Family: It Shouldn’t Be This Difficult
My Queer Family Started Later in Life
I’m floating in a tiny inflatable raft just off the coast of Florida. A yacht full of modern-day pirates transporting illegal drugs firing automatic weapons is barreling towards me. I’m being circled by hungry reef sharks who menace my flimsy raft with their carnivorous teeth every so often. The sky has turned black, and the waves are stretching for me as the storm inches nearer. The wind picks up, and gleefully scoots me into the Bermuda Triangle.
That’s what family means to me.
Well, not really. It’s not quite that bad.
But if you’re like me, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you probably have some inkling of what I mean. Family is not an automatic; blood is not the binder we’re led to believe it is. And it’s not so easy to cultivate, depending on where you are on life’s journey.
As an old man of 60, I grew up believing a family is a mommy, and daddy, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents. As a kid, I was fortunate we all lived near each other; the furthest away was my maternal grandmother, but even she could be visited within two hours.
Now at 60, all my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and my father are gone, and my cousins are very distant. Even though I have a decent relationship with most of my siblings, it’s not like the old days. Searches for affordable homes and decent-paying jobs have caused us to scatter across the country: Vermont, New York City, Long Island, North Carolina, Florida and Oregon. It’s tough to be a cohesive unit when you’re separated by thousands of miles.
Another complicating factor is the trajectory I chose for my life.
While we don’t choose to be gay (I don’t know why…who doesn’t enjoy bullying, beatings, and discrimination?), some of us do choose to act straight and live in that big ol’ closet, like I did, until I was in my early 50’s. Then, when I could no longer endure the self-inflicted torture of denying my queerness, I popped out of that closet.
I lost a spouse and almost every single friend I ever had, because I was now an evil spawn of Satan for liking weiner.
This also caused a wrench to be thrown into the cogs of my sibling relationships. Several are devout Christians, although I must say they have never been overtly holier-than-thou towards me; rather, it was the shock, I think, of seeing their brother do such a “180,” having lived as a WASP-y middle-class conservative-type for all those years, and despising myself for it.
Ironically, the worst reaction from anyone in my biological family was from an older brother who is also gay. Rather than welcome me into the rainbow family, he berated me for what a horrible person I was for living in the closet all those years, as though only HE knew the appropriate time for me to come out. And as the ensuing years have progressed, I’ve seen that those within the LGBTQ+ community can be extremely vicious toward each other and prove yet again that all sorts of family can really suck.
One blessing of having endured a closeted life is having biological children.
In spite of me having come out and at least appearing to have abandoned my kids, I actually moved in with my mother literally next door. My kids probably saw me about as often as when I was still living at home. My soon-to-be ex-wife was keen to have me leave, even though she’d always known my sexuality was an issue. In spite of my attempts to work out an agreement to remain in the family home with my kids, she, understandably, wanted me gone.
I am very fortunate that my kids still love me. In similar situations , I think kids feel abandoned and angry for what they perceive as a dissolution of their family. When I left my marriage, my oldest had just graduated from college, and my middle child was coming up on his senior year of high school; these relationships were less prone to damage after all the years spent together at home and on many memorable family vacations.
I think my youngest child, however, at age 10, was more vulnerable to feeling abandoned. Admittedly, as much as I love them, I do feel at times I don’t know them as well as the two older kids, not as much as I want to know them. Though my two oldest were at stages where they were becoming independent, my youngest was still trapped at home with their mother, and still going on day trips and vacations with their mom and the people who had been my friends.
I’m not stupid. I know lots of John-bashing was going on in those days. I really do think that exacerbated feelings of estrangement between us. It breaks my heart to know what they must have been exposed to once I was banished. Though common in this day and age, no child should have to bear hearing others trash-talk a loving parent.
For any new readers who may not know my story, late in June 2021, I relocated to a new state. Within a month, I had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery, followed by COVID, then months of slow and difficult recovery. In December, just as I was starting to feel halfway decent again, I had to have sternum reconstruction surgery because my sternum failed to heal properly after bypass. All that coughing from the COVID kept the bones from knitting back together.
Here I am now, mid-March, about to have hernia repair surgery tomorrow. Between work, doctors and hospitals, I have literally had NO time to form new relationships where I now live. In fact, I’m very lucky to still have a job! Part of the relocation to my new state was to be closer to my oldest and youngest kids, but they are still a good 90-minute drive away, and one is building a career while the other is preparing to embark on the next phase of her life, away at college.
So I find myself quite lonely.
I will say, however, that two guys, members of the local LGBTQ+ community have reached out to me and stay in touch, encouraging me from time to time. I have met one of the gentlemen, a member of a group of gay men who have dinner once a week. Unfortunately, with all the medical issues and medical bills, I have only been able to attend once. The other gentleman met me for a cocktail one evening. I’m sincerely hoping this hernia surgery tomorrow will be the last medical procedure for a while. If not, I may need to adopt the local medical association as my new family.
This story is a response the Prism & Pen writing prompt, May I Present My Queer Family.
