I wrote this a year ago and as I sat and thought tonight what PRIDE month means to me it is so much more than parades and drag shows and flags flying high. It is the acknowledgment of pain and sacrifice of countless queer individuals. It is a declaration of freedom and acceptance of oneself even if that means disownment by others. PRIDE is the life saving breath that filled my emptiness when I was told I was disowned, undeserving, dead and damned. We celebrate PRIDE in June, but it’s the story of how I came to have and experience my own PRIDE that I carry with me always.
I hesitate to share…the story needs work, there are many gaps that still need filled and it’s unpolished. But it’s raw and it’s real and it MY PRIDE
June 2020
It’s PRIDE month; June. It wasn’t too long ago that I couldn’t acknowledge it was PRIDE month or say that I was proud of who I am. I couldn’t go to PRIDE events without lying about being there or why I was attending. Seven years ago; 2013, I was drinking myself to death in a hotel room at a super 8 because I thought that being dead was far better than what I knew I was; gay.
It was the first of many attempts to kill myself or trying to drink until I never woke up again. I lost count of how many times I whispered to myself as I passed out “please let this be the last time I’m awake”. Had it not been for my love for my beautiful German Shepherd, Mateo and my instinct to care for him I would have just put a revolver to my head.
I feared death and longed for it. I couldn’t see a way I could live in the world. In the world I had been exposed to, in the home and religion I grew up in. I was an abomination. I was possessed by the devil according to my family of origin. God would find a way to kill me, so why not just do it myself. My father was a pastor for most of my life, and then in my early twenties became an unaccredited, uneducated and dangerous religious counselor. If you pray hard enough, you’ll be cured of any affliction. If you say the right combination of incantations to dispel the devil, you’ll be healed.
This type of religious practice riddled my childhood and made life incredibly perplexing. Their religious practice relied heavily on the belief in evil spirits, demon possession and righteous hatred and racism.
I look back now after years of intensive therapy and thankfully a clear, sober mind and realize I was raised in a cult. An extremely damaging cult. You fell in line or you found yourself the scapegoat and target for any number of the skeletons in our numerous bone filled closets.
My family of origin hates. They hate well. It’s one of the few things they do perfectly.
They hate Latinos, they hate African Americans, they hate Native Americans, they hate Gays, they hate Catholics, they hate Methodists, they hate democrats, they hate liberals, they sort of like republicans but most republicans weren’t good either, they hate anyone who is not white. White is best, but you can’t be too rich or too poor. They hate and judge anyone not part of our very specific belief system. So if you weren’t the right kind of white “Christian” then you were also hated. I grew in a church denomination called Berean. But I realize now my father (Roger is how he shall now be referred to) turned his church and our house into a sect of religion that was a cult. He was the ultimate authority in his mind and in deed.
Thankfully I was different somehow. I could never hate like they did and could not understand why they did so. I remember as a small child hearing this hateful speech from them and feeling uncomfortable. I instinctually knew there was something not ok with how my family perceived the world and how they lived within it.
Being gay truly saved my life. I had these messages of hate deeply engrained into my psyche, but because I knew I was different I thankfully never believed as they did. But growing up hearing these messages of hate made it impossible not to hate myself.
I was born into this family, and even as a small child I was certain I must have been adopted. There was no way I shared DNA with humans like this. But the older I became the more I looked like the rest of my family of origin and I had to accept the fact; to my great shame, that they were in fact my biological family.
I was 3 when I remember I felt pressured in Sunday school to ask “Jesus into my heart” so I didn’t go to hell. I did it because the alternative sounded pretty awful. I had been hearing those words from the time I could form and understand language. If you don’t have Jesus in your heart you go to hell. I remember that same Sunday night I walked with Roger from the parsonage where we lived to his church next door and showed him the Sunday school room in the basement of that church where I had said that magical prayer I had been so badgered with. Even at 3 I could tell he was relieved that another of his children wouldn’t be burning in hell for all eternity. A few years later my sister had a similar “conversation” moment, but hers was much more traumatic as she truly was scared to death of this place called hell and ending up there. She sobbed for hours on end praying over and to make sure she did it right and that it stuck.
