Category: My Story

Possibly the Droids– Er the Post You Have Been Looking For

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

I had planned to include a disclaimer here, that this is going to be a long post and to be prepared…  But when aren’t they long?  So–  Yeah.

I’ve written here, a lot, I think, about my family dynamic and how much I feared coming out to my mother and sister particularly.  Lots of people have expressed, rightly so, that coming out to my family would be a big relief.  A number of you have also expressed that you can’t imagine a mother not loving her son no matter what.  While I wanted to believe that, I have had multiple opportunities over my lifetime to be clearly informed that “unconditional love and acceptance is too much to ask for.”  I’ve lived a lifetime of being afraid to tell my mother I was gay, because I knew she would not be OK with it, and the possibility that she might turn her back on me was, at least in my estimation, very real.

It wasn’t until very recently that I was able to come to grips with the idea that I could live without my family if I had to, but I couldn’t continue to live with the burden of having to keep a significant fact of my life a secret.  I could not continue to censor myself and actively work to prevent certain things from being revealed to members of my family.  It was only after coming to this realization that I was able to write and send the e-mail I spoke of here.

My sister’s response was about what I expected:

Ok, I wish I could say I am shocked, but I can’t. I have suspected as much for some time now. I just haven’t wanted to ask.

You already how I feel about the subject, so I don’t need to tell you. My attitude is one of hate the sin, love the sinner. So while I see your choice (and yes I do see it as a choice) as a sin, I still love you. I will continue to do so regardless. I will still talk to you, harass you, pray for you, and love you. I wish I thought you would get as much from mom, but it will surprise me if you do. At best I think you will get a big lecture.

As far as guardianship is concerned, we are still undecided. Since we don’t currently have much to send with them, there is temptation to choose someone who we know would have the means to take care of them. But there is also something to be said for the love of family. At any rate, this revelation is merely confirmation of my suspicions, so I will add it to the pile of considerations.

So, I don’t know what you were expecting my reaction to be, but there you have it. No I don’t approve, no I don’t agree, but no I don’t hate you. We can agree to disagree and I will just pray that if I am not wrong God will convince you that I am right so that we see each other in heaven.

Not an ideal response, but about what I would have expected from her.  My mother took longer.  When I first sent the e-mail I dreaded her reaction, or rather how she’d convey it.  I didn’t want her to call me, or try to initiate an instant message conversation with me, just to start preaching at me.  But then there was no acknowledgement whatsoever for seven whole days.  I went from dreading any direct interaction with her to being somewhat angry that she hadn’t acknowledged me at all.  Would it have been so hard to send a simple e-mail that says, “I’ve received your e-mail.  I’m not ready to talk about it, but yes I still love you.” or “I don’t love you anymore.” whichever.

Finally seven days after she received my coming out letter, she sent me this reply:

Dear Kevin –

Thank you for being honest with me.

If you think this takes me by surprise, you’re wrong.  God talks to me about my children.  I’ve been expecting this for a while now.

If you think it means I’ll stop loving you, you’re wrong.  You’re my son, and I love you.  Nothing will ever change that.

If, however, you think that means I will give you an “oh-honey-that’s-ok” pat on the head and release you with my blessing to pursue a lifestyle that is degrading and dangerous for you and dishonoring to the God we serve, you’re very wrong about that.

If you think you will ever find lasting peace and fulfillment in that lifestyle, you could not possibly be more wrong about anything.

You are not a homosexual.  You’re wrong about that, too.  What you are is deceived.  It was as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise.  You distanced yourself from the people and the things and the teaching of the Word of God and planted yourself smack in the middle of a hotbed of satanic deceit.  You made yourself a sitting duck, and now you’ve been picked off and turned into yet another mounted head on the devil’s trophy room wall.  He loves to pervert the image of God in human beings, and it gives him particular pleasure to do it in someone who has been marked since before conception for the covenant blessings of God.  He thinks he’s won a big victory, here.  He is very, very wrong about that.  This is not nearly over.  He doesn’t get to hold my children captive.

