I been hesitant to continue with my story. Probably like you, our stories never really seem to stop. I am at an age where my family and friends are experiencing either extreme happiness or much sorrow. Our parents are older, our parents are in the process of dying or have died. Children are leaving to college, children are having babies. Life is on full display.
I am probably going to end my story, here, telling my mother, “I am gay.” While it was difficult to do, I think at the time I viewed it as another hurdle to jump through in a life at a time, when everything had gone from order to chaos. I didn’t really even get the time to go to therapy in order to try to make some type of logical sense in my life. My ex-wife was intending to move in with my sister and my brother-in-law. What I do remember is asking my ex-wife that if this is what you intend to do, then please let me go down South to tell my mother, “I am gay.” I also had to tell my mother that “I am getting a divorce, and that I cheated on my wife.” There is a lot all there, breakup, divorce, and outed. Even now, it is difficult to look back and view it all. My mother lived 150 miles away from me along the Texas-Mexican border. So, I left the city in my car driving south, I had called her in advance to let her know that I was coming down. To be honest I don’t remember a thing about driving down. The only thing I can actually remember now was sitting at my mother’s kitchen table. It was a Saturday afternoon, and since I visited my mother almost every other Saturday, there was an extreme ordinariness to the whole setting. Well, I am afraid my admission was quite anti-climactic. After sitting and driving in a car for over two hours, I just wanted everything to be over. My mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and I just told her everything. Blatant, upfront, and non-dramatically, I told her, “I was gay.” I think she looked at me for less than five seconds, and she said, “I know.” She then went to talk of the past. She went into a conversation that she said we had on one of our Saturday afternoon lunches in Mexico. In that conversation of the past, I told my mother, “I am getting married.” She said, “Are you sure you want to do that?” Of course I wanted to get married, I was in love. When she brought it all up at the table that Saturday, I honestly didn’t remember a thing. I have had four years to think about it, and it’s only now that I vaguely remember the conversation prior to our marriage. At the time that she was questioning me getting married, I thought maybe she was just questioning me as to my readiness. I had no idea what she was really referencing. Twenty-four years later, I tell my mother “I am gay.” She said, “I know, now let’s go to lunch!” It was nowhere near as dramatic as I thought it would be. However, the non-dramatic conversation has opened a door to my subconscious, a door that remains open still today, because it has a long unknowing list of questions that will forever remain unanswered now because both of my parents are deceased. I find myself wondering when did my mother suspect me of being gay? I assume it was at a very young age. I fit the pattern of having an emotionally distant father and an overcompensating mother full of love. Somethings seem just to make more sense now more than they ever have, especially my relationship with my father. I don’t get extreme joy by unloading my dirty laundry to others on the Internet. What I am trying to do here is to help the person who still struggles. My experience is that it’s especially hard to be who you want to be. Also, by denying the truth or by not challenging yourself to really know who you are, you cheat yourself out of much of the joys of life. I lived in denial, I buried a truth that others all could see. To be who you are, what bigger commandment can there be? You cannot love another, if at first you don’t love yourself.
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Christian Cantu
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December 2019
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