Living Every Moment In Fear – The Beginning
Today is the 25th anniversary of an event that few people have experienced; and that’s for the best, because every day of my life for the past 25 years has been filled with fear. It feels necessary to put these feelings into words and the words on paper; but the decision to submit it for publication is extremely difficult and scary. Will “they” be surprised? will “they” publish? Do I really want them to? What will happen if they do? Will I lose readers and followers as I lost so many friends and the respect of family members so many years ago?
That day began like so many other beautiful spring days in Indiana. I took my sons to their piano lessons and took advantage of the wait time to hand over some papers to one of my Little League officers. I was the president of the Little League, but not For real I need to deliver those papers… I just wanted to. I still didn’t realize why it was so important to me.
After ringing the doorbell, an unknown woman opened the door. I suddenly felt violently ill. The woman I really expected to see finally came to the door, ushered me in, and made introductions I never heard. My ears were ringing. My heart was beating. Nausea overwhelmed me. What was he feeling and why?
As I started driving back to my kids, I replayed the above scene over and over in my head. What had just happened? Why was he reacting so severely? When the answer finally took shape, I stopped my car on the side of the road. So I cried and cried and cried. What he was experiencing was jealousy, but jealousy of what? What did it mean?
Over the past few weeks, he’d spent a lot of time with the woman he’d gone to see to keep scores for Little League ballgames. I already knew that he was getting a divorce and that the divorce had something to do with her interest in another woman. I had been surprised by her earlier revelation, but not repelled. In fact, I started to look forward to the games we worked on together. I started making excuses to see her.
The recognition of the feeling she was experiencing as jealousy was too much to take. How could he be jealous of a woman’s affection? As a woman, she couldn’t be jealous of another woman unless…unless I…unless I was “one of those” people.
When I was young, my mother would often point me to “those” people (always men) and tell me they were going to HELL! My little brother was not allowed in a public bathroom because there might be one of “those” people waiting there to… I was never quite sure what they would do, but I definitely got the message that “those” people did it wrong . things and would be severely punished for eternity in HELL!
How could I be one of “those” people? I was 37 years old. I had a husband. I had two children about to become teenagers. I went to church every Sunday. My grandfather was a minister. This simply couldn’t be happening!
For the next few weeks, I existed in a daze. I really wasn’t fully aware of what was happening around me. I cried often, lost weight rapidly, and reflected on my past. Yes, I had been the typical tomboy. I had always hated frilly dresses and loved climbing trees. I hated playing with dolls, but I loved playing basketball with the boys at recess. In high school, I paid little attention to boys or girls, but I had a crush on my PE teacher. Back then, I hadn’t realized it was a crush (and now it seems so stereotypical), but it was a crush. In high school I had a “boyfriend” who was older, and in the military (Vietnam era); and therefore he was SAFE in the sense that he did not have to go on dates. I hated go on dates
During college, I dated a friend from high school; but he didn’t attend my college so again, the number of dates was limited. I became good friends with a freshman who lived on my floor in the dormitory where I was a member of the student staff. Her name was Barbara. She intrigued me because she was so different from your average “girly” girl, and we spent a lot of time together. We often talked for hours.
Before my junior year in college, my boyfriend asked me to marry him. He didn’t really want to marry me, but it was what good girls were supposed to do. My family liked him and his family liked me. So I said, “Yes.” Before my senior year, we got married. I cried throughout my entire wedding. now I understand what those tears were about.
As time went by, I kept doing what I was supposed to do. I finished my degree in Mathematics, started a teaching career, got a Masters in Psychology and started a family: a boy and a girl. Life seemed perfect. When my daughter was about four years old, it occurred to me that “someday her father is going to get very angry.” I didn’t have the right words to apply, but I was recognizing in her what I didn’t recognize in me.
As I looked at my past, I realized that I had always been “fascinated” by the couples of women I saw in the mall, that there was a girl from high school that I thought of periodically, and that I occasionally had fleeting sexual thoughts about certain women. which I always “close” quickly. (“I wonder how she would feel…?” or “I wish I were a man so I could…”) At the time, she truly believed that all women had such thoughts.
