The ties that bind August 19, 2008

Is it sick that I Google stuff like “mothers who hate their lesbian daughters” to feel close to my own mother, who I haven’t really talked to in weeks now?

I understand that’s too simplistic. She doesn’t hate me. She just hates this thing she thinks I’ve become. She doesn’t understand it and is deeply disappointed by it. She doesn’t understand that I’m angry with her and that’s why I don’t call her anymore. She doesn’t understand that the things that she says could possibly be hurtful to me. She doesn’t understand how peculiar her shame is considering that, by all standards of modern society, I am actually a well-adjusted, albeit a bit nerdy, successful person?

All she understands is her pain.

So I wonder things like, “Were I to die today, would she go to my funeral? Where would my funeral be? If she were to die, would my two siblings who aren’t with me bar me from the proceedings? Would it actually be easier on her if I were dead? At least that would be something she would understand, no?”

But I don’t know for sure. And I really don’t want to talk to her because I don’t want to explain to her all the ways she’s hurting me, and besides that conversation would be moot because she wouldn’t believe a word that came from my mouth, anyway, with me being brainwashed and all.

And so instead I sit here, silent. And wonder. And Google.

Hit delete July 7, 2008

I just deleted my mom from my cell phone phone book.

Purely a symbolic move. As if I’d forget a phone number that had been my own for 20-some-odd years.

Yet somehow… I felt better. I’m also moving soon. I didn’t give her my last address, except when I wanted her to mail me money from my old account. I’m sure I won’t be giving her this one, either, unless under duress.

I’m sure somehow that’s wrong. I’ll hear from the fundies that say I should rot in hell. I suppose they’d prefer that I kill myself (the route I was heading).

If God is offended by my finding peace of mind and happiness for the first time in my life, then God is a jerk. A fragile jerk who creates people just to toss them in hell. Nice.

I suppose it comes to this: I’m tired of being the punching bag, just saying “yes, yes” while my Mom pours out her frustrations, anger and disgust with me. If I’m so disgusting, then I’m too disgusting to have contact with. Fuck off and leave me alone.

Yet I remain a chicken, venting here in a corner of cyberspace instead of telling her over the phone. In an argument nobody can win, as we go round and round about things nobody can prove, from two people who won’t budge in their ways of thinking.

So instead I just hit delete. It’s best for everyone involved.

She’s not impressed July 6, 2008

So my mom actually asked me if I got married.

I suppose the news of this California thing spread.

I said, “Why, yes I did.”

Silence for a couple of beats. Then the shame. She’s glad my dad isn’t around to see this. Then she had to go.

I don’t understand. If you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.

In other news, it’s official: I’m going to law school.

Mom: Not impressed by that. She kept asking me about on-campus housing. I told her the same thing twice. I think she’s on the “listening every three words” plan.

Another reason not to argue.

Well, let me go out and recruit children now. I’ll be back in a bit.

Two homes June 29, 2008

I took a trip back home and just got back yesterday.

When I say home, I sometimes mean where my dad lives in the Midwest, and sometimes I mean where I live in California.

It’s kind of confusing to think of two places equally as the place where your heart is.

But Jade is here, my cats are here, my stuff is here. Jade says home is where your stuff is. Maybe because her Midwestern home isn’t as welcoming as mine is.

To be fair, my dad’s home isn’t really home any more either. I don’t have a bedroom there filled with stuff from when I was growing up. It is the spare bedroom, and it is mine when I am there, but every single thing that was ever mine has been eradicated from the house. Even down to the boxes deliberately left in his basement years ago. I kicked and screamed at the thought of taking that stuff out, because if I left it there, I’d still have some presence in that house, apart from the couple of family pictures on the wall. But on one of my visits back home, he made me go through my last two boxes and mailed me the things I wanted to keep.

It’s kind of weird to go to this place called home and to know that your father loves you but absolutely does not want to talk about your marriage.