For me it was pragmatic to say what needed said, but as a small child I already questioned why. My life seemed to go on that way; questioning, trying desperately to believe these stories that seemed more like fairy tales or were simply used in our house to broker fear and allegiance. I mean come on! A giant boat that was filled with animals and only one family to repopulate the earth? I mean the instances of incest in the Bible are so numerous you lose count. I remember as a child asking how that was ok, and Roger simply saying “those were different times” and it was in God’s plan at the time. Perhaps that’s part of why one of my older brothers got away with sexually abusing me for years, and why it was excused, and I was blamed when I finally had the courage to tell my parents what he did to me. He said he didn’t do it, he said I was lying, he to this day says my memories of what he did to me are false. I hope the truth haunts him! I hope the weight of lying to everyone about who he is chases after him like wolves stalk their prey! I hope the reality of the monster he is snarls at his heels as it closes in on him. I hope the truth rips the last breath he has from his body and shreds him apart to show all those in my family of origin who believe the lies his grotesque, decaying heart.
Had heinous acts like that not been excused and swept under the rug perhaps I wouldn’t have started cutting, and self mutilating at the age of 12. An addiction that I would struggle with into my thirties and still grapple with.
But I digress; far-fetched bible stories is what we were discussing. As a child and adolescent, I heard stories and wanted to believe them, acted like I believed them so as not to incur any unnecessary wrath but that was a difficult pill to swallow. A man whose strength came from never cutting his hair; Rapunzel anyone?! A talking donkey? The Red Sea splits wide open because some old guy holds up a magic stick? And that’s just in the Old Testament. The far-fetched stories in the New Testament are just as ludicrous. The stories I heard from the Bible sounded just like all the other fairy tales, mythology and lore I thankfully heard in secular circles. Those Bible stories were used to frighten us into submission and obedience.
Religion was used to bully and control, and so went my life even after I had graduated high-school and moved out into the world on my own. We were groomed to be enmeshed into a lifestyle, and any deviation from said lifestyle was a sin against God.
My being gay was a death sentence in my family of origin’s eyes.
As I stop and look back at my life now, it is obvious to me that I was born gay. I have always had crushes on and attraction to women. I tried to force myself to like, be attracted to and even date males, but I knew it was unnatural for me. I tried so hard to be and feel “normal” to fit into the religious values I had been taught.
I moved away to college and immersed myself in a church organization hoping that would cure me. Hoping that would make me feel normal and less out of place. I would go to church on Sunday, and Thursday and see the beautiful girls there and tell myself I only noticed them because I wanted to be like them, but the butterflies I would get from their hugs or innocent affections always confirmed what I feared most.
I was desperate to fit in with the religious group, with my family of origin and to get and keep my parents’ approval. My relationship with my biological parents was strained for many reasons. As a freshman in college I finally told them what my brother had done to me all those years and I was told I was a liar. I dealt with the flashbacks and trauma for years. I was blamed for any bad tidings that occurred amongst them. If something happened that was unplanned or less than satisfactory it was because of my sin of lying according to my parents. For years this went on, until I finally stopped fighting them to believe me at around the age of 25. I simply couldn’t bear it any longer. They forced me to have a relationship with my abuser, they called me a liar and a sinner. I was told I would be punished for my sin of trying to slander my brother’s name. The weight of their shame on me the victim became more than I could bare.
When I was 23 or 24 Roger stepped down from his church. He had lost the confidence of his congregation and essentially chose to leave rather than be forced out. I was somehow to blame for this happening to him. According to them, my telling the truth about the years of abuse cost Roger his job, and my mother (Brenda) her dignity somehow. This alone would have been enough for another person to walk away from their family of origin but being so enmeshed in their cult mentality I could not escape them.