Even with all that pondering, he still couldn’t accept me as a… dare I say it? as a lesbian? I needed to talk to someone who could understand my confusion. All my friends and family were very religious people. In fact, everyone in the town fit that description. There would be no understanding of anyone there. The person that finally came to mind was Barbara. She had moved to Colorado right after graduation, but since she would visit her parents in Indiana and usually visit us at the same time, we stayed close. During our college days, she had always believed that she was a lesbian, but we had never discussed it. She KNEW for sure that she had a gay brother so I felt like she would listen to me without telling me she was going to HELL! I called her and asked if she could visit her, saying that she needed to talk.
Barbara thought that I had come to tell her that I was getting a divorce. When I finally mustered up the strength to tell her why she was really there, she stood up and walked out of the room. I didn’t understand. When he finally returned, he explained that the exact same thing was happening to her in Colorado. She had made room to reflect on why I had come into her life at that specific time and to consider telling me about her own struggles. We had both been attracted to unavailable women and were wondering what to do about it. As we talked, it became clear that the lesbian label was undeniable. A new life, along with its set of fears, began for both of them.
We started looking for useful information in lesbian bookstores. I didn’t know such a thing existed. We discussed the ramifications. As teachers, we were painfully aware that if anyone found out, we would lose our jobs. I had the additional complications of a husband and children. Could I stay married and pretend to be straight? If I decided I couldn’t, would my children be taken from me? At that time, lesbians were not considered suitable for raising children.
I returned to Indiana with very few responses. My husband took care of the first question a few days after I got home. One night after we went to bed, he turned to me and said, “Are you a lesbian?” I was momentarily shocked into the silence. I finally managed a shaky “Why do you ask that?” “I found this book,” he replied as he pulled out my recently purchased “Our Right to Love.” I thought that I had so carefully hidden this book in a cupboard that it never opened. I remember looking up at the sky and thinking, “Thank you for your help!”
I had never lied to my husband. He was my best friend. So I told him the truth. “That depends on your definition. If you ask me if I have had sexual relations with a woman, the answer is no. If you ask me if I now identify as a lesbian, a woman who prefers the company of a woman, then the answer is yes. “. To his credit, my husband was wonderful. We talked until late at night. He understood that this was not something he could fight against. We discussed options and ramifications. I told him that I felt he needed to move me to Colorado Springs both to be close to Barb and to get me away from Indiana. He initially decided to move in with us and helped us move and settle in Colorado. In the end, he decided that he couldn’t stay in Colorado; but I will always be grateful for his help and support. I still wish we would have remained the best of friends like he had promised.
Life in Colorado has been more difficult and scary than I ever imagined it could be. A bitter divorce, constant financial worries, raising 2 children without their father, building a new relationship with a woman, dealing with my partner’s issues related to child abuse, teaching in the environment of fear of discovery created by Focus On The Family and Amendment 2, raising a lesbian daughter, raising a teenage son in a house full of women, learning to accept myself as a lesbian, learning to to be a lesbian, no friends and constantly fearing for the safety of all of us were just some of the issues we faced; and all this will be the subject of another article.
Initially, the decision to write and submit this article seemed very difficult; But when I think of the young people who are bullied at school, who question who they are, who are thrown out of their own homes, who feel there is no hope, and who think suicide is their only option, the right choice is obvious. . . I will always feel very sad for my students who obviously, to me, needed help but didn’t get it due to my own fears. I still feel ashamed of myself for not being stronger then. Now I understand that we must all FIGHT FEAR. We must do it for those who will follow us. Hopefully, one day, no one will have to live in fear for what it is!
Am I afraid to hit the SEND button? Absolutely! Barbara has seen me cry while writing and mentally relived everything. She just asked me if I want to reconsider. Absolutely not! But when I ask myself why I haven’t written this sooner, the answer is that I’ve been afraid. Why can I write it now? I just have to. One of the magazines I write for chose FEAR as their topic of the month…and sadly, I’ve become an expert on fear!
NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO LIVE EVERY MOMENT IN FEAR FOR WHO THEY ARE!