I told my brother, via e-mail, about us getting married legally on June 17, and told him he could tell my dad and stepmom if he wanted. So when I was home, I asked him if he’d told them. Yeah, he said.

“Well, what did they say?”

“Not much. Just ‘We were just talking about that and wondering if they were going to do that.’ “

During my visit, my best friend told me on the phone that I needed to come out to my dad. I told her that he already knows, so it’s not coming out. We just haven’t spoken about it directly, except for accidentally once or twice.

I guess she thinks I should talk to him about it, and force him to start the process of acceptance.

Well, I didn’t ask her. She’s not a lesbian, she hasn’t had to deal with these feelings of rejection and discomfort, both of others and with herself.

And that’s how I feel.

Can’t help it May 24, 2008

I just had a pleasant conversation with my mom. I told her I was going back to school. And she even seemed *almost* proud, an emotion she hasn’t directed my way in almost two years, ever since I came out to her in Sept. 2006.

Further, she mentioned LIzzie’s name, and asked her role in this entire school bit. (”Yes, she’s moving, no she’s not in school, she’ll be helping to support me.”) That’s all that was said of her, but it was a start.

I hadn’t wanted to tell her about school since that whole conversation a few months back, when she was saying how big a burden it was to be nice to me. But it came up, and she was in a good mood, so I told her.

I shouldn’t be happy. I know this is fleeting. But for the moment, I’ll allow myself to smile.

Do ask, do tell May 3, 2008

I’d love to trade spaces with a straight person for a day. Well, that’s not entirely fair because I told myself I was a straight woman for several years, so I suppose I’ve been there and done that.

But bear with me. I’d like to get a nice, sheltered, hetero married woman to step into my shoes for a day. Preferably one who feels that any sign of gayness is being all up in someone’s face about it.

So hetero woman, I ask you this:

• You’re filling out applications for school. Do you fill out the space that says spouse/partner? What do you put there?
• Someone asks you if you’re married. What do you tell them? Do you lie? Change the subject? Tell the truth?
• An otherwise tolerable stranger blurts out something being “so gay.” What do you say? Or better yet, a coworker blurts out something being “so gay.” Or your boss. How far do you take a response? Or do you chicken out, say nothing?
• Someone mentions your husband’s name, calls him your “little friend.” How do you respond?

We face a million little decisions every day about being out. I find myself being out, then closeted, around the same people in the same day, wondering if they notice my terminology change throughout the day. “My partner… my roommate…”

Right now, my current policy is, “if they ask, I will tell. If they freak out, they shouldn’t have asked.” A coworker asked me the other day if I was married, and I replied, “technically, yes,” which isn’t the best response, but I was kinda surprised he hadn’t figured it out yet, with four matching rings between Lizzie and I, our living arrangements, etc etc. etc.

I’m lucky in that my workplace is a fairly friendly place to be. There are a TON of gay people there. My department alone I’m fairly sure is half gay. But, as Lizzie points out, they’re all closeted. Well, except for the ones who aren’t. But anyhow, we’re part of a club where not all the members are hip to the others. Unless they are. Who the hell knows. Does your head hurt yet?

But anyway… a million little decisions. And in the end, the choices we make about the information we give out may not mean a thing. I wonder sometimes: What if I get into a wreck while alone in my car, or I collapse at the gym during my customary wee-morning visits to the treadmill? If the ambulance is called, will anyone tell Lizzie? I mean, who would think to call a woman to come after another, grown-ass woman? Will they just call my mom, who will then try to ensure that, even two thousand miles away, Lizzie will have no say in what happens? This scenario, actually, was what sparked the entire wedding talk to begin with. We have the requisite legal papers drawn up, but I don’t know if they’d do anybody any good if everyone doesn’t know what’s going on. And this doesn’t even count the horror stories of hospitals and things not honoring those agreements or waiting until the partner dies …

There’s a lot of risk involved with just trying to be honest — risk of losing a job, risk of bodily harm, risk of important decisions being scuttled away from one’s partner. And this is something that people who use homosexuality as a political scare mongering tactic will never, or never want, to understand.