And then it happened. I was 26 and working for a social work agency when I saw a woman through the window where I was working and got butterflies so intensely that I could not deny them. In that moment I was terrified. I knew I was incredibly attracted to her, and that scared me to death. I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling. That moment of realization started me on a downward spiral of hiding, and fighting my identity. I lived two lives; one at work with this co-worker that I soon developed an intense infatuation with, and the life I showed my church friends and my family. This hiding and lying about who and what I am is what initially pushed me to start drinking. At first my drinking was purely social. I would go to the lesbian bars and insist I was there as a straight woman just trying to be a friend and an ally. I was only lying to myself as I continued to meet women and develop crushes on and spend time with them. When I spent time with one of these women, I felt alive in that moment, but as soon as I would leave the religious inflicted guilt and shame would press in on me so heavily the only escape I had was to drink. I drank to forget who I was, and I drank to give me the courage and lose my inhibitions enough to act on my attractions toward women.
I lived in that haze of lies and alcohol for 5 years before I got to the point where my drinking was killing me. Living two lives finally became too difficult. Living in such close proximity to my family of origin and the people I still tried to attend church with, so I decided to move. It was not a well-planned idea and more of a last-ditch effort to escape the cycle of drinking and lying. I had been talking to a woman who lived in Denver Colorado, so I decided what better way to be able to be openly gay but to move to another state. For a time, it was incredible living in Colorado! Spending time with this woman and feeling free to be myself. But my body had become too dependent on my alcohol use and I quickly progressed back into my dangerous cycle of binge drinking. So now I was not only lying to people I met out in Colorado about my alcoholism, but I was still lying to my family of origin about being gay when they would call.
My lies were stacking up and my drinking had taken over my life. I tried to stop drinking on my own, but the DT’s and withdrawals were so bad I would hallucinate and have seizers. My hallucinations were so intense I had no concept of what was real and what was a withdrawal induced conjuring my mind created. So, when my parents and siblings showed up on my doorstep, I wasn’t sure if it was real or something my alcohol-soaked brain had made appear.
It quickly became a very sobering moment for me when I realized they were there to take me back to NE and attempt to force me to be straight using conversion therapy.
I will acknowledge that they did one positive thing and that was pressing pause on my drinking by taking me from Denver without my consent, I was on a downward spiral of drinking myself to death. So, in that way they did one good thing even though that wasn’t their intended purpose.
It was August of 2012 and I heard a knock on my door, I had been on one of my benders but at that point my tolerance level was such that I couldn’t function without a drink. I was shocked and surprised to see Brenda and my sister at the door. Saying they wanted to take me to lunch. Like I would believe they drove 7 hours to take me out for a meal. I was, even more shocked and terrified when I realized Roger and two brothers were there as well.
They took me to the hospital because I had a lot of alcohol in my bloodstream, though to me that was my normal. While there getting checked out Roger and his sons packed up and went through all my possessions without my knowledge or consent and started the process of kidnapping me and taking me across state lines back to Nebraska. My mind was racing. I had grown up immersed in trauma. Sexually abused and assaulted by one of my older brothers. I was terrorized by Roger’s explosive temper along with abusive manic and bi-polar episodes as were all of us in the house I grew up in.
I had alienated myself from the woman I had moved there to be “out n proud” with because of my lying and drinking, but I still tried to reach out to her via text and ask for help. My phone was quickly confiscated as well.
They went through all my personal belongings. The people I feared most in the world read my journals, took my phone, my computer and any method of contact with the outside world and isolated me from anything and anyone who I trusted or felt safe with. They took everything from me; put me in a car and drove me back to Nebraska.
