The conversation was about being ill, but also about grasping and stripping down good days. In work and in love. ‘I had affairs with different girls mixed together.’ This made the interviewer feel free to ask Hanna about her homosexuality. Because according to friends, she had never had a coming out and did it ‘a bit sneakily’. And then came the words I had been chewing on for two days. ‘I find coming out a difficult term because it is so self-fulfilling. With that word, you tell a homosexual person: you have a secret. It is the outside world that places the closet around you.’
The reason she mentions it now? Because it would have helped her a lot as a fifteen-year-old girl to have had a role model. That's why.
I found that so true. Have you ever seen a heterosexual person who, at seventeen, gathers their family around the dinner table, falls into a solemn silence, and then says: ‘I have to tell you something, I am heterosexual.’ Well? It's about whether someone finds happiness in love. And whether that someone is of the same or the opposite sex, you can see that.
Mindful of her lesson, I said nothing about her being gay to my beloved when I closed the magazine. There was something else I wanted to share: ‘Did you know that about Hanna Bervoets?’ He: ‘Well, what?’ I: ‘That she is chronically ill?’ That was the core of her story for me. And this message, I will carry with me forever.
