What follows is a guest post from a lifetime friend of mine who recently found the strength to reveal his long hidden sexual
preference to his family and friends.
It is an intensely personal story many people will benefit from reading - not only people struggling with the same issue - but also those who should reach out and show their acceptance and support for people whose only sin is being human.
Crossroad
At
our stage of life the days pass by like autumn leaves flying past the window. When most of our days are behind than ahead, we
come to hope that we did more with our lives than just take up space and
consume things. We want to know that they
had meaning. We assess how well we used
our time. We think about the events that
shaped what we’ve become. Most people get
a satisfaction from the families they began.
They can be proud of commitments to spouses and to the kids who wouldn’t
be here without them. As a single man I
have no spouse or kids, so my satisfaction must come from one other thing that
most people wish to have, which is to say integrity. I try to live a life guided by that moral
compass. Most of you would, I imagine,
say that I’ve done okay by you, which is to say that I’ve been a good brother. I hope you’d say that never I knowingly
harmed anyone. I believe in our family
and have enjoyed the times I’ve spent with one or another of you over the
years. But my moral compass tells me
that I’ve failed miserably. Miserably!
I
keep people at arms-length. I’m afraid
of everyone I meet and every encounter I have.
I’ve lived with an anxiety that rises and falls throughout the day, one that
has plagued me from my teens until now.
It shriveled my sensitivity and empathy.
It robbed me of any peace whatever and kept me from developing close,
caring relationships with anyone. It is
the reason why I scowl more than smile. I
suffer these things because I’ve been living a fiction.
One
cannot live a fiction with integrity. If
I were to die like this, my life would be an empty shell with less than no
meaning. You’d have known a fictional
character who called himself Rod, and I would have lived an entire life without
the integrity that means more to me than anything else. Confronted by this awful fact I know that I must
correct the error. However many years
remain to me, when I face death I want it to be as an honest man. So here it is: I’m gay.
I’m attracted toward members of my sex with the same strength of feeling
that you have for the opposite sex. I’m
indifferent to the opposite sex the way you are indifferent to members of your
own. No one ‘did’ anything to make me
gay. I wasn’t abused as a child. I did not ‘catch’ it from somebody else. It simply was.
Looking
back, I can trace my feelings to when I was a kid in early grade school. Of course, I did not know then what the
feelings meant or that they weren’t the same as those of any other kid. I didn’t pay much attention to them until I
was an adolescent in high school, when it gradually became clear how different my
feelings were. Even then I didn’t know
that there was such a thing as homosexuality until I was almost out of high
school. I still remember the time and
place when I put all the pieces together and I realized to my dismay that I was
gay. I say ‘dismay’, because I knew that
anyone known to be gay was treated like a leper. A wall goes up that separates gay people from
the sympathy that people usually extend to each another.
It
was a nightmare that I could not wake up from.
I hated being gay. Mainly, I
hated it because everybody else did. Most
people I knew were revolted by the idea of anyone being attracted to members of
their own sex. All of their references to
gays were infused with a note of disgust that came through in their voices, their
jokes, their facial expressions and their gestures. ‘Queer’, ‘faggot’, ‘queen’, and ‘pervert’ were
never far from their lips. It brought
out their dark side. Given half a
chance, guys would beat the hell out of anyone they thought was gay.
I
bought into the idea that to be gay was to be a pervert. There was an unspoken assumption that people
who are gay somehow brought it on themselves through their own wickedness. Why should such people merit respect or
consideration? Why shouldn’t they be
objects of righteous contempt and get slapped around for their loathsome
behavior?
I
never imagined I was wicked, but I did think that there was something wrong
with me. All I wanted was to be like
everybody else. I needed outside help, but
there was none. I was completely by
myself, alone, with no one to help me figure out what was the matter with
me. While still in college I saw a
psychiatrist for nearly two years. I
tried dating a number of women during college and later while working at TACOM. None of it worked, of course. I couldn’t change my feelings of physical
attraction.
Try
to imagine why anyone in their right mind would choose to be gay. Just for a moment imagine what being hated by
nearly everyone would feel like. Ask
yourself why anybody would want to be rejected or to risk physical harm. Now imagine that the only way to escape the
hatred was by changing your sexual orientation.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that it can’t be done. Sexual orientation is not a choice. It is a fact of life.
However,
acting on homosexual impulses is a
choice. I could decide how to play the
hand I was dealt. Only two possibilities
came to mind: The first one was that I
could announce to the world that I was gay, knowing that I’d be marked for life. From that point forward, whenever people met
me or talked about me or thought about me, the first word that would come to their
minds would be GAY. For some people I’d
never be anything else. No other
description would come in a close second.
Nothing else I did or said would matter.
[You’ll see this soon enough for yourself.] To admit to being gay is to be ready to
endure an abiding ill-will, an unending rain of poison from nearly every person
who knew about it. I rejected this
possibility because I just couldn’t face the thought of all that animosity.
The
other possibility was to live as if I were ‘normal’. If I acted ‘normally’, then I’d be sheltered
by the uncertainty of family and friends.
I could avoid the poisonous rain.
And it turns out that all the people I cared about were perfectly okay
with that. As long as no one knew for
sure then I’d get the benefit of a doubt and the fiction could continue. Acting ‘normally’ meant that I couldn’t draw
undue attention to myself. I could never
let my guard down. I had to watch
everything I said. I had to laugh at the
jokes, and nod at the nasty comments, and pretend that they didn’t hurt. I couldn’t share confidences. I had to submerge feelings of physical
attraction all the time. I had to deny
myself close human contact with anyone. I
could not allow any but the feeblest of warmth or intimacy. I gave up feeling anything at all. Only by doing all this could I stay in the
shelter and avoid the thousands and thousands of poisonous little droplets.