Fortunately for you, being right with God does not depend on anything you do or don’t do.  Being right with God depends on the finished work of Jesus Christ, who suffered and bled and died a horrible death to redeem you from sin and all of its side effects, and who gives that redemption freely to anyone who will receive it – which you did.  I remember it well.  You were four, maybe five years old, and I will never forget the look of pure-hearted joy and excitement on your face as you ran down the hallway toward me from that children’s meeting.  “Mommy!  I asked Jesus into my heart!” The price He paid has made you right with God.  So, no, you won’t go to hell, although it is a shabby and wasteful thing, indeed, to relegate Him merely to the position of Eternal Fire Escape.  You will never experience the blessing and fulfillment He means for you to have in this world, as long as you live a life that disregards His truth and disrespects His holiness.  But yes, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ has made you “right with God” as far as your eternal destiny is concerned.

So, here’s how this is going to go down.  I’m not going to preach to you – at least not with any regularity – because your born-again spirit already knows the truth, even as you seek to override it.  And you’re not going to flaunt this in my face.  I’ll have nothing to do with anybody or anything that places Kevin Riggs and homosexuality in the same category; and I will not have my son, whom I love, dishonoring my God, Whom I worship and adore, in my hearing, in my presence, or in my line of sight.  Quite simply, I cannot bear to watch that going on.  You don’t get to argue your case with me or try to justify yourself to me.  You just leave me out of it.  This is not negotiable.  My bond with God my Father, with my precious Savior, with His sweet Holy Spirit, and with His holy, living, unchangeable, life-giving Word – these are not simply things I believe.  They are the very essence of my being.  They are not going to change, and you don’t get to mess with them.  You certainly have the ability to break my heart, but there’s nothing you can say or do that will change it.

We’ll go on as we have since you left here.  You can ignore me and distance yourself from me, as you have already done, only more so.  Or we can interact without reference to this mess.

And, finally:  Yes, I am angry, but not at you.

I love you very much.

Again, I was not surprised by much of her reaction but the more I thought about it the more I realized how much it doesn’t say.  Lots of words, but not much meaning.

And then I thought about it even more, and I became a bit angry.  She contradicts herself, “thanks for being honest with me, now don’t do it anymore” and “I’ll have nothing to do with anyone or anything that puts Kevin Riggs and homosexuality in the same category”, except, I’m the one doing it.

I didn’t want to react hastily.  I was unsure how to formulate my thoughts and feelings and I wanted to be careful.  I sat with her letter for nearly two weeks and finally I sent her this:

I’ve been trying to figure out how best to answer your letter.  I have to admit to being more than a little surprised by what you’ve had to say, which I did not expect.

I’m also somewhat confused by your response and the contradictions that lay within.  You start by thanking me for being honest with you and then you end the letter by essentially telling me not to be honest with you anymore.  You want to pretend, and for me to pretend, that I didn’t tell you I’m gay, that you don’t know it after all.  I have to tell you, I’ve lived that way for many years and I won’t do it anymore.  That’s why I told you in the first place; because being honest with you is important to me.

Interestingly, we are in agreement about something.  I am a child of God, He loves me and I am going to heaven when I die.  Honestly, that was the one thing that was hardest for me to accept; the idea that you would look at me and believe I was going to Hell.  That was the part it took me so long to come to terms with.  I knew that not to be true, but I was certain you would see it differently and I had to come to a place of being able to disagree with you openly before I could share the truth with you.

I’m not sure what “flaunt[ing] this in [your] face” would look like to you, but I never had any intention of flaunting it in your face.  The fact is we don’t talk about relationships in our family.  There’s no reason why that would change now.  But having our own relationship means being able to be truthful with each other, not actively working to protect parts of ourselves, and that is all I wanted to accomplish by telling you the truth.

That does not mean I’m willing to accept things going on as they have, worrying at every turn how you will react to things if they were to come to your attention.  I don’t expect you to be proud of, or even happy about, everything I say or do, but I think it’s better to know the truth and not like it all, then to only know the pieces that you find acceptable, therefore not really knowing me at all.

I appreciate that you don’t intend to “preach to me”.  At the end of the day, I know what I believe and it’s not what you believe.  I don’t expect to convince you that I’m right and I would expect the same courtesy from you.  We disagree.  It happens.  We have to accept that and move on.  I know what you believe, so there’s no sense in you telling me again and again.  By the same token, I know I’m not going to convince you.  I had no intention of even trying.  I guess that would be my line in the sand, just as it is yours.

A lot of what you had to say came as no surprise to me, but there are two things from your letter about which I’m not happy.  The first is the healthy dose of guilt you tried to heap on me and the second is the untenable ultimatum you set, which places me in the position of being the jerk, no matter what I choose.

