Written by Jessica Nelson.
I was in the fourth grade when I first heard the words ‘faggot’ and ‘dyke’. I could tell that neither of these was anything that you wanted to be associated with. Growing up in a strict, Black, Christian household in Texas, raised by a mother who grew up in the Bible Belt, I knew I couldn’t ask what these words meant. So I listened to kids use it as a playground insult and then I started to use it too. My brother and I even traded it as an insult in the house when our mom wasn’t in earshot. I carried this with me, these slurs that I thought were just playground insults. When I got to the seventh grade, my Spanish teacher told us about the gay neighborhood of Houston. Everyone thought it was funny, so I thought that I did too. But something else was happening with me too, while everyone else started admitting to crushes on boys, I felt left out. Why didn’t I feel this rush of butterflies when the cute boy in class smiled at me? When I met Camille, the star player in our district, at a basketball game, I began to discover why. I started to feel that flutter of butterfly wings, not for the cute boy but for the girl I was chasing after on the basketball court.
I knew this was bad, those words came back to mind, ‘faggot’, ‘dyke’. I was scared, this couldn’t be me, this can’t be what I’m feeling. I ran from these feelings, but all of a sudden I couldn’t help but notice other girls in my class. In the midst of puberty, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I felt bad. Not the bad that you feel when you take a cookie without asking, but the kind of bad that runs deep and fills you with guilt and shame. I carried this with me. I pushed down those thoughts, those butterflies with their fluttering wings and I closed myself off. If I couldn’t be normal, then I wouldn’t like anyone.
I finally entered high school and I thought these thoughts were behind me, but who do I find at school with me, on a team with me? None other than Camille. When I saw her again for the first time, I was shocked, I was dismayed, I was aroused. The butterflies came back with a vengeance letting me know that I had been fooling myself.
Again, I tried to push down these feelings, be ‘normal’. In my high school of 4,000 students, we had one kid who was out of the closet. He was brave when they shouted “queer” at him in the hallways, he didn’t hide when they threw trash at him, and he wore it like a badge of honor when they yelled “faggot”. I was envious in how he could be so self-assured, stand tall amidst all the hate being slung at him. Those words stung me, but I couldn’t tell my friends, couldn’t even talk to the one kid that might understand what I was going through. If I said the words, that would make it real and it couldn’t be. I was still waiting to grow up, to grow into that straight woman that I was supposed to be.
I researched in secret, I joined chat rooms, I asked Jeeves, I did all that I could to prove that this was a phase and I wasn’t actually ‘that way’. All it did was tell me what I feared.
When I began to experience the freedom that college granted me, away from the church, that I loved but didn’t always love me, away from the mother who asked if I needed to go to the conversion camp she’d heard about on the radio, away from the house where I had to look over my shoulder while figuring out who I was. I went to the campus LGBT center, as an ally, because as a member of the ROTC program, being gay was not allowed. I met others like me, women and men, some self-assured and some questioning like me. We went out to bars together, had secret meetings and movie nights together, I could be myself when I was with them. Still shy, still questioning myself but not hiding. During the day, I was a cadet but at night, I was me.
My sophomore year, my friend in the Corps was outed. He was promptly removed from his unit, forced to move out of the dorms, and publicly shamed among the Corps. I was terrified by what happened to him. But something weird occurred to me, he was happy, he no longer had to hide who he was from the world. He became a beacon of light to those of us in the Corps who were still closeted.
In 2009, I was outed.
I left college my junior year. Among the pressure of trying to be someone I wasn’t, working multiple jobs, and being a student and Corps member, I began having panic attacks. Again, I confided in no one about these as they didn’t fit into the mold of good daughter on her way to graduating and joining the military. I didn’t tell anyone I left college for a month and a half. I moved to Mississippi with my dad. I ended up leaving stuff at my mom’s house in Texas, not thinking anything of it. A few months into living with my dad, while at home, he calls me over and says that he needs to talk to me. Thinking it’s about bills or something, I say “what’s up?” He responds that my mom called him and told him that I was gay or questioning my sexuality and he needed to talk to me about it. I froze. I seized up and didn’t know what to do. How could she do this and why? It hurt, everything in my body hurt. I walked away from him. I ignored my mother for months after the fact and refused to talk to them about this. She proceeded to tell her family about this, without my consent, and I was lost.
The feeling of being outed before you’re ready is something that you can’t fully describe. It’s a feeling of betrayal, fear, loneliness, the feeling of a scared animal caught in a trap. I had to keep moving, so I pretended that nothing happened. Except for not speaking to my mother, everything went back to normal but my trust in people about this was gone. I was afraid of what people could do if they found out, would I be outed again?
Soon after, I enlisted into the military. In the Marine Corps, I went deep into the closet. I was coined a “bitch” for turning down men for dates, thought of as cold because I didn’t date, but I couldn’t let them know who I was and what I was hiding. Over the course of 5 years, I told one other Marine about my struggle and that I was gay and he has been by my side ever since. He didn’t understand but he loved me just the same. He didn’t know but he saved me a little bit, he was the first person I made the choice to tell and he didn’t run, he didn’t shout at me, he just said “okay” and asked me who I thought was cute.
After leaving the Marine Corps, I found myself in a very different space, Northampton, Massachusetts. Northampton was like no place I had ever been, it was liberal, queer in all meanings of the word, and it was liberating. In NoHo, as they call it, you could be almost anything you wanted without judgment. I’d never been in a place like this. I discovered new terms, I had a queer community, I went in and out of the closet, I fell in love, I fell out of love. I learned to love myself. At 29 years old, I had finally learned how to love myself, how to be okay with myself, and I learned that it’s okay to not always be okay.
Now back down South, where my roots are, I am hoping to make change for young people to make their path a little easier than mine. Times have changed but some people haven’t. I have pledged to serve my community in the ways I wish I had access to growing up.
Coming out is not always a linear journey, in fact it’s often not. The struggles make you who you are. Sometimes it may seem impossible, but if you push through then you may find something good on the other side. My journey was not always easy, I wasn’t always sure, but I got to where I am today because of everything that I’ve been through and every day I become more proud of who I am, Black, queer, Christian, and so much more.
“I’m here, and I stay.”
コメント