Mom knew I was gay. Everyone knew. I must have known it since I was five, but I denied who I was, instead, I lived through many years of sadness.
I was bullied, ridiculed for being soft.
It was how I saw myself — just soft.
Being called gay was a slur, it cut through me. It was one of the early words I learned at school, not from books or the teacher.
I learned it from my classmates who were slightly older than me, who probably didn’t know any better.
Kids are kids. They say things they don’t understand.
But it didn’t stop with the kids.
I heard it from adults too.
. . .
My parents separated when I was twelve years old. But even when they were together, my father was absent in my life.
He never laid a hand on me or any of my siblings. But I hardly had any memory of him talking to me.
He was just there.
Being the only boy in the family, I thought I would have a special relationship with my father — I never did.
It was the same with my sisters.
I have five siblings, all women.
Growing up in a household full of women and a very strong mom only made it easy for me to blame everything on my family.
The reason I was gay was I had an absent father and a very strong mother.
None of this was true, nor is hell my final destination for being gay.
I was born this way.
. . .
The Bible
Although I was brought up as a Catholic, I later went to a school with strong evangelical Christian roots.
By the time I was seven, I began to read the Bible. I started hearing from the preacher about salvation, who would later tell the story about Sodom and Gomorrah, and how God destroyed the city and its people because of their wickedness.
But it wasn’t wickedness that was preached when I first heard of the story, it was gay sex.
And if I want to be in heaven, I better not be gay.
The struggle was real.
. . .
First Crush
It was in the third grade that I had my first male crush. I never called it that, I only wanted to be his best friend.
He was the John Travolta of the class, it was the time of Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
He danced so well, that he was everyone’s crush from grade school up until high school.
He never knew, he never asked.
It was all part of growing up.
. . .
First Heartbreak
I was 19, he was 21.
Everyone must go through their first heartbreak, including gay people. I was still very much in the closet.
We were officemates.
We started as friends, but feelings got in the way, and later on, after he broke up with his girlfriend we had sex.
To him it was sex, but for me it was love.
You don’t give away your virginity that easy, right?
We were both young, and he was straight, that’s what he said.
I was still in the closet, and very much afraid of what my first sex experience meant — a one-way ticket to hell.
It was all so confusing, that one day I resigned and never saw him again.
Well, thirty years afterwards I did see him, but that’s another story.
. . .
In my 20s, I only had sex a few times.
At the gym, where closeted men and straight men, after their rigorous workouts and the hormones, go haywire. Gay sex was a thing before everyone hit the shower.
That’s where I had casual sex.
Because at the back of my mind, I can fix this or it or whatever name I call it, even the word gay was a hard word for me to say.
It was until I met Bam, I was 32.
It was almost magic. And like all magic, it disappeared into thin air.
He was trying to sort out his young life, he was 27. We both love watching movies, music, and going to church.
He never said he was gay. Neither did I.
In “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” Julianne, the character played by Julia Roberts said,
I didn’t say it, neither did he. There was love, I knew that to be true but it passed us by.
One day he was gone.
When he left, I finally said to myself, I’m gay!
It will take the pandemic, and my mom’s death to give me the courage to say hello to him on LinkedIn.
It took twenty years. He replied, but he was being polite. That was it. Closure, maybe?
. . .
It will take me another four years to recover from Bam.
And by that, I mean to live.
It brought me all the way to the Love Boat to find a new love and a new life as a cruise photographer who ended up traveling around the world.
I was 36, he was 37.
Love at first sight?
To him it was, I was already seeing someone in the boat.
It will take a few more cruises before I said yes to a date.
Soon, we would be a couple and I thought finally, a fairy tale ending to a life of almost four decades filled with sadness.
Because it was the way I would describe my life even after I came out, even after I accepted that I’m gay — I was still sad.
It was too good to be true.
I was blindsided. He was a cheater.
It took three years before I finally gave up on my fairy tale.
More heartaches.
. . .
I went home.
A failed romance, an end to my career as a cruise photographer, and soon, I would begin life as a caregiver to Mom.
It will be all of seven years.
It wasn’t easy. It will take the pandemic, and her death to make me realize that the journey was all worth it.
But I never knew that when she was alive, I was both miserable and sad.
. . .
Today, I’m partnered with two dogs.
I’m still sad. I am still trying to work on how to be happy and also lessen my anger.
Now that I’m in my 50s, I find myself asking the same questions from the time I was young.
To be honest, none of it can be further from the truth.
I would still be sad even if I am straight.
Because there’s more to being gay, there’s life.
A lot of things happen in our life that are beyond our control. A lot of expectations and disappointments. And many of that have nothing to do with being gay, it’s all part of the human experience.
Coming out will not lead you to the rainbow, but it’s the first step.
It will take a lot of rain before we see the rainbow.
Thank you for reading.
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This post was previously published on The Narrative Arc.
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