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gay-and-also-sad · 9 months

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Homophobia, Trauma, Healing

Understanding trauma means understanding yourself. I am starting to believe that no one gets out of this life completely unscathed. No matter who you are, trauma will come for you. Sometimes it’s something that seems insignificant, sometimes it’s so gargantuan it will cast a shadow on the rest of your days, and sometimes it’s like a steady drip of water onto your forehead, pattering onto you until you go insane.

Family really is the Chinese water torture of trauma. It drips on you all childhood until one day you’re an adult and you go to college, forgetting all about the pressure on your skull. Drops aren’t worth thinking about, and your forehead is dry now anyway. So you go about your days, attending classes like nothing bad has ever happened to you.

And nothing bad has ever happened to you, to your knowledge. That is until Thanksgiving rolls around, and your mouth is full of turkey as the dripping begins again. Now though, it’s unbearable. Once you’ve felt the comfort and warmth of being dry, the drops feel like a torrential downpour. Your chest is tight for the rest of dinner, and you’re left wondering what happened.

I was talking to my girlfriend the other day about this weird thing I would do in college. I now think it was the beginning of my realization that I had been a victim of the family-style water torture. At the time I thought I was going a little insane.

While I was working, or walking to class, or taking a study break, I would spend hours a day thinking about things that my family had said, or might say, and I would have these imagined arguments with them in my head. I remember how they would fill me with this white-hot rage. I remember certain things would trigger it, too. If I saw an article about Republicans trying to pass homophobic legislation, I would seethe thinking about how my family wouldn’t see an issue, or worse, agree with it.

I had a whole script ready for the day my aunt had something to say about transgender people. The rant had the perfect amount of Biblical legitimacy, scientific evidence, and irrefutable logic. Still, when I would recite that rant to myself, testing out every single response she could possibly have, I was so angry.

For a long time I knew I needed to stop doing this. I knew it was unhealthy. I even had a hard time understanding why I was doing it. These fake arguments never made me feel better after; in fact I almost always ended up feeling much worse after it was all through. Even my partner at the time had an issue with the way I would engage with these things. So why was I doing it?

Every once in a while I would have a glimpse into my own psyche. It was always when they would finally do it, they’d finally say one of the things I had been waiting for them to say. And I had it; I had the perfect response ready.

I remember one time in the middle of a shift at my college custodian gig, I got a text. It was on the family group chat, a continuation of a conversation from the day before. They had been discussing that one of my aunt’s friends had met Mike Pence. So far, I had managed to keep myself out of the conversation, but this text was one I couldn’t ignore.

As always, I had waited patiently for them to give me a reason to retaliate. This time it came in the form of a photo of my aunt’s friends with ol’ Michael, with a caption that said he was ‘incredible, kind, humble’ and ‘a genuine believer’. Of course I knew these things weren’t true, and now that a value judgment had been made it was my time to strike.

So of course, with all of my practice I knew exactly what to say. I responded ‘yaaas we love a kind, humble, and homophobic king’, with a bunch of heart-eye emojis because of course I did. I remember sitting in a bathroom I was supposed to be cleaning, physically shaking as I wrote out that message.

That message did start a conversation, during which I did say some things I am actually proud of, although I do still think my initial response was rather funny. I think that incident was the beginning of me understanding exactly what was going on with myself. Before that I couldn’t put my finger on it, but once that happened, the light began to shine through.

There was a common theme to all of the fake arguments I would have with my family. They were all about their bigotry. I had never had a fake argument about foreign policy, or student debt, or the economy, or anything like that. Every time I found myself imagining these fights, it was always about bigotry. These episodes would also very often be triggered by something I saw in the news that I knew these relatives would agree with. The BLM protests in early 2020 somehow damaged my relationship with my grandmother, even though we’d only had one conversation about it.

So, what was going on? This didn’t make any sense. The bigoted things my relatives had said to me were few and far between, and I had spent time creating this compilation of things that they hadn’t said to me. I had seen the tip of the iceberg, and created my own behemoth underneath the surface. Now, I admit that does sound very unfair to them. I shouldn’t be ascribing views to them that they haven’t come out and said themselves. I don’t know for sure that my grandma is glad that Roe got overturned, I mean she’s never told me that directly.

But that’s the funny thing about it, every time I thought my iceberg of bigotry was unfair, they would say something out loud that I had put in the iceberg. That would always, inevitably, give me the sense that I was right in all of my assumptions. Everything they said to me now was unsurprising.

Every homophobic comment, every mildly racist line, every facebook post they made, it all reinforced my view of their beliefs. To this day, they have not said anything to me that has surprised me in terms of their opinions. I know it’s taboo to come right out and say this, but at least for the relatives I’m talking about, I have a pretty good idea of the things they believe even if they haven’t said it explicitly.

That’s the thing with bigoted views, if you have them, you’re unlikely to think very differently from other bigots. Of course there’s a difference between a TERF and a ‘yer dad’ type transphobe, but neither will tell me something about trans people that I haven’t heard before.

So, a part of my behavior made sense. The practicing I was doing in my head was paying off. Eventually they would say something, and I would have the correct talking points to counter it. But the thing was, I also had the correct talking points to counter the opinions they had on the ‘welfare state’, but I wasn’t neurotically creating arguments in my head where my grandma would talk about fraudulent food stamps, I was creating arguments in my head where she would call me a slur.

Finally, years later I have a girlfriend, and I’ve come out to them as bisexual. (Extremely fun experience 10/10 definitely won’t be writing a blog about that later.) It’s been over a year since I’ve been that angry from just thinking about what someone could say, but now I know why I would make these bigotry plays.

