Like Me

I just finished reading Chely Wright's coming out memoir,  "Like Me", for the second time.  The first time i read this book, it had just been released.  I'd gone to the book store looking for it but wasn't convinced i'd have any success because there isn't typically a large inventory of coming out memiors in Destin, FL.  Still, a shred of hope remained that i might discover it in the autobiographies.  As i recall, i was having some difficulty locating it so i reluctantly asked an employee to help... all the while wrestling with the ever-present fear of how i'd be perceived for my interest in such material. Back then I still cared.  I remember thinking  if the book weren't about someone's coming out journey, it would be odd that a much publicized new release would be so difficult to find... but not in the Redneck Riviera.  Nope.

Nonetheless, my tenacity had served me.  We found the book in its inconspicuous hole, and I promptly found the nearest overstuffed chair, sat down, and flipped through it.  I perused the chapters for a minute or so, and then almost involuntarily, as if I were thirsty and reaching for a tall glass of water,  I made a beeline for the first page and blazed through the first few chapters.  It wasn't long before i knew this book was going to change some things for me, and though this terrified me, i kept reading.

I had been "out" for some years.  I was definitely out to my circle of friends, albeit small.  And i had come out to my family.... on several occasions... but that was mostly an awkward and painful exchange.  As i sat with that book in my hand, my relationship of 5 years was unraveling as we'd both been self-medicating for decades to survive the pain of our respective journeys.  The crux of our demise, though we couldn't see it at the time, was unquestionably rooted in our incapacity for authenticity.   This is a byproduct of addiction, but it originates with trauma and the fear of reliving it, whether emotionally or physically.  As i sat and read this book that day, i was unaware i would soon be having this realization, but there was an urgency in my soul to keep reading.  So i did.

 It had always been fairly easy for me to admit the chemical dependency had ravaged my relationship with Sarah.  I could generally grasp how detrimental addiction was, and i was even willing to admit i'd lost the ability to choose something different.   We both felt stuck in so many ways, and we'd reached a point where most days, we couldn't find a common ground unless we were sitting on a bar stool.  We knew we were sick and suffering, but it was too daunting a foe for either of us to battle so we continued to watch helplessly as it ruled us.  For many years, i carried a great amount of shame over my inability to be a more authentic version of myself and make no apologies for it.  When it came to my relationship with Sarah, i seemed to always edit my conversations with certain people in my life. This hurt me for her, and i knew it wasn't fair.  At the time, it felt like the easier, softer way, but much like my addiction to alcohol, each time i indulged,  a piece of me vanished... never to return.

Sarah had a very different experience coming out to her family. When she finally told her parents she's gay, her mom replied, "Oh honey, you scared me.  I thought you were going to tell me you are a Republican."  We always had a good laugh about that, but the reality is, this was a pretty atypical response growing up in the midwest and living most of our adult life in the deep south.  So we each, through our own experiences, carried an immense amount of fear around with us like a ball and chain... everywhere we went.
We moved to Destin, FL in 2007.  We'd only been in town a couple of weeks.  We'd only been together about 9 months.  We didn't have much money so one evening we decided to go to the book store.  The aforementioned book store.  The one where the coming out stories are buried beneath the college football magazines.  Excited to connect with our new community, we got ourselves a coffee, hung out a while, dreamed about the books we would buy when we had the money, and skipped out the front door.  I remember feeling carefree which was a rare occasion during that time in my life.  It was a beautiful evening on the coast,  and as we walked across the parking lot to our vehicle... a group of people circled past us in a lifted 4x4 (stereotypical, i know.. but that was the scene) and yelled out the open window, "Why don't you get a fuckin' room!?"  Unbeknownst to us, we'd been holding hands... a completely benign act of love which apparently caused someone so much discomfort that they needed to project those insecurites onto others to find relief.  Maybe we were naive... maybe we were in love... maybe we'd surely never fucking do that again.  And we didn't.
The verbal assault was loud, mortifying, and left nothing to the imagination about the potential fallout in our new home if we were to bear any resemblance to who we really were.  Looking back, it's amazing how many compromises we made because we didn't know we deserved better.  Our self-worth had been systematically diminished through years and years of  "You're a disappointment.",  "God disapproves of you.", "You are damaged goods".  We were so accustomed to compartmentalizing and dismantling ourselves in order to make others more comfortable.  When that person yelled those words that night, i felt angry.  I felt protective.  AND I felt like running.  So instead of giving myself permission to feel those things and allowing myself the space make healthy decisions,  I sat right down in the middle of myself and doused the anger with alcohol and self-pity.  I bolstered the fortress around my soul in order that no one would ever be able to hurt and/or scare me like that again.  And I ran... and ran... and ran.   I ran to the liquor cabinet.  I ran away from love.  I ran to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and to the edges of insanity.   I tried to run away from myself only to find i'd been followed.... day after day.

