It wasn’t my choice.
Content Warning: Childhood trauma, homophobia, sexual abuse, violence, strong language, use of gay slurs, and isolation.
I am 39 years old.
I have not, in my adult life, met a single other person who has shared my experience.
Let that sink in. In twenty-plus years, I have not encountered a single other human being who admits to having had experiences like mine. Statistically, they must be out there, lots of them…but they’re hiding. Just like me, I suppose.
I am invisible.
*****
On the outside, I look awfully normal. Painfully so, in fact. I’m tall, white, female, married to a guy, and I have cute kids. Everybody assumes we’re Christian. I’m a professional, with a degree, in a town where being white, straight, married, and professional seems to automatically make you part of an in-group. A crappy, racist, catty, homophobic in-group.
It makes me crazy.
People talk to me, share their opinions, confident that I agree with them. Because I look like them. Because they know I’m straight. Because I can really never tell them otherwise.
*****
My parents divorced in 1982.
In 1983, my mom moved in with her girlfriend. In a little city in a Western Canadian province, where a gay man had been beaten to death on the street not too long before, just for being gay.
I didn’t know what a lesbian was. I was too young — I really didn’t care. At that age, whatever your family is, is what you think is normal. It was years before I clued in that not everybody had a lot of moms, but only one dad.
*****
Our dentist was gay. Our mechanic was a lesbian, and so was our doctor. Our entire contact with the outside world was pretty orchestrated, and mostly with other gay people. Looking back, I think it was because kids are terrible liars.
You see, it was 1983.
The Equality Rights section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms hadn’t come into law yet. That didn’t happen until 1985. And anyway, sexual orientation wasn’t named as a specific protected group, and it wasn’t even challenged at the Supreme Court until the mid-’90's.
Great history lesson…so what?
Well, mom could have lost her job for being a dyke, for starters. Or her kids.
*****
Remember, kids are terrible liars. And I was typical, when I was seven, or eight, maybe even nine. At some point, a kid in my class called another kid a fag. I told him (in my outside voice, unfortunately) that there was nothing wrong with fags, and my mom was one. I was overheard by a concerned adult. An adult who was so concerned that he called Social Services to investigate. My whole world could very easily have come crashing down that week.
Luckily, the worker was sympathetic.
And Mom was savvy.
You see, Mom wasn’t out. She could have lost her job for that. Or her kids. Her partner, my step-mom, had her own room.
How quaint.
All of her clothing, her jewelry, her toiletries, her personal items…didn’t live where she slept. It was an elaborate charade, but one that made it possible to ‘pass’. You know…a struggling single mom and a divorcee, teaming up to cover the rent. As far as the Social Services worker went, it might have been wink-wink-nudge-nudge, but it was enough to keep us from being apprehended. For the time being.
Or who knows, maybe the worker was oblivious. People much closer to my Moms were certainly blind. My grandma, for instance, who quit attending her church when they allowed gay pastors, didn’t blink when Mom and her partner shared a bed when they went to visit…for decades. Some of my high school friends, who still haven’t figured it out, despite having hung out at my house for years. Our neighbors on the block, one of whom ‘hated fags’, but helped us out with yard work with some regularity.
*****
We were coached. We knew that we had to keep the secret. We knew we could be taken away by Social Services, by the Police.
But I mean, people knew. That was almost worse.
*****
We weren’t exactly on display, but I was hyper-aware that I was being examined. People who knew about my Moms were keeping an eye on my sister and I, searching for evidence that out parents’ lifestyle was screwing us up.
We were definitely screwed up, but it wasn’t because our parents were gay. It was because society was screwed up towards gay people, and my Dad was screwed up towards gay people, and because we were getting picked on in school, and ostracized, and isolated, and occasionally beat up. But we couldn’t say any of that to anybody, least of all our Moms. We knew it would break their hearts to know they were bringing that misery down on us, and besides, the cat was already out of the bag. It wasn’t like we could make our family un-gay.
Though, really, sometimes I wished it. At least then I could be angry, or sad, or get bad marks, or swear at a teacher, and not have it blamed on my parents’ choices of life partners. Or taken as evidence that my family was wrong. I could have had friends over to my house, or had my parents come to my grad. Both of them. Or all of them.
And when I was sexually assaulted by an older boy at school, I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. Not the teachers, not the cops. They might call Social Services, and we might not be so lucky this time. And I couldn’t let on that something was wrong, not to anybody, because there was nothing anyone could do. And besides, I had to do my very best to be not screwed up, so that I could show the world that being a kid of gay parents was just fine. Because just like every other minority, I was the representative, the ambassador, since most of the people I’ve ever talked to have never met another person who was raised by gay parents.
Not even me.
*****
It really bugs me to be so isolated, and so…un-obvious. Anonymous. Invisible. There’s not a large number of support groups on the internet for people like me. Seriously. It’s 2015, and the first five pages of a Google search turns up only one network for children of LGBTQ parents, guardians, and caregivers (COLAGE), and dozens of hits on articles from the Religious Right of children talking about how growing up in a gay family screwed them up.
Sure, it screwed me up, too. Because my step-mom had to keep her clothes in a separate bedroom. Because I could never introduce her as my mom. Because my parents could never attend events as a family, unless it was a gay event, but of course, Mom couldn’t be seen at a gay event, because she might lose her job. Or her kids.
Because I’m 39 years old, and my co-workers don’t know my mom is gay. I still haven’t figured out a graceful but appropriately evasive answer to the question of whether my mom re-married after my parents divorced.
I’m in the closet.
It wasn’t my choice.
*****
I think that’s probably what makes us so invisible, us adult children of gay families.
Mom’s retired now, and doesn’t have a job to lose. My sister and I left home twenty years ago, and nobody can take us away, anymore.
My step mom runs a business catering to elderly clientele, so she is afraid of losing their business, if they found out.
They could legally marry, even in the States (yay!) but they’re still in the closet, because society is still screwed up about gay people.
And I have to respect that. I can hate it all I want, but it’s not my place to out them.
Personally, I wish I could just have a blunt conversation with my colleagues, and say, straight up (haha), that I hate how they say ‘gay’ when they mean ‘stupid’. How I have never, ever found their fag jokes funny, and would love to smash them in the face with a chair every time they say something cruel to or about the one guy at work who is out.
I mean, I stand up to people, when I can do so without losing my temper, but they think I’m doing it because I’m like that, not because I have a personal stake, with years of anger and hurt seething just below the surface. Maybe if they knew how close I sometimes came to punching them in the face, they’d shut up already. Even if it wouldn’t change their attitudes, I bet it would change their behavior, and that’s close enough for me, at this point.
And I would really, really, love to meet just one other person who can nod knowingly when I talk about my step-mom’s bedroom. Just one.
Annie
Guest blog writer
Are you feeling isolated or alone?
Feeling suicidal? Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1–800–273–8255 . The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.
Want to be connected to a virtual community of people in LGBTQ+ families? Join COLAGE’s closed Facebook group! The online COLAGE Family group is a place for folks 13+ who share the experience of having one or more LGBTQ+ parent or caregiver. Join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/120479254788187/
Our difference is our strength and you are not alone.