“You can ignore me and distance yourself from me, as you have already done, only more so,” you said.  It takes a lot of nerve to make a statement like that when you consider your own relationship with your mother and the relationship between all of our family members.  None of us talk frequently.  None of us interact on a regular basis, and in fact, I have interacted with you with more frequency than anyone else in the family.  And let us not forget who it was, that dropped everything and spent two weeks taking care of you after your heart attack and surgery, never once complaining, expecting anything in return, or even doubting the decision to go.  Don’t forget who helped you with your computer problems, or who came to you with the opportunity to purchase a new television for a good price.  Let’s not forget all the times I’ve been here when you’ve needed someone.  Maybe more than I should have.  How dare you suggest that I have ignored you for the last fourteen years when that has been patently untrue?

Perhaps there has been “distance” between us, but that is because I have been protecting this part of my life from you for quite some time.  Can you not see that as the reason for my telling you the truth now?

I do not appreciate the guilt trip and I do not accept the guilt.

As for your ultimatum, you left me with three choices:

1.        Never mention this again.  Never post anything on Facebook that could even potentially be construed as being a reference to my sexuality.  Never tell you about friends or outings or any kind of activity that gives you insight into my life if it also alludes to my sexuality.  Perhaps that works for you, but it’s not fair to either one of us, really, and it is unacceptable to me.

2.       I actively choose to cut you out of my life.  Never acknowledging you.  Never giving you the chance to acknowledge me.  Never giving you any opportunity to know me at all.  In essence being cast in the role of the ungrateful son who “turned his back on his hardworking single mother who sacrificed everything for him.”  It might make you feel better to see it that way, but it wouldn’t be the truth.

3.       My last option is to disregard your letter and continue to be honest with you.  To “flaunt it in [your] face” as it were, thus being the jerk for being so “confrontational and flagrantly offensive” when all I really want is to be real and open.

Clearly, this doesn’t leave me with any good options.

There’s something I don’t understand.  You said, “I’ll have nothing to do with anybody or anything that places Kevin Riggs and homosexuality in the same category…”, only this was in response to me, Kevin Riggs, telling you that I am gay.  Therefore, I am putting the two in the same category.  Will you have nothing to do with me?  I don’t believe that’s really what you want, but correct me if I’m wrong.

It’s not difficult to take that thought a bit further.  Your statement suggests that in the unlikely event I actually pull myself out of my dysfunction and insecurity enough to actually meet someone and fall in love and want to share the rest of my life with, you don’t want to know anything about it.  You don’t want him in your life.  So, you propose that I should pretend to be single forever as far as you’re concerned and not bring a significant other into your life.  Setting aside that you don’t agree with my choices, do you really think that’s a fair and reasonable thing to ask?  Do you suppose Erin would comply with that if you told her never to mention David or bring him around your house?  Do you really think if you forced Erin to choose between you and David, she would choose you?  I don’t.

So, you told me how it’s going to go down; now let me tell you.  As I said in my previous e-mail, I’m telling you that I’m gay, because I love you and I want you to know me.  I’m not going to pretend it isn’t true.  I’m not going to pretend I didn’t tell you and I’m not going to censor myself for you.  I’m also not going to try and convince you, or push you to change your ways.  And I’m not going to be belittled and condemned for something I know to be right.  I don’t know what the future holds or what opportunities will present themselves.  I’m sure there will be times when you will be reminded that I’m gay.  How you’re going to handle that is your choice.

I’m not going to be forced into having to choose to turn my back on you.  If that’s what you want, you’re going to have to be the one to do it.  I hope you won’t, but I’m prepared if you do.

I  love you.

I certainly didn’t want to initiate another back and forth with her.  I didn’t want to be insulting or instigate anger with her, but I wasn’t going to roll over either.  I was no longer willing to be the dutiful son and just play nice.  I was determined to establish my own boundaries.  But I had no way of knowing how she would react either.

It took her another week, and as the time passed, I really began to anticipate another less than concise but nonetheless preachy response.

Instead, I got this:

I love you very much.  As I used to tell you when you were growing up, you’re my favorite Kevin in the whole wide world.

Ironically, I have no memory whatsoever, of her having ever said that.  I’ll take her word for it.

I realize now though, that’s the only response that she’s going to send.  I’m choosing to interpret it, and in fact, really believe that it means she’s going to back off.  Certainly she’s displeased.  Certainly she wishes I wasn’t gay and that I would never ever mention it to her or say anything that even sort of brings it to light, but I think, after reading my letter and seeing where I stand, she’s decided to keep her feelings and opinions to herself.

