life

12/31/10 I’m gay, let’s go for Thai/3

Coming out was different for me, I’m 42 have a good sense of myself and am confident in who I am. I did not have to face the struggles that young people face when coming out I did not have the fears, insecurity or self doubt. I’m old enough to live my own life and say “fuck you” if you don’t like it get on board or get the hell off.So at 41 I fell in love and started to date a girl. She was and is amazing, breath taking intelligent, beautiful in a gentle non assuming way and wise wise wise. She is quiet, soft, delicious, loving and drinkable. She is and will forever be the love of my life, this is the person I have waited for forever and the person I have hurt the most because my whole life I had to fight and defend myself to survive in my household. It was crush or be crushed any sign on weakness and you were dead in the water. God bless my sister a sensitive type, someone who wears her emotions on her sleeve someone who was an easy target for my mother. When my mother was verbally assaulting her and she saw the crack begin to widen and my sisters eyes fill with tears because she was told she was stupid, worthless and whore or whatever her word of the day was…it was like a predator smelling the scent of their prey. Immediately she would attack my sister and tease her for crying, being weak, stupid and unable to control her emotions. She would tell her she was crazy and needed help because she was nothing more than a big cry baby and that this would be her downfall for the rest of her life and make her unsuccessful in anything she attempted.I watched, observed and quickly learned not to cry, no weakness was shown or I would be in the scope and she would finish me off. No way, my emotion of escape was anger to the 100th degree, stand and fight, be louder, be stronger, push back, say something equally mean or meaner, not go down without a fight, fight, fight, fight. It was how I survived suicide attempts by the age of 12. I knew better than to try again because I was punished severly by my mother when she was aware of the second time. “What are you crazy? now I have to treat you like a fucking baby? watch your every god damn move and babysit you like a kindergardener? Jesus Christ what the hell is matter with you? !SLAP! Why are you making so much work for me? !SLAP!”After finally letting me out of the bathroom I heard her walk casually through the front room and spew with a sigh of exasperation “Your sister tried to kill herself tonight, what to you think of that?” My brother sat on the couch blankly staring ahead at the TV saying nothing. She then arrived to the kitchen and said the same comment to my Dad who said “Oh my god.” That was it. If it wasn’t for my sister L I would have never even seen a doctor about it. She understood that pain, she knew how deep it went and she was the only one to try to take some action.

I anticipated the day I would finally start telling my friends, “I’m in love with a girl.” M and K were the first, then my nieces, then E and D. The funny part is that I did it at the same Thai restaurant each time I was begining to think the waitress would walk up and just say “she gay, I take yur orda?” Each group of friends and loved ones was supportive, happy and could see the pureness of my bliss. It was unmistakenly there I literally was walking on air. M was curious and had lots of questions. L had some of the same questions but was also so excited by the potential of two people she loved and respected so much coming together. As time went on I shared it with more and more of my friends/coworkers.  My bosses know, my immediate friends and people I am close to know, K is a big part of my life.

There were so many amazingly loving, beautiful, deeply connecting moments we shared. There were also struggles that we endured that until recently we didn’t even know or understand that came from both of our childhoods. Now so much later after being in couples counseling for the last couple months we are trying to figure out if there is an “us” left to save. With the knowledge we both gained there is great potential, she discovered her dysfuntions and I jumped into mine head first and tore them open, getting past the anger and justification and arriving to the most painful part of my heart and psyche. So painful that in some moments I felt again that I might not be able to go on and survive the pain of reliving those moments. I’ve never known that there was so much I didn’t deal with, I thought I was past it, but as therapy began I remembered more and more about my childhood, telling K what used to be and what head games I was constantly dodging and trying to be one step ahead of. With each memory I was able to immediately link it back to our relationship. Like why I always needed to be right and why I would debate till end and stand my ground that her sweatshirt wasn’t red but burnt orange.

In the end it doesn’t matter but I was operating as I had as a child and giving in and giving up and being wrong or mistaken had earth shattering repercussions for me. I was no longer needing to defend and stand my ground, K wasn’t against me, she wasn’t going to hurt me, she wasn’t trying to defeat me but I couldn’t break my patterns and in the end it may have cost me the one person who ever really loved me and that I loved so.

We are so different but in some ways that is the beauty of it she provides me with what I will never fully understand or come to on my own. Her perspective, her heart, her smarts continously bring me to better places, she elevates me on every level even when she challenges me to move beyond my limitations. I love her deeply and the thought of us not succeeding and not staying together is beyond heart breaking and terrifying for me. Right now she needs space and time both of which can be a challenge for me because in my household the “silent treatment” meant a week of attacks, snide comments, your wet clothes being yanked out of the dryer and thrown in the driveway, hearing everyone called to the dinner table and invited to eat except you, the silent treatment was hell week. But K isn’t my mother and her quiet time, where she needs to think, regroup, recharge and pull her thoughts together isn’t about punishing me or sending me a message that I’m not loved although I let it trick my head because it triggered the insecurities of my childhood. She’s taking time so that she can be considerate and think about what she needs, what must her next step be. She is literally thoughtful in her process and if I think of it that way I can cherish the idea that she needs that time away from me. I can cherish and respect that she loves and thinks so deeply that rather than be impulsive and reactive she stops and uses her heart and her head together. I told you she is amazing