I think I would do this as a way to recover from the water torture that was growing up around people with bigoted views. For so long, I had just sat there while they made these comments. I remember one time I mentioned a gay person, and my aunt turned to her son and said ‘that's when two boys kiss, that’s gross, right?’ And, as the child that I was, I sat frozen, unable to counter that. Of course now we both know she can’t get away with saying things like that around me.

I wasn’t out as bisexual back then, in fact I didn’t even know I was queer at all. It sure felt like my family did though. I always felt othered, uncomfortable when they would make homophobic comments. Since I didn’t know why these words made me feel so awful about myself, I grew up saying nothing. I think these internal monologues were a way for me to fight back against the bigoted specters of the adults from my childhood.

Once I began to counter their bigoted statements as an adult, the anger began to subside. I remember when I was twenty, and I would snap at my family when they would say something awful. There was such a rage behind my voice that I knew they weren’t listening. I had to get it out though, I had to say something.

Now I’m glad I said something. I think actually saying something did more healing than arguing with a fake version of their bigotry ever could. When they say something awful now, I’m able to counter it calmly, in a way that they will listen to. That was always my goal in college. I really believe people are generally good, that they’re capable of change. There is a certain level of finesse needed when pointing out someone needs to change though.

I was always so frustrated when my grandpa would say a slur, and I would snap at him, angrily telling him to never say that again. I knew he wouldn’t be receptive to that, and in fact, I may have pushed him further into his bigotry. I do think those times were more for me than they were for anyone else. I think it’s a necessary stage though, to get to a place where you can respond in a way they will be receptive to.

I’m finally at that stage. The final evolution where you become some sort of a ‘bigot whisperer’. They’ll listen to you, and at least in my experience, they will get a little better. There was a brief window where I saw a future where I could attend family gatherings without having a full blown trauma response afterward.

Then, I got a girlfriend. Once the bigotry is directed back at you, all bets are off. Now I felt like I was back at square one, unable to calmly engage with them. Part of that was because it was digging up all of the childhood trauma I had from their homophobia, and part of it was because of the sheer weight of it all. I have had nearly a full year of every sphere of my life being infiltrated by queerphobia. I’ve lost friends, had to endure transphobic threats at work, and now my family was being very really extremely normal about it.

So what’s the point of all this rambling? Two things, I think. One is that growing up around homophobes is traumatic, no matter how mild it is. For years I’ve been experiencing symptoms of it. Sure, the comments were few and far between. The comment my aunt made about gay people being ‘gross’ was honestly the worst one I think I’ve heard from them. Over the years though, it’s been hundreds of mild comments that paint a picture.

Now they’re part of the mosaic of homophobia. A small piece in a machine that exists only to crush me and people like me. Their piece may be small, but I think I was hyper fixating on it because it’s the only piece I felt like I had the power to change. It’s also the only piece that exposed me to homophobic religious trauma for my entire childhood, no matter how mild it was.

That much was easy enough for me to understand. It’s hard to accept that something so small can traumatize you. It makes you feel weak. But then you remember that at least you weren’t telling a 12-year-old how being gay is a sin, because that is infinitely more pathetic.

I think there’s another realization that is important to make, and it’s one that has been very difficult for me. Homophobia is traumatic, yes, that’s true, but the thing that was difficult for me to realize is that it needs to be treated the same way as any other trauma.

I’ve been having such a hard time standing up for myself because homophobia is so socially acceptable today. Most people do not understand how incredibly fucked up it is to sit someone down and tell them, ‘I have no problem with you being gay, but I do ask that you refrain from showing affection to your girlfriend in my house’.

I know that is an insane sentence. I know that the second half completely negates the first half, but the reality is that there is an entire political ideology set up to convince people that that is a perfectly acceptable sentence to say. So every time I fold, and I try to explain the insanity to the person, instead of rejecting it outright.

The correct response to that sentence is, ‘You obviously do have a problem with me being gay, and I will not be coming to your house any longer’. But instead I spend hours trying to get that person to understand why that sentence upsets me, to get them to see my point of view. The truth is, there are mountains of social messaging that tell that person that since they said they ‘don’t have a problem with gay people’, whatever they say afterward isn’t homophobic.

It very clearly is, and saying homophobic things to a gay person is traumatic. Doubly so when you then act like there’s no reason for the gay person to be upset with you. Triply so when you then accuse the gay person of oppressing you.

It’s pure insanity. The likes of which you typically only see from narcissists and emotional abusers. And queer people should have no qualms treating these homophobic ‘opinions’ the same way you would treat a verbally abusive parent.

At least for me, I get a lot of guilt about doing that. I know why they believe the things they do, I know they sincerely believe their homophobia doesn’t hurt me. So, I feel guilty for making them feel bad for their bigotry. I feel guilty for making them realize how horrible they’ve treated me. I am trying to move past that guilt, because I think I owe it to myself to stand up for myself without apology.

It is sometimes necessary to engage with homophobes in the same way you would an emotional abuser. You should put yourself first. If you feel like you can’t handle a conversation, you should leave. You should set your boundaries firmly and stick to them. You should engage in a conversation only when they seem open to change and you feel like you can handle it.

If having a relationship with your biological family is something that is very important to you, then you should make your best attempt to keep those relationships. But I beg you, please do not let those relationships come at a detriment to your mental health. If these people really care about you, they’ll eventually realize how their homophobia hurts you and change. If you find yourself in fight or flight at the Christmas dinner table though, it might be time to leave.

The only thing I feel I have left unaddressed is how the bigoted members of my family feel about all of this. Empathy can only go so far. Some of these people want you to have so much empathy that you will let them wipe their shoes on you because they are dirty. Don’t be a doormat. You deserve so much more.

#coming out #trauma #lgbt #tw homophobia #childhood trauma #homophobia

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