I can’t ask for much more than that.

The Hardest (And Most Important) Thing I’ve Ever Done

~ riggledo ~ 6 Comments

Have you seen this?

Karin and I talked about it the other day.  She said it brought a tear to her eye.

I said, “hmmmm.”

“Didn’t do anything to you?” she asked.

It didn’t.  As we know, I’m not quick to emotional reactions to things.

But I admit, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  And I watched it again, that day.

And again the next day.  And several times since then.  I don’t really know how to explain how the video affected me, but it did affect me.

On Sunday, I sent the following e-mail to my sister:

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to you to know that when I think about our family, you are the person who means the most to me (well, you and your kids.)  You are the ones that I care the most about.  And you are the ones that I would most hate to lose.

Because of this, I have felt for some time that if I was ever going to share what I am about to share, you would be the one I needed to tell first.

I hope that what I’m going to tell you won’t change things (though I imagine it will), but for the last two years, ever since I asked you if you and David had a guardianship decision in place for your children, I have felt like it was only right for you to know this…

In the next few days I’m going to send the following e-mail to mom.  For the most part, though, I wanted to say all the same things to you… just… first.  Here goes…

There is something I have wanted to tell you for a long time, but I’ve been too afraid of how you would react.

It has seemed like it’s been more important not to upset or offend you, than it has been to be honest with you.  But now, somehow that seems wrong; it doesn’t seem fair to you and it is certainly not fair to me.

I want you to know that I love you very much, and it is because I love you that it has been so hard for me to tell you that I am gay.

I’m not going to drag this out.  I know you don’t approve.  I know you think it’s wrong and all I can say to that is that I did a lot of soul-searching, research and praying in the process of coming to terms with this for myself and I did not arrive at this conclusion easily or take it lightly.  I believe that I am right with God.  I do not believe that to be gay is a sin, an “abomination”, or that he will condemn me for it.  While I know you strongly believe that your perspective is the right one, I strongly believe that mine is and I’ve finally reached a point where I’m ready to accept that we will disagree on that.

I know that you are disappointed.  You’re hurt and you’re probably angry.  I’m sorry for that.  I know that this is something that you’re going to need some time to get used to.  I wish this were easier for both of us.  I only hope that you can still love me and show me that love, in spite of this disappointment.  That will be for you to decide, though.

For the record, I still want to be your children’s designated guardian, but I realize I’ve just made it a much tougher decision…

I love you.

~~~~~

I sent the e-mail to my sister around 6:00 yesterday evening hoping she would e-mail a response.  I put the computer down and went about doing some household chores.  About 30 minutes later, she called me, but I didn’t answer the phone.

I hoped she would send a response via e-mail since I didn’t answer the phone, but she did not.

Around 10:30 last night, when it was clear I would get no response from my sister that night and before I could change my mind and wimp out, I sent the e-mail to my mother.  I knew she wouldn’t see it before this morning and while I hoped she, too, would e-mail a response and not telephone me, as of now, I’ve not heard from her at all.  While I realized it’s possible she simply hasn’t seen the e-mail, the much more likely answer (and what I should have anticipated to start with) is that she won’t acknowledge it for a couple of days while she “mulls over” the “correct response.”

Erin called me again this morning, first my cell phone, then my work number.  She finally left a message on my work phone in which she said she wasnt’s sure she still had right numbers for me since she hadn’t reached me, that she had received my e-mail and that she wanted to “visit” with me so I should give her a call when I had time.

I sent her a text message and said, “Call me a wimp, but for the moment, I would rather have you say what you have to say in writing.  I don’t regret telling you, but you can’t begin to imagine how difficult this is for me.”

Her response was, “So does that mean you are ignoring my calls?”  😎

“Some of them.  Others I wasn’t around for,” I said.

To which she replied, “Wimp!   OK, I’ll e-mail you as soon as I can.”

~~~~~

The tone of her texts suggests playfulness (trust me, this is her being playful), but her message on voice mail was less than comforting.  She didn’t say anything about loving me, or not being particularly surprised, or anything remotely encouraging or supportive.

I have to believe that this is not a surprise to either of them, though maybe not what they wanted to hear.  But I also know that, whether they accept it or not, this was the right thing to do.  I’m pretty wrecked over the whole thing right now, but I know that once the initial storm blows over, I’ll feel much better for having done it…

Blow storm, blow!