Sarah and I didn't really talk about the incident that night, though we are able to candidly discuss it now.   We sat mostly in silence on the way home from the book store, with an occasional, "What an asshole!"  I think for both of us, it was life-altering.. though we couldn't have known it at the time.  The message was simple.  "You are not welcome here."  "We don't accept you." "Your happiness is offensive to us."  This was the same message we'd received our entire lives so of course we bought it.

 And though it may not have been a conscious decision, we never again held hands in public in Destin, FL.  In fact, if ever we touched in public, there was first an automatic, acute and thorough assessment of who was near, where we were, and how we might go about escaping a potentially hostile audience.  I became so adept at  this process that the whole thing lasted only seconds and appeared pretty effortless to those who didn't know our struggle... which was pretty much everyone.  Over the course of the next few years, this rivaled addiction as the most damaging force in our relationship.  In my case, it was the origin and impetus of the addiction, though I didn't fully understand the extent of it until years after I got sober.
That said, we were hiding less than we ever had in the sense that most people in our lives knew we were a couple, but we'd also learned that as long as we didn't display any proof (I.e. "throw it in their faces")... They would treat us as human beings rather than carriers of disease.  And we preferred to be treated like humans.
  We eventually found an amazing few friends in Destin.... people who did accept us, though by this time we had already solidified the duality of our existence and were not about to upset the apple cart.   It's difficult to say how some of those people might feel if they'd experienced us in our authentic forms.   I'm not saying the opinion of one group of monster truck enthusiasts in a jacked up pick-up is a blanket statement for an entire community, but i will say that the night in the book store parking lot wasn't an isolated incident.  Over and over, the message was reinforced.  We were propositioned for strange sexual ventures more times than i'd like to admit by men who clearly didn't comprehend the most basic definition of the term "lesbian".  We were evicted from our residence because the owner forgot to read the whole Bible, and she unfortunately missed the parts about how to be an actual Christian... which may or may not involve love, compassion, and lack of judgment.... or at the very least, not putting a couple of folks on the street because you've deemed yourself the one person on the planet who is without sin and has been therefore granted the pious privilege to cast stones.  Yeah... no.  Just no.
Shortly after we both got sober, we began to compile what would become 21 pages of documentation and countless police reports regarding our next door neighbor's relentless quest to force us out of our home because his narrow spectrum of humanity caused him to react violently to us without any provocation whatsoever .  He was brazen in his disdain for us.  He did not, for a second,  pretend there was some other reason he hated us besides the structure of our family unit.   We were "the fucking lesbians" to him.  He shouted insults our direction nearly every time we came in contact with him.  He trespassed on our property often... throwing dog shit, among other things, all over our outdoor living space. He often invited his friends to join him in his mission.  Most times they obliged.
Here's what we did.  We stayed sober.  We never allowed him to force us out.  We never retaliated or engaged in the unmitigated bedlam he perpetrated.  We stood our ground, exercised what feeble rights we had to defend ourselves, fortunately found favor with law enforcement, and ultimately came to feel compassion toward his miserable state of being.  This taught us so much about ourselves and our relationship.  Ironically,  in an effort to convince us there was something terribly wrong with us, he had shown us every single blessed thing that was right with us.  We watched people move in and out of his life with a swiftness.  We watched how downtrodden he became when he'd made a mess of things. We finally understood that the whole experience had been nothing more than a projection of his own self-loathing. He was so full of venom.  It was clear he hated himself more than he could ever hate us.   It's not an excuse, but it's a damn good explanation.  Though some days it was a challenge to keep our resentments at bay, we couldn't judge him because we'd already walked a mile in those shoes.  When we moved out of that house, it was on our terms.  We never spoke a word to him.  He never knew we were leaving until we were gone.  I think about him often, and I still hope and pray he finds relief from himself someday.  I hope he finds what I've found even though he swears it's the last thing on earth he wants.
Needless to say, we were surrounded by an unparalleled ignorance every day of our lives, and at the time we felt the best way to handle it was to minimize our visibility.  DO NOT POKE THE BEAR.  We didn't necessarily lie about our relationship, but more often than not, we prayed we didn't have to tell the whole truth.  We feared we'd be fired from jobs or denied the job altogether if the details of our family structure were raised in an interview.  We feared we'd be denied a place to live.  We feared people would distance themselves from us because often to simply be suspected gay in certain parts of this country is a spectacle unto itself.  To our knowledge, there were no other gay couples who actually lived within the city limits, and though i'm sure they existed, they sure as hell weren't motivated to discuss it either.  Consequently, we developed a mean set of poker faces.
 This is undoubtedly the most painful form of deceit.  Conversely, the pathology of absolute self-denial would have eventually led me to believe the stories i told about myself... thus relieving the push and pull.  Yes, this would have also meant i was certifiably insane, but at least maybe i wouldn't have known the difference.   As it were, i became tangled in a paradox of truths.... a duality of spirit... a great big, sloppy, walking, talking  Judas' kiss.
It wasn't until after i got sober that i realized how unbelievably devastating this has been in terms of my physical connection with my partner, but more significantly, in regard to our emotional and spiritual connection.  I sometimes still walk ahead of Sarah (partly because she drags her feet and has a shorter gait), but I understand now the psychology behind that type of body language.  It's important for me to wait on her, walk beside her, and stop trying to portray a lack of connection so the world will halt its flaming darts.  The value of this seemingly small gesture is far greater than words can articulate.  I am also not, by nature, an overtly affectionate person, but due to years of stifling what little affection I may have freely given, I'd really done a number on myself and my relationship.  I've learned that the key is letting go completely.  Only then can  we can communicate effectively and allow each other the space to dig through the rubble of a collapsed ego in order to build a bigger, stronger spiritual structure.  We are doing that every day.  Some days are better than others.  I am literally just grateful to have survived it.
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So as I sat reading at Barnes and Noble, my eyes welled up with tears over and over.  I'd only just begun to hear Chely's story, but i'd already known my own version of it for years.  I read until the store closed that evening.  I considered purchasing the book, but i didn't have the 25 bucks and i knew if i had to return to that spot to finish it, i was more likely to do so.  Accountability, among other things, eluded me then.  Also, there was something about sitting in a very public setting have a very private experience.  It disarmed me in many ways.  I became vulnerable.  I knew there was the possibility that someone i knew might see me reading that book or another customer might notice i was upset, but none of that mattered as much to me as it had before.  I needed to liberate myself from the confines of my ego.  I was beginning to ask for help.  Right there, in that bookstore...the pain of staying the same had summarily surpassed the pain of changing.