I thought living in Colorado I was safe, I discovered quickly I was not safe from my family of origin
I knew if my family ever found out that I am gay that it would be the beginning of the end for me. The self-hatred my family had instilled in me was my constant companion. It’s what I drank over. I had heard my entire life that being gay was wrong, that it was a sin punishable by death. By DEATH & followed by eternity in hell as far as my family was concerned. So, you see how keeping this secret, my secret was vital to my own survival. Now I can honestly say that if such a thing as hell existed, I would choose eternity in it rather than one more second around my family of origin lying about who I am
Being gay meant being hated.
It meant there was something wrong with me as a human, I was one of the dirty; unclean; undesirables. Being gay was a death sentence according to my family of origin, and so I tried hard to push my feelings away. I cut myself, I tried to drink my feelings away, I nearly drank myself to death because being dead felt like a better option than being gay in my family, and honestly had I not been able to escape them death would have been the only option for me.
They came for me in Colorado, and instead of taking me to an alcohol treatment facility they kidnapped me and took me back to my parents’ house, kept me in their house for four days while I went through horrible DT’s and they tried to heal me of from being gay.
I’ll never forget Roger’s words to me that if I “chose this lifestyle” he hoped I died homeless and alone under a bridge. I spent the next four days terrorized and traumatized. They took every form of communication with the outside world away. They took a good majority of my clothing and trashed or burned them because they made me look too masculine and like a “dyke”. They forced me to burn movies, books and other items that had any hints of homosexuality or were deemed masculine or homosexual.
They kept telling me I was female and not male which meant being attracted to other females was a moral sin that God would kill me for if they couldn’t save me and heal me from this.
At night I would sing “fall” by Ed Sheeran over and over to try and remember the girl I had met from Colorado and remind myself that there was nothing wrong with what I was feeling for other women. I would stay up all night trying to detox and tell myself that I was not an abomination against nature. I’d say every girl’s name I had ever crushed on over and over to remind myself there was something else out in the world besides the ugliness being forced on me during the day.
During this time my family was harassing the girl in Colorado; Michelle. They blamed her for making me gay, they went so far as to accuse her of raping me. I felt guilty and responsible. She was innocent in all this, and a victim of both my drinking and now my family’s insanity and terrorism. I carried that shame with me for a long time. Wishing somehow, I could make amends to her; but that day will likely never occur. So, in order to make amends to her I try to live sober and proud as a strong lesbian, even though she will never know any of my pain or my remorse.
Each day my parents forced me to say prayers to be healed from being gay. They made me say chants to cleanse me of my “affliction”. Meanwhile I went along because I saw no way out. No one knew I was there. I had few friends that I was out to and who could come help. It went on like this for 3 days and finally I asked if I could have my iPod to listen to music at night with. They didn’t realize I could access the internet and communicate that way so thankfully Brenda gave it to me. Please keep in mind that all of this was happening to me as a 29-year-old adult woman. I am at times embarrassed by this, that I let them scare me and control me, but that had been my entire life. The strong cult mentality I was raised in meant I could be controlled by my fear of them. My brother assaulted me physically and sexually for years, Roger had a horrible temper and could be abusive, and Brenda was so steeped in the brainwashing of the cult we were in that she couldn’t save herself let alone any of us.
But once I got my iPod, I felt I had a chance. A chance to get away somehow. I contacted two people and told them where I was so they could start to find a way to come help me. Unfortunately, Brenda figured out that I had made contact with someone and pinned me against a wall and tried to pry it from my hands. At this point I was desperate and couldn’t take any more of them trying to cure me. I had spent my life up to that point protecting Brenda both physically and emotionally from her husband, but I shoved her off of me. This resulted in Roger getting involved and then before I knew what was happening, they had not only gotten my only way of communicating with the outside world away from me, but they had called the chief of police who had attended Roger’s church.
The police chief shows up, A friend of Roger and Brenda, and they tell me I either comply with what my parents are trying to accomplish, or they were taking me to a mental health facility. They put me in handcuffs and essentially made me swear that I would do what I was told. Now I’m not sure what the exact rule of the law is but I’m pretty sure abusing your power and authority to threaten someone because of their sexuality is a hate crime.