A Thousand Words

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

I have never been a fan of paintings.  I’m not sure why.  My Paternal Grandmother was a painter and most of my family, including my mother (who has been divorced from my father for 33 years) has at least one of my Grandmother’s paintings in their home.  I do not.  I never cared and I never felt like sentimentality was a reason to possess or hang something that I don’t like.

I love photographs.  I desperately want to purchase a good 35mm digital camera and take a photography class.  I really enjoy a well thought out, unique photograph of a beautiful, or even just personally meaningful, vista.  I have photographs all around my house, mostly images of San Francisco.  I have no photographs of people… at all.  I’ve never had an interest in hanging pictures of people in my house.

I have a few pictures of my nieces and nephew pinned to a bulletin board in my office, but that’s it.  I’m not sure why there’s a difference, but there is.

When I take photographs, I almost never take pictures of people.  Some of my favorite photography subjects have been the beach, famous (and not so famous) San Francisco architecture, Sculpture, the fountains in Lake Bellagio (I still need to get that roll of film developed) and of course, Mischa.

I don’t take pictures of people.  Not strangers, not family, nobody.  And I sure don’t display them.  I’ve never understood why people do.

I’m sure this mentality lead to my feelings expressed in my recent blog posts, but what led to these feelings?  I remembered something at the end of my session with Deb; something I didn’t actually forget, just hadn’t thought about in a very long time.

When I was a kid, my father and step-monster used to take my Brother and Sister and me to get a portrait taken every year.  Every. Year.  Sometimes more than once.  Back in the day there was a portrait studio in Cincinnati, maybe still is, called Olan Mills.  Olan Mills offered free sessions to shoot your portraits and they made their money on the prints (at least that’s how I remember it.)

These experiences were always painful, drawn out and horrible.  They always resulted in tears.  I hated having my picture taken (some things never change) and I never wanted to do it.  If, however, I was going to have to have my picture taken, I wanted to at least be able to be comfortable doing it.  I wanted to wear clothes that I liked and I felt like I looked good in.  My father and step-monster had different opinions.

“Don’t you want the picture to look nice?” the step-monster would ask.  She always has a demeaning and over-bearing tone, even if/when she doesn’t mean to.  She would stand over and lean toward me and look at me with eyes that were probably uncomprehending, but looked angry to my seven-year-old self.

“I think I do look nice,” I would answer, meekly.  I meant what I said, but already knew I was going to lose this so-called battle.

“But don’t you want to look dressed up?” she would say, thinking this would clarify things.

“No!” I answered angrily.  I didn’t want to look “dressed up”.  I wasn’t comfortable “dressed up”.  And I didn’t have any “dressed up” clothes at my father’s house.

My father’s house was always dirty, and drafty and messy.  My mother says I always came home from my father’s house with a cold and with some sort of wound; a splinter or a cut or bruise.  The clothes I wore would be stained and ruined with motor oil or grease from a wood shop tool that wasn’t properly shielded.  So she stopped sending clothes with me, telling him instead to buy me clothes to have at his house.  So I had garage sale finds and TJ Maxx Bargain Bin finds that the Step-Monster bought for me, without my presence or input.  And she didn’t buy “dressed up” clothes because what would I need them for?

Their idea of “dressed up” was for me to wear hand me downs from my older brother, or worse, from one of the Step-Monster’s children who were eons older than I was.  A button-down collared, Oxford cloth shirt with the shoulder seams hanging low and a large gap in the collar, and a tie, with a double windsor from my father’s collection; that was their idea of dressed up.  And that was her idea of what our portrait should be.

I wanted to wear my corduroys and a modern t-shirt that I believed was stylish and trendy and would make me look better that I did on my own.  It wasn’t “dressed up” but that didn’t mean I didn’t look good.

Some parents have a bad habit of attempting to reason with a child, using logic that makes sense to them, but perhaps not to a seven year old, and when that attempt fails then resort to yelling and issuing commands.  And that is where we always found ourselves.

“Kevin, we don’t have time for this, go change your clothes,” my father would intone, loudly.

There was no point in arguing further and I would turn away, slowly, sullenly and drag my toes as I slunk off to put on the shirt and tie and pants that had been selected for me to wear.

And I would sob.

I didn’t want to have my picture taken.  I was ugly and I didn’t want to have to see it, or have other people see it for eternity.  I didn’t need a reminder of this life I was living and I didn’t want to take the fucking picture.

