Coming Out Story - Theresa
The brief story of a mid-life debutante — a coming out process, by Theresa Anne
I see by an e-mail from sister-friend, Kaylin, that October 11 is National Coming Out Day. She has also invited us to share our stories on the KISISS site, to warn or teach or possibly inspire others. I suspect that such stories will have a certain commonality to them; a repetition of themes and phrases. And perhaps there is great value in that. The sheer repetition of a common story may drum itself into the collective conscious, perhaps inspire researchers of pop literature and modern folk lore.
My story is fairly typical. At an early age I realized I was queer but I couldn't then overcome all the values and beliefs I had been taught to accept this in myself. A lot of my energies while growing up were directed toward hiding some gross personal defect from the awareness of others: siblings, parents, friends, mentors, strangers — later years added spouse and off-spring to the list. I was passing easily, as I was perceived by others, not as I perceived myself to be.
It's often heard in the news these days that Islamic "jihad" typically means a spiritual struggle within ones self against personal demons, not a political war of terroism. Sometimes our own strengths turn out to be the things that beat us. And the ways in which we think we triumph turn out to be empty. My story has been a like jihad conducted with the zeal of a conquistador or crusader. I overcame. I was successful and normal in school, in career, and in marriage. I was a dedicated parent. I was a conscientious worker. I was a loving partner. No one wondered about the lack of social life or few friends. No one suspected the occassional fits of depression or suicidal thoughts. No one had a clue about the constant itch. There's nothing worse than an itch you can't scratch. No one knew of the secret, gradual erosion going on at the foundations of my life.
So my spouse was surprised when I came out. She thought it was a sudden crisis, hopefully temporary insanity, some kind of psychological implosion. She certainly hasn't seen it as a kind of blossoming of personal honesty. She'd rather there was less uncontrolled honesty. Now she's in a closet and she doesn't want to come out. She's married to a deviant queer and the last thing she wants is for friends, neighbors, or family to find out. Why does she stay with me, and I with her? There's no simple answer to that one. Even a kindly, wise doctor on the fourth floor of a medical building on Jordan Avenue in Bloomington, Indiana, couldn't unravel the gordian knot that binds us. He prescribed a dose of reality: "Your relationship may be untenable." Maybe so, but so is everything else. Maybe the problem is that I was too successful for too long in staying in the closet — at passing.
Labels — I wanted to avoid them but maybe I shouldn't. How can I put this with a minimum of cliches? I am queerly gendered. When I was conceived, the roll of the cosmic dice gave me a Y chromosome. I registered a complaint as soon as I realized the silly error, but by then I was already out of God's warranty coverage and She seldom does returns or exchanges. Maybe She doesn't see it as a defect in workmanship or materials. Maybe She believes that I was made with the same high quality standards as anyone else. Maybe She thinks people are like diamonds — more precious for being rare in some way.
Maybe so, but that's not how my world sees it. The first closet to open is the one inside, to Self. I had learned to view my difference as a moral and spiritual defect. Now I am angry at relatives, school yards, churches for teaching me this point of view; this deeply seated self-loathing. To get out of the first closet one needs to realize that some jihads are wrong, some crusades misguided, some conquests inappropriate. One simply cannot win that war by strength of moral purpose or will power. To open the closet you must give up, surrender unconditionally, to the truth of who you are. I can't tell you anything useful about the other closets that remain. The process continues.
It's all actually kind of absurd. That the act of making others aware of a personally significant fact is so special that it deserves a special term such as "Coming Out" is in a way very absurd. The term itself implies a great social stigma. Letting others know you are left-handed is not called Coming Out as Left-Handed. Being left-handed is not a big deal — at least for now. But I've noticed that being a nicotine addict is becoming sufficiently stygmatized that letting others find out is a kind of coming out. And, now that I think about it, being an alcoholic or a victim of severe mental disorder (or being the offspring of parents thusly afflicted) have enough shame associated with them that to mention them is coming out.
Perhaps the LGBT strategy of celebrating the act of coming out — the continual affirmation before others of who we are — is a good idea. Perhaps it will eventually reduce the stigma and the shame and make some differences no big deal. It's a way to make society a little more informed and tolerant. It's a way to make a difference so common as to lose it's shock value.
Some have expressed the notion that a Better Society would make surgical or hormonal "mutilation" unnecessary; that, by making it OK to be a person in the wrong body and/or clothes, medical intervention would not be needed. Author Chris Bohjalian lets one of his characters, Will Banks, make that argument in his novel, TRANS-SISTER RADIO. It especially caught my eye because one of my therapists had expressed the same opinion to me a couple of years earlier. Even Riki Wilchins had eloquently suggested a similar idea in her essay, VIDEOTAPE, by asserting that the real problem with being made cross-gendered is not being born into the wrong body, but being born into the wrong society.
Not that I'm saying that Riki regards GRS as mutilation. S/he has elsewhere made it clear that such medical help should be as available as rhinoplasty and as included in health benefits as pregnancy. A more tolerant and open society is highly desired. It makes "coming out" and "closets" and "passing" obsolete terms. Will it make gender identity and sexual orientation obsolete? Will it cause people to express their fluid sense of selves and love whomever they love without labels of boy, girl, gay, straight, or whatever? Was the berdache in pre-european Native American society happier than your average gender-queer today?
I don't know. Eliminating shame and stigma is definitely a good start. And doing that requires courage and sacrifice — overcome it in our heart and, by coming out in celebration, help overcome it in society. Being accepted, or at least tolerated, is a good thing. Having medical miracles still would mean a lot to me, though. I'd like even greater medical miracles. I'd like to clone my body but as XX instead of XY — I'd like to have a vagina that could birth a child and breasts that could nurture it. I'd like a there to be immigration and naturalized citizenship on Mars and Venus instead of this severly patrolled border. Why not even dual citizenship . . . able to be a Wabash College graduate who was also able to go to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival without ever once being in that queer little closet called "passing" — first as a boy, then as a girl?
You who are young have hope and opportunity that I envy. Coming out to yourselves, being clear and honest with yourself and also accepting and cherishing, is better done sooner than later. Do not build up a weight of years of living a big lie, of passing as anyone else but your true self. Do not paint yourself into a corner, as I have, where you will be damned if you do and damned if you don't. Isolation, shame, guilt, fear . . . these are not the right ingredients for life, or anything that passes for it.