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12/31/10 I will not submit to the grief/2

My father’s wake, I’m on display, I’m like a host floating through the crowd thanking everyone for coming, shaking hands, getting hugs, kissing cheeks I never stop moving till it’s my turn to stand in the reception line. My sisters and brother in laws and nieces all take place standing there, next to the coffin, watching people pray and cry as they kneel infront of my father. I disconnect, focus on other things, remove myself as far as I can while my body waits to mechanically to say “thank you for coming, yes it is sad, yes he was a great person, thank you.”My friends arrive, one of them L knows me well she leans over and whispers to M “something’s not right, she’s too, she’s too, pulled together, she doesn’t seem like she just lost her dad.” She’s right I do not seem like someone in pain, someone scared, someone lost, someone forced to spend time with a family they are not close to, a family they never feel safe showing vulnerability with.I’m not right and this is just the begining of how fucked up I am about to become, this is the begining of therapists offices, fights with K, hurting her, hurting us and not even knowing it, feeling suicidal, becoming a sort of walking dead, numbing myself and pushing the person who loves me most away. This is the begining of the worst time in my life, for over the next year right after my father’s funeral I will have to put down my dog because she bit the person I am in love with, badly, so badly she is hospitalized,  I will watch my other dog bite and attack my neighbors dog, I will push K away without realizing what I am doing, I will make mistakes and let the dysfunction that I come from hurt our relationship, K will lose her job and I will take part in deciding to remove my brother from life support and let him die.Right now at my Dad’s funeral I’m in survival mode aka not dealing with what’s going on.  No one in my family knows that I’m gay now, not like I’m trying to keep it secret but something about that announcement at a funeral is not right. My oldest sisters watch and notice, they see K and they see me, at this point I haven’t even told my friends yet, we are so new and well they have only known me to date men. My oldest sister appears to figure it out and will eventually tell L the one sister I maintain a relationship with which will then in turn cause her to relentlessly question my nieces -who do know, I told them first.

I’m tired the next day there is a mass he will be cremated so no cemetary, I’m glad.
Everyone rides in the limo, except me I don’t and haven’t for a long time felt part of my family, I tolerate them most of them are well, crazy, damaged and difficult to love and be loved by. My mother has pulled a number on each one of us, she has damaged us so deeply and so darkly, systematically attempting to take all of her kids out at one point.
I hug and kiss my family members at the wake because I have to, others are watching, others expect that cause that’s what families do. I hate it, I feel like a fraud, a liar I hate to be in a position where I have to pretend. I stopped pretending long ago when I broke nearly all ties with them. I ride with K to the church, we meet my family in the front as they exit the limo and we all watch and wait as the coffin is carried out of the hearse.
We follow down the aisle and we file into the first three pews of the church, K is sitting directly behind me one seat back. My family all sits in the first row there is no room for me and I sit in the second pew by myself. My nieces are infront of me and we perodically offer each other support.  My sister N delivers the eulogy she does it in both Spanish and English she does a wonderful job. When she comes back I tell her coldly “good job”.  K says to her “that was beautiful N”.  I can’t connect with her, she did give a beautiful speech but the only thing I can muster is “good job.” We’ve never learned to really love each other, support each other or be there for each other. When my mother was angry with one of us she often tried to pit the others against you as well and if you talked to, helped or were nice to the one in the “doghouse” you might find yourself next.

It’s time to give each other the hand shake the “peace be with you”. I turn around and K embraces me, out of the corner of my eye my friend M who has recently moved back from Mexico comes up and hugs me warmly. I am deeply touched, so appreciative and feel so loved. She found out via our school email that my dad had passed, she immediately left work picked up her husband and they headed out from Forest Park to the southwest side of Chicago, she made it just in time for the mass. I will always remember that gesture of love and it was the thing that finally moved me to tears as I stood in my pew, removed from my Dad, removed from my family, removed from my heart, removed from this moment. I make my way down my pew hugging people in my family, my mother never turns around to be hugged by me and I even tap her shoulder at one point and she distracts herself with my sister.

Later that day at home K’s observations and introduction to my family rolled over me like a boulder. She gave a blow by blow account of the “dysfunctions of your family” talking about how no one comforted my mom or my sister N and the visible seperation between us. The coldness, the tenseness the akwardness was something she witnessed first hand and no amount of preparation even if I had given it to her would have helped her understand it or be prepared for it. Someone who has a relationship a normal one with her family cannot understand it. It wouldn’t be untill much later in our relationship that she would begin to understand it and even be able to explain it to others as I tried to do with friends.  To this day, to this moment as I write this, the night after she has broken up with me, on the brink of her possibly moving out and ending our relationship forever, she is still learning, seeing, hearing and experiencing the profound impacts my childhood has had on me.

