To speak about the quiet...

Until recently I was undecided if I wanted to share this on here until the book is done and published but I feel it is important so...here it is...

"It was so quiet….

I could hear mom gently sobbing and my dad quietly point one word, “No”, as he shook his head at the ground.

I had just told my parent’s that I had fallen in love and that is what I remember.  It was so….quiet.  Yes, there were many more things discussed in that half hour.  Mostly Religion, which is usually the case in this situation.  That I was committing an abomination and how that is clear in The Bible.  I countered their singular argument the only reasonable way, with a grenade of knowledge from the very same book.  I asked my dad how all of those “abominations” that they have committed in their past or, in some cases, that they commit daily are somehow okay and my allowing myself to be the person God made me, the person I did such a good job of hiding from the world, is somehow worthy of my death.  How being that person that God made had lead me to a group of people who loved me by choice and one man who wanted to create a life with me.  My mom asked some health questions that most people would ask.  I mean I still can’t give blood because I had same sex relations.  If a large organization like that hasn’t set the facts straight, how can I expect my mom to know the level of risk?  I answered her questions and told them I was still the same person they raised me to be.  I have the same morals and values that they instilled in me.  I told them that being gay isn’t WHO I am that it is just part of what I am.  I reiterated that nothing had changed and that I was just finally letting them meet the person that they raised and not the patch-worked puppet shield that I had been carrying for as long as I could remember.  I asked them to think back to when I was in school and to remember how unhappy I always seemed.  To remember how, even with friends, I would frequently slink back to the back of the group and only occasionally burst  into the front to show I was one of the pack…just like them.  I asked them to compare that to the last 2 years of my life.  A life where I have a family of people who love me because they genuinely want to be in my life and care what that life is.  A life where I smile casually and laugh off cue and cry when I am sad regardless of who might see.  A life where I don’t go to bed at night angry for what I felt during the day.  A life where I didn’t see who God made me as a burden that I have to hide.  I finally had a life that I got to live…not a show that I had to put on.

And it was so quiet….through all of it.  That is what I remember.  That and the voice that interrupted me when I told them that this in no way changed my plans for the future.  I was still planning on getting married, and having a home, and kids, and that they would have their grandbabies.  But before I could finish the final word, the voice sliced through the air with the only thing I didn’t expect.  I had prepared to weigh out sins with my dad.  I had prepared to teach my mom a sex ed class.  I had prepared to show them how hard I had tried for years, sacrificing my own happiness, to try to be what I knew they wanted me to be.  I had prepared to make them see the damage that that one lie to myself would do to the whole family that they wanted me to have. And  yes, even though I knew it was very unlikely, I had even prepared to let an “I love you, a thank you for raising me strong enough to be who I am, and a goodbye” fall on refusing ears.  But this voice that came from my father was cold and sharp and calculated.  It was not the man that loved every animal he saw, cried with me when my dog died in my arms, and never argued about where we ate when we went out to dinner.  I don’t know who this man was but he said to me, ‘Don’t have children.”

My entire face melted with the world around me as I asked him, “What?”

He kept his eyes on me and said, “Don’t have children, you’ll just mess them up.”

And it was so quiet….  I rallied to regain my balance in the slosh of the world and said, “I’m not messed up.  Two gay parent’s don’t necessarily make a gay child just like two straight parent’s don’t necessarily make a straight child, and even if my children ALL turn out to be gay, they will be good people.  God gives us the challenges we don’t think we can handle to show us that we can.  Apparently you needed to learn this one twice.”  And only a few days past the one year anniversary of the day that my little brother had told our parent’s that he was an abomination, I had just told them that I was their second chance from God to see the truth.  We are the blessing that they just have to be willing to see and accept it.

Then I got up and told them I loved them.  My mother asked who knew and I told her that most everyone already knew.  Jjust like in my childhood, I had tried to spare them the pain longer than I should have because I knew how it would hurt them and they had taught me never to hurt people without reason.  I had my reason with this man so I told them.  I told her that if anyone in the family had questions or concerns to tell them to call me and I would tell them exactly what I had just said.  My mom continued to cry as I left through the door and walked to my car.  I am still not sure what sat in my dad’s chair in the corner of the living room, but it sat there for as long as I could see it as I was backing out of the driveway.  I don’t know if it was grief, or anger, or regret, or guilt, or hate but whatever it was…it changed him…and for the first time in all those years with my dad…that is the first time I only saw a man.  A man that I never wanted to be and who only happened to be my father.

I went to my new home with the man I loved and, in a daze, told him what had happened with my parent’s that evening. That night we laid in bed with our dogs, Inkblot and Julian, cuddled up between us as I kept crying and he kept saying that it could have been much worse over and over again. And he was right, it really could have been, so many have it much worse than it ever could have been for me.  But as I cried myself to sleep that night, surrounded by the love of MY family; I could feel the void where my center of gravity once had been before the voice ripped it away, and I clung to those three warm bodies like they were my only anchor to this world…

And

It was so quiet…."

I think it is important that I say that I don't think my father is a bad man.  I don't think my mother is a bad woman.  I just think that sometimes great people do bad things in the name of a good idea.