long time coming

From Celebrity Fix:

In the biggest non-shocker since the enormous Christina Aguilera confirmed her pregnancy - Hollywood legend Jodie Foster has come out of the closet!

The star has been criticized for not opening up about her long-term lesbian relationship, despite being photographed countless times with partner and co-mother of their children Cydney Bernard. Jodie instead preferred to keep her private life just that - private.

But at the 'Power 100' event in the US on Tuesday, Jodie was presented with a leadership award by the Hollywood Reporter and chose to publicly thank Cydney for her support.

As part of her acceptance speech, Jodie thanked “my beautiful Cydney who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss.”

Nobody should feel obligated to talk their private life out in public, but I'd glad that it indicates she's comfortable with her own reality. I was thinking recently about sexual orientation and how it sometimes prompts people to live double lives. I've been reading about Kenny Everett, who was married for more than a decade before he even acknowledged that he fancied guys. Even after coming out he suffered bouts of depression related to his inability to accept his homosexuality.

Beyond the idea of coming out, I think we all struggle sometimes with accepting ourselves and being unafraid to reveal our real selves to the rest of the world. It reminds me of a passage in The Golden Compass where Lyra is bemoaning the fact that her daemon (soul) will not always be able to take different shapes. (As people in her world become adults their daemon settles into a form and keeps it permanently.) But Lee Scoresby explains to her that the advantage of having your daemon take its final form is that you really learn what kind of person you are. He then tells her about a sailor he knew who was unhappy his whole life because his daemon took the form of a dolphin (meaning basically that he could no longer go ashore) and he could never accept that this was who he was.

Strange really, that one of the hardest things in life can be being yourself. In theory nothing should be easier, but in practice...