SaraSnabb

My mother found out that I was gay when I was nineteen.

She found out by accident. She was in my room looking for a book that she was sure I borrowed and forgot to return. She saw my hardbound lavender journal in my desk and flipped it open out of curiosity. Inside she found a card I made for my then-girlfriend of five months.

When I came home that weekend from my college dorm, my mom was giving me the silent treatment that she used to give me when I was little and had done something wrong. I didn’t understand why she was behaving like that; I dismissed it as some getting-old characteristic (My mom was 36 years old when I was born). Finally, she called me into her and dad’s bedroom and confronted me. “Are you in a relationship with a fellow girl?” she asked. Caught off guard, I didn’t know how to explain. My mom cried so much. She asked if I was so desperate, if there were no more guys left on earth that I would throw myself to another girl. She wanted to know what she did wrong in raising me. And then, indignantly, amazed that she would even acknowledge such a thing, claimed that she did nothing wrong. She thought I needed psychiatric help. That I was just confused. Lost. “Misguided”. She couldn’t believe that I would betray her; that she warmly accepted and treated cordially the girl I occasionally brought home, only to find out that I was in a relationship with that girl. She said that we made a fool out of them. She couldn’t believe that I would lie to her. “My daughter never lied to me. Until she met that girl”. She blamed all of it because of that girl.

That girl’s name was Kristine. A smart, kind, compassionate young woman who was graduating that year. She used to be in good terms with my parents but after my mom found out about us, she was banned from ever coming to our home. She didn’t give up easily though. She believed that there was no reason my mom would hate her because she was still the same person, so she religiously sent text messages to my mom who ignored her. My mom only saw her as the person who poisoned her daughter and took advantage of her and my dad’s hospitable and trusting nature. My mom thought that she could change me “back to normal” by making me live at home, convinced that I would no longer be in contact with Kristine who she thought was a “bad influence” to me.

In the end, after much complication and drama, I broke up with Kristine. Two months after being found out, I kind of fell out of love. I stuck long enough to celebrate our first anniversary, but that was as far as I could go. Needless to say, Kristine was deeply hurt and extremely mad at me. I can’t blame her for seeing me as “the bad guy”. I had no legitimate reason for leaving her. Except that I slowly felt my passion slip away because I was bothered about the thought of how much I could hurt my mother if she found out that the relationship was continuing.

My mom is a pastor. I grew up eating Bible stories for breakfast. I was named after a Bible character. I went to Vacation Christian Schools, Summer Camps, Winter Camps, Youth Camps, name it, I’ve been there. Needless to say, I know all passages in the Bible concerning homosexuality. My mom is an intelligent woman, I know that. You would think that a female reverend may be more open to homosexuality because women before her had to fight long and hard before being allowed equal privilege to be God’s instrument on the pulpit. But my mom is a homophobe. She believes that the devil will have hold of my soul because of this different preference. She thinks it’s a sin, I will not be saved, and it will be a big burden and heartache for her if her own child is not saved.

My mom loves me, and she believes that her love for me is unconditional. She loved me through all the humiliation I had caused her from when I was in elementary until I was in college (I was very hard-headed and always defied the authority), she loved me though I was more of a disappointment and subject of concern while I was growing up, she loved me through all my failures and all my mistakes, she loved me through thick and thin. But I’m sure, for some reason because I know my mother, I’m sure she would disown me had she known that I didn’t stop being a lesbian. I know her love isn’t unconditional enough to cover that one. And since I love my mother, I cannot come out again and hurt her. I just can’t. Although one day, I wish I can, when I have become someone she can be proud of so that she can see that being a lesbian didn’t hinder me from becoming a good daughter and a successful individual.

During my last two years in the university, I was so busy that I had no more time to go to church. It’s true that when you do something long enough, it becomes a habit, then a lifestyle. There was a time that I stopped going to church altogether. Nowadays, I go maybe once a month. Sometimes twice. And I also no longer participate in activities like I used to. I miss being part of the church. But somehow I just can’t seem to find my way back. I know that God loves me enough to see through my imperfections, what bothers me is knowing that these people in church, who used to be my second family, may not be that tolerant. Of course I can’t come out in church. I have to consider my mother’s reputation. So instead of causing any possible damaging incident that may hurt my mother’s character, I just distanced myself from the church. I know that even though these people love and care for me, I cannot, for the life of me, listen to their bigotry. Once, I went to a winter camp with another then-girlfriend and we had to sit through lecture after lecture about the wickedness of homosexuality and it was just… uncomfortable.

I cannot change the way I turned out to be, not because I’m born this way (I wasn’t. No one is.) but because I have embraced this choice. I am not a girl wishing I could be a boy, no. I love every part of my feminine self. I just prefer to love another girl, too. This is my choice. This is who I want to be. And I know there won’t be a community of faith who will accept me without trying to change me. It’s not “I cannot help but love her”. It’s “I chose to love her”, and I believe that our love is as true, as genuine, as pure, and as lasting as any other heterosexual couple’s love. Of course for other church people, this would just look like promiscuity. But I’m not promiscuous. I’m the kind of girl who had read the Bible from cover to cover, who taught kids in Sunday school, who sang in the choir and in the praise and worship band. I’m the kind of girl who never dated until finishing high school, who had only kissed four people in her entire life. I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t go to bars and get wasted, who cleans her bedroom and the house and keeps her closet neat, who reads a book all day at home instead of loitering outside, who never use swear words. I sit with my knees firmly together, I’m always polite and considerate. Parents of little kids love me because their kids love me. I do my job well. And yet, none of these would matter because I happen to love another girl. I’m just another immoral heathen. And it hurts, it burns. And I guess that’s what drives me away from the church. Suddenly, all my credibility as a person dissolves because of who I chose to love.

I know that these things will never reconcile: my faith and lesbian identity, my parents and my female partner… it’s like I can be happy with these things individually, but I can’t have them all at once. I can go back to church, but I have to pretend to be straight. I can be gay, but I feel some sort of hollowness because I miss God. I can be the perfect daughter, but it means I have to give up my partner. I can be with my partner, but I’ll be dead to my parents once they know. And all I want is to be good enough for them all. And maybe I can be. I will be.