I didn’t want to take the picture, and I didn’t want to be forced to do something I didn’t want to do.  I didn’t want to have the power and the choice stripped away from me, compelled to violate my own free will.

And let’s face it.  I was seven.  I believed that if I made it a miserable enough experience, they would give in and not make us do it.  At the very least they would decide it wasn’t worth the trouble and never do it again…  Right?  Right?  Hello?  Is this thing on?

But don’t get me wrong.  My tears were real.  My anguish and desperation were real.  I would sob from the moment I shuffled off to dress as my master had commanded, until the moment we got into the studio and…  Well, I have to hand it to photographers who take those kinds of pictures.  Despite my genuine suffering and despair, they always managed to get me to smile and laugh and dare I say it, look happy.  The pictures would actually turn out as well as can be expected for a self-perceived to be ugly, genuinely UNphotogenic seven-year-old boy.

And my father and step-monster?

They never bought a single portrait.  Ever.

Just the way I am

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

Yesterday in therapy, I talked to Deb about the “Amber Alert” from last week.  I was surprised, as I told her the story, to hear the anger in my voice.  I really didn’t realize I was “angry” about the whole thing.  This is just Amber.  This is how she is.  And over the years, we have just grown apart because of it.

This time last year, my mother asked me if  I had gotten Amber’s Christmas card, a photo of her children.  I told  her I had not and she said she would forward me the one she got.  I told her it wasn’t necessary for her to do that.

“Aren’t you guys friends anymore?” my mother asked, astonished.

“Not really,” I answered her honestly.  “I mean, nothing really happened to end our friendship, we’ve just, sort of, disconnected.  We don’t really have anything in common anymore and we haven’t talked in ages.”  I told her the card didn’t mean anything to me and I didn’t have a burning desire to see the picture of the kids.  My mother seemed to find this hurtful in some way, using her “jewish mother” tone of voice to say, “Ooook.  I’ll just keep it then.  I like other people’s kids.”

It seems… maybe… that I might… have seemed a little hostile when talking about this card… maybe.  Deb asked me what it was about the card that bothered me.  At first I really didn’t know what she meant.  I didn’t realized that I was conveying serious displeasure about the subject.  I gave her a few answers:

“What’s the point?”

“It’s a waste.”

“Why do I want pictures of other people’s kids?”

None of these answers seemed to satisfy Deb.  “I think there’s more,” she kept saying.

I told her, I don’t understand why people send out pictures of their children as a Christmas card.  I’ve gotten them from other people as well.  People I don’t really interact with.  People who I’m no longer (or never was) close to.  People who can’t be bothered to give me the time of day for months and years at a time and then one day decide to send me a picture of their kids as a Christmas card, without bothering to personalize it in any way.

“It feels like an afterthought,” I told her, “like they didn’t really care that much.  I imagine them sitting down at their dinner table with a stack of these damn picture cards, a stack of envelopes and their rolodex.  They pick up a card, they right a nice greeting to the recipient and they pop it into the envelope and they send it on it’s way.  They get to the end of their list and there’s one card left.  ‘What should I do with this one?’ they wonder aloud.  ‘Eh.  I guess I could send it to Kevin.’

“The sentiment feels disingenuos.  Like I was nothing more than an afterhought and I wasn’t any more important than a quick flip of the wrist, and off the last card goes.

“I’m not attached to these people’s children, and they couldn’t even be bothered to write a simple ‘Merry Christmas.  Wish you were here.’  What’s the point?”

The answer still didn’t seem enough.  “I keep feeling like you’re looking for me to tell you that I’m some how jealous or envious of these people having families, but I swear to you, that thought has never entered my mind… Before right now.”

That’s when the real irony of the situation hit me.  I told my sister, in October, “I need good quality, non-cell phone digital pictures of the children so I can print them out and hang them on my office wall.”

“I know,” she replied.  “I need to take their picture for the Christmas card anyway.”  The thought crossed my mind that it was a lame card.  Nobody wants a card with pictures of other peoples’ kids.  But at least it would get me a picture of my neices and nephew.  Out of all the “christmas card” picutres of other people’s kids I got this year, the one person from whom I would have liked to, my sister, didn’t even send one to me.

Deb asked me for more.  More explanation why I was so unahppy to receive the child-photo-christmas cards.  Why did it feel disingenuos to me?  The only answer I could give her is that it felt one sided, like people were foisting upon me something I didn’t care about without any interest or concern about whether I was interested; without any interest or concern about me.