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12/31/10 He’s died…./1

May 1 2009 I’m leaving work to go home for lunch to let the dogs out. I’m in a good place, I have just “come out”, late but have fallen in love with an amazing woman K. We didn’t see it coming but here we are about 4 weeks into our relationship. I check my phone because we are in that stage, you know where you text a million times a day but don’t say much more than how much you adore each other. I pull out my phone to receive my latest love note and I see a text from my niece says “call home asap”. I get a sinking feeling I pull over, as I dial I talk myself through what might be on the other end of the line.

“Aunt Lisa?,
“Yeah, what’s going on? what happened?
“Grandpa died.”

There it was, the words we all know one day we will have to face as our parents get older we know one day, one day it will happen and we try to anticipate our reactions but they never match the real thing.

“What happened, why, what happened?” my niece isn’t sure he appears to have just passed in his sleep. He woke up early showered and was waiting for both of my nieces to come by to go to breakfast with them. Sat down in the chair shut his eyes and passed away.

My dad is the best grandfather in the world, he was a pretty good dad to me but the job of grandfather was made for him, I was fortunate to see him in action as he loved, played with and spoiled my nieces. That day I realized the sadness that if I were to have children they would never know that love and joy of feeling like the most important person in the world and being so purely adored by their grandfather. I never really thought I would have kids but suddenly I became sad feeling like these imaginary not had and not even wanted kids wouldn’t know my father.

I was confused and literally disoriented, kinda starting to cry but more whimpering with a hearbeat that felt like it would pound through my chest.

Breathe, breathe, breathe, turn the car around drive back to school tell them your not coming back because your father just died. Turn around and drive back, go.

I pull back into the parking lot, there’s Kelly, she lost her dad, she knows what this is, she knows how this feels, she is walking out of school towards me she sees a look on my face and knows something is wrong, she asks.

She proceeds to hug me with all she is, she hugs me so authentically, so hard, so caringly that for a moment the world is on pause and I feel like the pain in my heart transfers to her. “I’m sorry, what can I do? I’m so sorry”. “I need to just go in and let our boss know.” I need to tell my student teacher who is sitting in my office and has just started working with me.

I walk into a fog, everything is muffled, I go to the office but my boss isn’t there I see the next person in line, M the school psychologist she’s my friend. She hugs me, she’ll let them know, go be with my family. I walk in my office and I tell C my student teacher she hugs me I tell her to report to M if she needs anything. I leave.

I sent K a text and she calls me I tell her what has happened and she asks me if she needs to work I tell her no I’m on my way to the funeral home and will call her.

I’ve never lost anyone before so I’m completely treading water and have no idea what I need. In fact for 6-8 months I do not grieve, I do not cry, I do not acknowledge the pain. Until in a therapists office, I engage in an exercise that has me imagining my father is sitting across from me and I tell him/the empty chair what I never got to say before he left.

Dad I want to thank you for teaching me an amazing work ethic. I get my sense of responsibility and integrity in relation to work from you. You modeled such an amazing example that I noticed at a young age and was always aware that you provided for your family. I want to thank you for my sense of humor, I love that you always cracked a joke, you were smart, witty and funny. I miss you, I’m sorry we weren’t closer near the end of your life, I’m sorry I didn’t make time to always see you and that I let the relationship with my mother interfere with me maintaining a  relationship with you. I hope your happy, safe and in a better place. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry.

I arrive at the funeral home my two sisters and their husbands are there F is taking the lead and asking questions and helping to make the arrangements. My sister N sits near my mother crying. My brother is not there, he’s too sick, been sick for the past 15 years plus he has let the diabetes win and lives a hollow unfulfilling life in my mothers house who cares for him around the clock. My nieces hug and kiss me and I make the same rounds with my three sisters though we are not close. None of us are really close as sibilings the only one I had a close relationship with was with my brother but my sister L and I try sometimes.

We are moved to a table and the person at the funeral guides us delicately throught he routine, prayer cards, flowers, ribbons, coffins, obituary, death certificate and on and on. I hardly speak, N my sister does much of the talking and then translating into Spanish to my mother. Decisions are made, books are passed between us and everyone nods and agrees to things we will never remember we agreed to. My niece P looks at me and says “what they hell are you wearing?” I look down at my long sleeve aqua blue shirt with a red and grey striped sweater pulled over it, my eyes follow down my legs to my cuffed jeans which expose two different socks, one striped one argyle and then all the way down to my feet, two different shoes. She then points to the four multicolored bubbly shaped barrettes in my hair.

“It was mismatched day at school today, I forgot I was dressed like this.”  Everyone laughs. Even the funeral director admits to thinking I was a little weird.

The arrangements get made and we start to leave, my sister asks if I want to see my father, no, no I don’t no. They are unable to show him to me because there are the remains of someone else there. The remains…..the remains, it sounds so removed from the person I called my father.  I want to leave, I want to get out of here, I want to go, I have to go. I go home and recount the events to K she hugs me and comforts me and takes the next few days off of work to be with me. 4 weeks in and here is where we are the first of many traumas we will be dealt in our first year together and the first of what damages me for the next two years.

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