Finally Proud

Kathy was the type of person who liked to please everyone. She did so at a detriment to herself. Kathy had a very vulnerable soul. She hated conflict and all that came with it. Yes, she had her opinions, but she was under the strict impression to keep them to herself.

Kathy’s brother, who was four years her junior, seemed to hit one of the most important emotional milestone before her. When she was eighteen, she was ready to come out to her recently separated parents. She was aware of the fact she would have to have to have ‘the talk’ with each of them individually and decided, as she lived with her mother, to tell her first. She was feeling positive about the decision. She sat her mother down in a coffee shop, a kaleidoscope of butterflies in her chest, ready to spit out the words, ‘mom, I’m gay,’ when she discovered her brother had beaten her to it. The fluttering butterflies turned to charring flames. Kathy was in no way taken aback, after all, even at fourteen, her brother was as camp as Christmas. She sat quietly realizing that she was obliged to resist the urge to share her news. She gulped down her tea and her sexuality that day.

Kathy gave all of twenties to the façade of being straight, resisting the urge to experiment with who she really was. She was miserable as she watched her brother openly go to gay bars and have proper relationships. She resisted her core belief that she was actually gay and as she felt she couldn’t have her parents have two gay kids. She didn’t know how they would take it. Her father in particular struggled with her brother’s sexuality and, as she was the apple of his eye, she didn’t want to disappoint him further.

Kathy started extensive psychological therapy with the emphasis on her parent’s separation to begin with…...a therapy that she still attends to this day. She had a history of self-harm, which, for Kathy, was a way of getting out her frustrations. She would rather hurt herself than anyone she loved. She was hospitalized several times all the while resisting to expose her ‘secret’.

During one particular admission, when Kathy was thirty-three years old, she met Jacqui. As she got to know her fellow patient, she grew to have feelings for her; the kaleidoscope of butterflies was back. She knew that Jacqui was special and was devastated when she was discharged.

The loss of Jacqui gave Kathy determination. She sat in the green tub chair opposite her councilor, tissues in hand, and said the words for the first time out loud, ‘I’m gay’. Her councilor of twelve years was taken aback at first, but after he composed himself, he praised her for making the leap. She smiled. She was encouraged to inform all the important people in her life and to be proud of who she was.

Kathy had fire in her belly. After she had said it once, she felt like she could shout it from the rooftops. When she arrived back in her room, she pressed the nurses call button. She knew that whatever she said to any of the nurses she said it to it would be put in her notes for all to see. She was in floods of tears as she said it again, ‘I’m gay!’

The relief of getting something she resisted to say for so long out into the open gave her confidence. She walked taller and was finally able to exhale a breath that she had held in for fifteen years.

A week later she sat her mother down in the same coffee shop she had brought her to all those years back, but this time it was Kathy who was coming out. To her surprise her mother took it very well. She was told that, no matter her sexuality, she was loved and that her happiness was all that mattered. Kathy beamed. Her father mirrored her mother’s words. The flames that were in her belly for all that time were extinguished. Finally,  she no longer resisted her sexuality, she embraced it.  

picture from pixabay