“Say more,” she prompted.

“To me,” I told her, “Friendship goes two ways.  Sure, we all want to talk about ourselves.  We all want people to listen to us as we tell them about ourselves.  But friendship?, is about talking about the other person.  Friendship is about asking the other person how they are doing.  What’s new with them?  What, if anything, do they need?  Hopefully, after they have answered those questions they will turn around and ask you about you, but if they don’t, that’s when you can say, ‘OK.  Glad to hear your doing well.’ and then proceed to tell them about you.

“THAT is what I didn’t get from Amber for a very long time.  It’s all one sided!”

“Of course it is!” Deb answered.  “You made it that way.  You didn’t tell her about you.”

“She didn’t ask about me.  She didn’t express a genuine interest about me.  She didn’t really want to know about me.”

“She didn’t?” Deb asked me.  “You said she asked about your love life.”

It’s true Amber always asked the dreaded “when-are-you-going-to-get-a-girlfriend-you-need-a-girlfriend-when-are-you-going-to-get-married?” questions, but she didn’t want to know what I would have told her, had I answered those questions honestly.  She didn’t want to know that I am attracted to strong, healthy, athletic men, preferably with a nice tan and not much hair below the neck.  She didin’t want to know that the kind of relationship I was interested in, the kind of sex I wanted to have, wasn’t going to result in the creation of a baby.  She didn’t want to know that the kind of marriage I would want is not even legal in 45 US States.  So I make sarcastic, sometimes even snide remarks, (“What are you?  My Grandmother?  Would you like to pinch my cheeks and talk about my punum too?”) and she either doesn’t get the point or she pretends not to and continues to push.

“So she doesn’t know the truth and the dialoge is one sided because she feels free to express, maybe even push, her thoughts and feelings and what she believes, but you don’t do the same.  And I think we see this over and over again where you form these relationships where you feel like you have to sit back and allow the other person to force their perspectives on you and you start to feel like you can’t express yourself and be who you are around them.  And then you start to accept this as how things are.  I’m concerned that you make it OK.  That you give people permission to do this to you.  And then you feel more and more like you can’t be who you are and be open and honest with people.”

…..

WELL, DUH!

It Gets Better?

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

I’ve struggled greatly with how and whether to write this.  I’m still not entirely sure what to say.  And I’m truly, if unrealistically concerned that somehow, this will be the post that I write that will be seen by more than the 6 or 8 people who usually read my blog and that somehow my words will be misconstrued as something more than they are.

By now we all know about the number of teens who have committed suicide recently after having been torturously bullied by their classmates for being, or being perceived to be, gay.  Most of you are probably aware of the “It Gets Better” campaign and the numerous videos that have been made of people, some in a position to know, some not, telling the youth of this world that life gets better and that they have so much to look forward to and that if they’ll just stick it out until they graduate they can have the life they want, free from bullying and torment, free to live openly and proudly and freely as who or what they determine for themselves that they are.

To that I say, “Don’t bet on it!”

My story is about more than just being a gay kid.  Hell, I didn’t even know I was a gay kid!  Nevertheless, I was bullied and beaten and name-called; abused by my classmates with words I prefer not to use, even as an example.  I didn’t know why they would call me that and I wondered what they thought they saw in me that I didn’t think I saw in myself that would prompt them to be so hurtful.

But it was more.  I wasn’t just called names because they perceived me to be gay.  I was tormented for many reasons.  And when I went home after school into what was supposed to be a safe place of refuge, I was tormented for entirely different reasons in new and terrible ways.  I was raised by a single mother.  While she was at work, I was at home alone with my older siblings, a brother five years older and a sister three years older.  My brother was abusive; he once broke my nose over the use of an alarm clock… MY alarm clock, that I bought, with MY own money.  That was the worst, but he abused me often, physically and emotionally.

What my mother did was worse.  In the case of all three of her children she “disciplined” us into submission so that long before hitting our teens, or even our “tweens” to use a modern term, there was no longer a need for “discipline.”  So instead of physical abuse, I suffered emotional abuse; bullying of its own kind.  I wanted to be close to her, she told me I was “in the way”.  I wanted to talk to her, she turned up the volume on the television.  I told her I was horribly depressed, she told me I wasn’t and “never say that again.”  I told her I didn’t have any friends and I was miserable, she told me “Well that’s your problem, isn’t it?”