Despite
my best efforts the fictional life hasn’t worked very well. Having bottled up my feelings in so many
ways, I suffered two nervous breakdowns and had recurring bouts of black
depression. I never had special feelings
for someone else, nor anyone for me; and at my age I don’t expect I ever
will. I’ve lived in an emotional desert
that most people would do anything to avoid.
The act didn’t fool friends who had long known without my telling them
that I am gay. None of them have ever
raised the subject because they sensed rightly that I don’t want to talk about
it. But the thing is that my friendships
lack the depth that can exist only when friends share their vulnerabilities in
trust.
I
don’t know who among the family members my real friends are. It is impossible for me to ever be at ease
with the very people who mean the most to me.
Likewise, it’s impossible for anyone else to be truly at ease with
me. My failure to be honest about my
sexuality rightly makes me the object of mistrust among everyone who suspects
I’m gay. I’ve had to endure jokes and
remarks intended to make me squirm. I
lived like a coward, without dignity, cringing in fear that one day I’d be
exposed. So I gained very little by the
fiction. My silence has affected you as
well, though you probably haven’t noticed it.
It allowed you to inflict harm every time you show contempt for gay
people. It allowed you to nurture prejudices
that my honest life might have softened.
You
may find what I’ve said hard to accept. Some
of you have long been told that people choose to be gay. You may think it self-evident that
homosexuality is a deliberate rebellion against God. Maybe you think that gays are possessed by
the devil. Or maybe the gays you’ve seen
on TV and at the movies makes wickedness the only explanation that fits. I’m talking about the guys dressed up like
chorus girls, the fairies, and the flamboyant marchers in gay pride
parades. Surely, you may think, they choose
to live as they do. I can’t answer for
them or explain them to you because I don’t know much more about them than you
do. I don’t know what motivates
them. I don’t know anyone who behaves as
they do. However, I do know what it is like to have an entire life instantly judged on
the strength of a single word. While I
don’t understand their effeminate ways, I can imagine that the crap they endure
must dwarf anything that I will ever experience.
You,
on the other hand, have a lifetime of memories that include me. If you believe that being gay is evil, then
you’ve been in the company of an evil person every time we’ve been together. I was gay when you saw me sitting on our
parents’ living room floor in front of the old black and white TV. I was gay when we sat down in the basement to
every breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was
gay when you saw me get confirmed. I was
gay in high school. I was gay every
Christmas and Easter. I was gay at every
family reunion, wedding, funeral, camping trip and card game, and at every
celebration of joy and sorrow. Do your
memories of me support the idea that being gay the same thing as being evil? That’s what all this comes down to. How you answer the question will determine
what you do next. You can continue to
believe that anyone who is gay is also wicked, or you can see from a brother’s
example that maybe they are not.
Maybe
you’re wondering why I waited until now to tell you all this. You might better ask why I waited so
long. There were, over the years, who-knows-how-many
times when I could have told you, only to chicken out at the last minute. It’s always been easier to let things
slide. Well the act is over. I will live the rest of my life with the
consequences, some of which I regret to say will also be yours.
What
now? I haven’t a clue. I dread this ordeal. The thought of it is the main reason I
haven’t said anything before now. I
expect it will be a humiliating experience, as in fact it already is. Writing this is painful. Dredging up these feelings is painful. Pushing the ‘Send’ button. Wondering how you will react. You’ll have a share of pain too, and it may last
a long time. Some of you will feel anger
and shame that someone in the family is gay.
Your feelings might harden into resentment and animosity. The common knowledge that I am gay could
cause a rift in the family. You may all
shun me.
I
think, though, that being honest is worth the risk. I have to believe that you prefer an uncomfortable
truth to agreeable lie. All I want is
for things to continue as before, except that now you’ll have a real brother
instead of a fictional character. We’ll
see if that is possible. What will
happen will happen, no matter what I want or what you wish you didn’t
know. Understand that I’m not
apologizing for what I am and cannot change but for acting like something that
I am not. To those of you who can’t accept
what I’ve just told you, I guess this is goodbye. You have to do what you believe to be right. I can hope that circumstances will change.
What
will I do now? Again, I haven’t a clue,
except to say that however I live my life from this point forward will be my
business, just as you rightly felt all these years that your business was
entirely yours. I’ve already exposed
more vulnerability to you than any of you ever have or ever will to me. There’s no more that I feel obligated to
share.
We’re
at a crossroads here. You may feel
deeply hurt. You may feel a loss, as if
someone died. That is how it feels to
me. Some of you may find it hard to
contain your feelings and want to respond immediately, which would be a mistake. It took me years of reflection and several
months to write the four pages that you spent only 20 minutes to read. I ask that you wait a week before contacting
me. There’s a lot to think about. Take the time to talk to each other, to your
spouses and your families. Sort this out
among yourselves before saying something that cannot be taken back.
I’m
deeply sorry for whatever pain this may cause you, but there is really no
alternative. It is a test of the love we
say we have for one another. Every test
in life is always unwelcome, but it is only during such times that we find out
what our bonds are really made of.
Please -- no prayers for a miraculous recovery. Pray instead for the wisdom to get through
this. Pray for the strength of the
family.