I rushed back to the bookstore the next day after work.  I found the book quickly this time, sat down in the same chair, and read with fervor.  With hope.  With fear.  With confusion.  With resolve. I finished the book that night, but not without enough tears shed to constitute a miniature cleansing.  There were parts of her story I wished were true about my story and parts of it i was thankful weren't, but by and large... it was the same story.
 I'd said that same prayer as a kid, an adolescent, and all the way through college... asking God to take away the gay. I'd said that prayer until i finally gave up on myself and found a counterfeit respite in the bottom of a bottle.  I spent my life in a constant state of fear over how people would react if they knew who i really was.  I believed them when they said, either subtly or directly, that people "like me" made them sick.  I believed I was nauseating.  I, too, gathered with my family in the living room of a home where we never missed an episode of the 90's sitcom Ellen... until "The Puppy Episode".  Then we never watched that show again.  There were jokes, but not many... because being gay was too taboo a subject to be a laughing matter.  I grew up in rural Oklahoma.  I grew up in a wonderful place for a cute little brown-eyed cowgirl but a pretty dangerous place for gay kid.  And when I say dangerous, I don't necessarily mean that I was often in physical danger.  I mostly mean that the way people spoke about gays, dismissing us as a pock mark on the face of humanity, was almost irreparably damaging to my sense of self worth.  Fortunately, i was good at most everything i tried, and i hid behind that well.  So i became a star basketball player, a "gifted and talented" student (as if all the other students weren't … ??),  vice-president of my class, and many other things which distracted everyone from my truth.  I was nominated for homecoming court, every minute of which i hated, but i did it.  I dated boys.  Popular, athletic ones.  I tried to eclipse my identity by any and all of these things, but the result was inevitable implosion after inevitable implosion.  Still i kept trying... until i started drinking... and then i just existed through many painful years of shallow breathing.

It was 2010 when "Like Me" was released, and I most likely got my hands on it somewhere around the middle of that year.  I never bought that hardback on which my tears were forever melded page after page. I vowed that I would purchase a copy of the paperback version when it came out and i had the funds.  I couldn't have known that within a few months, i would be sitting in front of Chely Wright as she read excerpts from her book and answered questions about her journey.  I also didn't know that i would ultimately end up buying the hardback on credit that same day for her to autograph... and that i would be so broken that i couldn't speak when spoken to.  That I would have the autographed copy personalized with Sarah Mae's name... as a gift... because she'd once said she wanted to read the book and I had moved out of the house two weeks prior and this would be a good way for me to see her so i could somehow try to convince myself she was okay.  I really missed her. and I knew, though the thread by which our relationship had dangled for years had finally reached its breaking point, i still loved her and wanted her to be happy.  This book had opened me to the possibility of healing.  I knew our experiences were different, but i wanted her to heal, too, and in my simple little child-like emotional state, i wanted to do something to help...……………. to be cont'd.