I was raised in the “Bible Belt” of America where there’s a church on every street corner and if you’re politics aren’t ultra-conservative, you’re a sinner who will burn in hell, or so I was led to believe.  In the Bible Belt… where Christianity, acceptance and God’s perfect love abound, right?

I’d be lying if I said I never had feelings and urges I didn’t understand.  If I said I never felt desires that I was ashamed of.  I was embarrassed by my body and just plain scared of sexuality in general, fearful that I would cross some boundary into sinfulness; more fearful that I’d discover something about myself that I couldn’t handle.

When I was 12, I spent the night at a friend’s house and while he was using the bathroom, with the door open, he asked me if I was in puberty yet.  He told me that he had a hair and then he wanted me to come see it. I didn’t want to because I would have to look at his penis to see it.

When I was 17, I was hopelessly in love with my best friend, I just didn’t know it then.  I spent the night at his house one time, and more than once during that night, I wished something would “accidentally” happen before immediately catching myself and feeling ashamed, embarrassed to look him in the eye over something he didn’t even know.

My mother told me repeatedly throughout my life that being gay was a sin, it wasn’t something that I could accept about myself.  And that belief was only reinforced every Sunday and Wednesday night at church.  And do you think that bullying and hateful speech was limited to school?  It wasn’t!  I got it at church too.  At church! Children and teenagers running around a very highly reputed, internationally respected institution yelling “F____t!” at the top of their lungs and aimed at one specific person.  Me.  Yeah, this was a safe and loving, welcoming environment.

In every circle of my life I was reminded almost daily that to be a Christian, to be acceptable in the eyes of God and man, I had to be straight.  I had to grow up and fall in love, and get married (to a woman) and have 2.5 children with a dog and a white picket fence.  I could never admit to anyone that I didn’t want any of that.

I was miserable every minute of every day.  I wanted to be out of that situation at every turn.  I went to bed every night and prayed I would wake up as someone else.  I drifted off to sleep at night begging God to let me off the hook and take me in my sleep.  I never cried; it wasn’t safe to do so. I still don’t cry.

And if I’m to be completely honest, I tried to kill myself, more than once.  I was terrified of pain, and completely unsure of where I believed my soul would go if I killed myself so, no, I didn’t try very hard.  I buried my face in my pillow and hoped I’d “accidentally” suffocate in my sleep.  I don’t suppose I ever really believed it would work and maybe on some level deep down, I didn’t want it to, but I was sincere in my attempts nonetheless.

The one thing that kept me going, the one hope, the one belief that got me out of bed everyday and kept me moving in my life was that one day life would get better.  I would move on from this place.  I would live on my own, in my own place with my own feelings and beliefs and the real world of an adult would be a better place.  I would be OK.  I believed that because I had to believe something would change.

Twelve years ago, I moved to arguably the most liberal, inclusive, welcoming, accepting place in this country.  I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since.  I have worked the last eight and a half years for a company with a sterling reputation for diversity, inclusiveness, acceptance and equality.  We rate 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Buying for Equality Guide which means we have full domestic partner benefits, nondiscrimination practices in hiring and, as a corporation, actively supports public equality.  And still “we” are not perfect.

Despite the community in which I live, this is still a nation of in-equality.  We are still a discriminating people.  Our institutions still bully.  Though things are still in a state of flux, as of this moment, I can not get married.  Even if I could, I couldn’t reap the federal financial benefits of being married.  Up until a week ago, I could serve in the armed forces if I wanted, but I couldn’t tell anybody the truth about myself while I did it.  My status as a homosexual man isn’t recognized as a protected minority even though, statistically, the proof is irrefutable, and as such I am not entitled to the protections afforded to minority populations.  You can call it what you like; I call it bullying.

Oh sure, some of the circumstances have changed, but many of them have not.  I still don’t feel safe to reveal myself to the people around me.  I still don’t have the confidence to be open and free in the world I live.  Every day there are stories in the news of discrimination in the world.

It’s not fair to say that I’m in this place because I’m gay.  And it’s not fair to say that gay teenagers today have everything in their favor except that they happen to be gay.  My story is not unique.

So when I hear these messages, telling kids “It Gets Better“, I have to ask: Does it?  Really?

I don’t have the answers.  I wish I did.  I know it’s not suicide!

I also know it’s not false hope and unreliable promises of a better tomorrow.