I endured 4 days of hate crimes committed against me. Day 4 came, and I realized as I overheard phone calls, and from computer searches I saw over my parents’ shoulder that they were making arrangements to send me to Exodus ministries in California.
If I was panicking before it was nothing compared to when I realized their long-term plan for me to go to specialized conversion therapy. My mind was spinning trying to find a way out!!
And then It came to me.
I made a deal with them. I told them I was a drunk, and an alcoholic and I needed help with that first and then I would go anywhere they wanted for the official conversion therapy. It took a lot of convincing, which entailed me having my hand held by my brother who I had been victim to his perversions for years and begging him to convince our parents to do this. That was the most difficult thing I had done so far was begging that fucking bastard to help me, but I was desperate.
So, my parents finally decided they would send me to treatment first and then to Exodus ministries.
I maybe had a way out now. They drove me to Valley Hope in Norton Kansas. They stayed in all of the intakes, even the ones that were to be private for just me. They told the staff they didn’t care so much if I was sober just as long as I was straight. They told them I had been forced into homosexual relationships by women, which was utterly false. I went along with all of it. At the facility they were invasive and pushy toward the staff and intake counselor and she could see the terror in my eyes. After hours of this they finally left me there still without my phone or anyway to communicate with anyone outside of them, but I could breathe for the first time in days.
After I saw them drive away and was certain they weren’t coming back I went inside and asked the intake counselor if I could talk. She of course said yes, but I have to ask one question. “What in the hell is wrong with your mother and the rest of your family?!” I broke down and tried to tell her the nightmare I had been living but could barely breathe through the panic to get any of my truth out.
Once I could control my breathing and shaking, I went outside and walked toward the room that would be mine. It was there I met one of my dearest friends for the first time. Rachel!
She looked at me with her green eyes, smiled and said hi, and somehow her energy assured me I’d be safe there. I spent the next 28 days coming to terms more with my sexuality and coming up with a plan of how to keep it from my family.
When I left some people, I had met drove me to my parents in Nebraska, packed me up and drove me back to Lincoln where I had called home for many years. I had picked a safe, sober living house to be in so my family couldn’t find me and send me to conversion therapy.
I stayed sober for 8 months that first time, but I was so enmeshed to my family of origin and the brainwashing they had put me through my entire life that I couldn’t break away yet. So, I pretended to be straight if they contacted me. I made the mistake trying to fit into their life because I was so afraid of being alone in the world. I was living a double life again. I knew I was gay, but I was hiding who I was. It’s no wonder I relapsed over and over again. My parents found me in Lincoln again and tried to take my car, my beautiful dog and essentially kidnap me again. Thankfully I had friends who knew what they had done the first time and saved me from them doing it again.
After 4-5 months of relapsing I chose to go back to treatment at Valley Hope and this time it was to get sober and not just to escape my family.
I decided then and there I was going to be out and proud and that meant being disowned by my family of origin. To me; however, that meant I would live, it meant I would survive! It has been heart-wrenching and complicated to processes through being brainwashed and part of a cult. My family of origin still to this day will attempt to contact me even though every attempt I now block. I block one email address or phone number and another one is created to send me messages begging me to repent and seek God’s forgiveness, so I don’t spend eternity in hell separated from them. What they will never understand is that outside of not believing there is a god, if I did and hell where a legitimate concern, I’d choose hell over my family every time. I will never forgive them for what they did to me, and the hard truth is that I hope they are tortured by their loss of me. What my family did to me shattered me and traumatized me for years afterward. I am still working through all of it but at least I’m alive! And I’m sober and I’m living my truth! I am strong and capable, and they will never hold me captive out of fear again.
Being gay saved me from them and everything they believe. So now I can say with PRIDE I’m gay! I’m a proud, pagan lesbian who is engaged to the woman of my dreams and I will live my truth until the day I die with my wife by my side every step of the way.
