Jane Lynch’s years of struggle

Jane Lynch spent decades in denial, said Hadley Freeman in the London Guardian. Growing up in a middle-class family in Dolton, Ill., the actress says, she always felt “a sense of alienation.” She realized why at age 12, when friends told her they’d seen boys walking hand in hand while on vacation in Florida, a sight they found disgusting. “That’s what I have,” she remembers thinking. “I’m the girl version of that.” Her epiphany triggered years of self-loathing and alcohol abuse. At school, she battled with her best friend, who was gay. “I pushed him away for what I was afraid of in me.” Even after coming out, she would lash out at anyone who tried to love her. When a woman Lynch met in her early 20s “committed the cardinal sin of liking me, it made me want to punish her.”

At 31, Lynch turned her life around. She quit drinking, and came out to her family the next year. “They were like, ‘Well, we knew there was something. We’re glad to know what it is, now let’s move on.’” Two years ago, she met her wife, psychologist Lara Embry, whose calm nature counteracts her own natural anxiety. “Our differences really brought us together.”

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