I said the W word March 20, 2008

I said the W word to my dad, accidentally.

We’d both been so good at avoiding the subject, and I didn’t even realize I’d said it until a minute or two after I’d said it.

We were talking about coaxing my brother into doing things he doesn’t want to.  Like wait at the airport until I can come and get him, because I won’t be able to leave work right away.

Like behaving himself. I didn’t want to come right out and say, don’t embarrass me, but my dad says, well, you just need to tell him. I know my dad would tell him if we were in the same situation. My dad already told him to stay out of trouble, something you don’t need to tell the average 28-year-old man. His wife shouted the same thing over the phone as my bro and I were talking. “Keep him out of trouble.”

Anyway, then there was telling Dad that I just wanted to make sure he would do whatever I wanted, because it was my wedding.

“Just tell him that it’s important to you,” Dad says, not skipping a beat.

Then I moved on to getting the other factor in the equation, our friend, to make sure she didn’t repeat any of the things I’ve said about my brother, to my brother.

“All of it true,” I tell my father. “Everything I’ve said about him is the absolute truth. I just don’t want my friend to repeat it to him.”

And then I realized I’d said wedding and that neither one of us died, and the world didn’t even stop for a minute.

Progress.

T-minus 9 days. Here we go.

Don’t want to talk March 17, 2008

After an incident with my aunt the other week, I suddenly don’t feel like talking with her.

I said it was OK that she told me what she was thinking, about my relationship with Jade, or our ceremony

But it wasn’t.

I thought I wanted honesty. I want to be honest myself, but when it comes down to it, I don’t like the disapproval.

I could have it a lot worse. My aunt still loves me, serves as a go-between for me and my dad if needed. Jade’s mom exudes disapproval every time they speak. But I think I just expected a little better from my aunt, the sister I never had.

Late at night, on my way home from work, I’ve been getting the urge to call my aunt and shoot the breeze, but then I remember I’m still mad at her. Not mad, disappointed. Disappointed in her the same way she’s disappointed in me.

The other missing parent March 12, 2008

I’ve written about my father, and that he won’t be there at our commitment ceremony.
But I haven’t written about my mother, the other missing parent.

My mother hasn’t been a part of my life since I was 19. But I think about her frequently. Her absence leaves a big, scarred-over hole in my being.

I didn’t lose her to divorce. I didn’t lose her to taking off.

My mom died when I was 19. I was helpless to save her, though I tried.

We didn’t have the best relationship in the world; I was at a bad age and she was difficult to be around. We fought the night before she died.

In my rose-colored world of doppler shifting away memories, she has become the best part of herself. Kind to animals, to the disabled, to any group in need of an underdog champion. She didn’t tolerate tasteless racist jokes or jokes that otherwise took dignity from any group.

She tried to be a lady in the face of an uncouth family — myself included — that loved nothing more than a good flatulent outbreak.

She fought for me to have a somewhat normal life. I wanted a prom dress; she argued my dad into spending the money. I got a class ring, too.
When I came home from school plastered in ill-applied makeup gleaned from a friend, she took me to someone who sold me Mary Kay, and had me taught the proper way to apply makeup.

Not that it really sunk in.

My mom was raised in a religion where makeup and jewelry are frowned upon, so she never learned how to wear makeup properly. But she did love jewelry, and had tons of it. Somehow, I never really understood jewelry, either.

Mom passed on her love of books. Her love of animals.

I like to think about those good things. I like to think of one of my clearest, recent memories of her: the night I woke up from a nightmare about her. Even though I was upset, and upset about her, she stroked my hair and told me it would be OK.

There are many bad things to dwell on, and I try to stay away from that. I tell myself that perhaps someday, we would’ve been good friends. My father and I turned out to be friends.

All I maybe needed was a little distance, a chance to get away, to grow up without a constant adversary.

So at every major milestone I hit, I think of my mother, and how much I miss her, and wish she could be there.