NOTE TO READER: This essay contains mention of self harm.
It’s a gloomy Tuesday morning in New York City and I’ve just come from the first physical appointment I’ve had since before entering my freshman year of college. And what troubles me is not the bandaid taped to the inside of my elbow, but a question the doctor asked that is still rattling around my head. In determining my sexual identity to assess risk factors, he asked,”Are you heterosexual? Bisexual? Homosexual?”
It gave me pause, if only for the briefest of moments. Perhaps I was thrown off by his seeming nonchalance. Yet, something inside of me felt it was insensitive. Homosexual? It sounds so derogatory, so dirty. But is it? I mean, I am in fact a homosexual by every definition of the word, so why do I still feel like it was a rude way of asking? Of course, I know one’s sexual identity is a very relevant thing to divulge, especially when it comes to medical assessment and care. It can determine what tests to administer and which precautionary advice to impart. However, this doesn’t seem to alleviate the feeling of being, in some way, violated.
Or am I projecting something that has long existed inside me? Is my unease with the doctor’s question just a reflection of my own insecurity? Could it be the only reason I feel the use of the word ‘homosexual’ is derogatory is because I inherently feel shame around being homosexual? It’s not impossible. Even in New York City in 2018, I feel uncomfortable being fully myself. I censor the affection I show to my male friends in public for fear of unsolicited looks and judgment. I still worry about how being gay makes me ‘other’, and that it comes with a Read Me file to instruct people on how to use and treat me.
A few weeks ago, friends of mine referred me to Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special Nanette. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is the emotional record of a person coming into their own power and skin—but there is something that has so strongly resonated with me, and it revolves around shame. Gadsby, at one point during their comedy act, tells of their inability to come out to their grandmother, not because it is a useless cause, but because they still harbor shame about who they are. And when speaking on the area of Tasmania where they grew up, Hannah says, “Seventy percent of the people who raised me, who loved me, who I trusted, believed that homosexuality was a sin, that homosexuals were heinous, subhuman, pedophiles. 70 percent! And by the time I identified as being gay, it was too late, I was already homophobic. And you do not get to just flip a switch on that.”
I am not sure I fully realized it at the time, but this same rhetoric surrounded me as a child as well. Was it 70 percent of the people I came in contact with? Who knows. The numbers aren’t relevant. What is is that I was exposed to this way of thinking and speaking that it has seeped into the three vials of blood I offered up at the doctor’s office. It is enthroned in my skin. It whispers to me in the confines of my brain, my personal and silent tormentor. In every way it has become a part of me. Another quote I’ve come across? “Our bodies and subconscious minds hold the residue of every kind or cruel word we’ve ever taken in.” That comes from Sally Kempton of Yoga Journal in an article about how the way we talk affects our reality and internal perception. What she says is true. That business about sticks and stones and words never hurting? It’s a lie. Words will bruise you the most, and they are the hardest wounds to heal. Hear them enough, and they will begin to convince you. He who is told he is great, believes so. She who is told she has no worth may spend a lifetime in a prison of unbearable low self-efficacy, ever trying to escape her shadow.
Overcoming my shame and insecurity will be the greatest work I do in this lifetime. It will be more important than whatever career I maintain or achievements I receive. Because on some base level, a part of me may always feel I am undeserving. In fact, trying to free myself of my shame has become so much of a personal endeavor that I have built a career out of it. I’ve put myself in positions of subservience hoping the validation and approval of others will alleviate me from needing to do it for myself. It is a cycle, or rather, more like an equation—if people love the work that I do, then that must mean I’m valued, and if I’m valued, then that must mean that I really do have something to contribute to this world despite adverse opinion.
A recent visit to a spiritual counsellor confided that the young boy of my past is in need of recovering—that somewhere along the way he was forgotten and left by the wayside; dispatched because of his difference—and I was the one who left him there. I have tried to sit with and confront my shame, but if there is one thing I have discovered it is that shame does not always come to sit at the table when beckoned. It is smarter than that, more cunning. Instead it waits until you are in the company of others, stealthily entering from the shadows at auditions, parties, corporate settings, family dinners, and even the doctor’s office. It will stand staring at you from across the room or, worse, take up the seat beside you with the clear implication of You wanted to talk? when the time is wholly inappropriate. Shame works on its own time and on its own schedule. All you can do is travel to the past and figure out where it keeps the pieces of itself—buried and seemingly indestructible—hoping to root them out one by one until the monster that has manifested them dissipates into dust.
In my personal work, I’ve started to identify the moments where shame began to appear in my life. One such incident for me was when I was about the age of thirteen—a volatile age for any soul, but as people will tell you, I am the sensitive type. I entertained thoughts of self-harm because the weight and the reality that I was different felt crushing. I even distinctly remember writing a note to a friend at the time expressing how lost I felt, though I craftily escaped the reason why. I never followed through on any of my threats. I was too scared. Instead, I would stare at my reflection in the mirror and makes promises for the future. Planting seeds of hope felt like the only way I could escape the pain of the present. I told the boy in that mirror that it would be better when he was older, that he would be liked more and fit in more; that he would be handsome and fit and become all of the things that would allow him to be accepted. I wished away all the things that made me feel inadequate, but when you tie a balloon string to the seeds of your insecurities and cast them into the future, they don’t disappear. They wait for you. Just like any seed, they grow where you put them.
I revisit that mirror from time to time, though it looks different from how I remember. Twenty years later, I can’t say I’ve lived up to my promise—because when I look at my reflection, I identify more with the boy who cast wishes into the well than the confident man he hoped he’d become. Every time I kick those seeds further along the line, wanting to be free of them, but instead planting a forest grown from the poisoned soil of disesteem.
Another thing Gadsby emphasized was that “You learn from the part of the story you focus on.” It’s true. I have never been able to move on from that portion of my story. I continue to sit in front of the mirror waiting for something to change, but mirrors can only reflect what stands before them. The change will only show when I have made it within myself.
But how does the uncertain man go back in time to save the child he could not protect? How do you deprogram three decades of negative attribution? How do you weed away the shame that has already been reaped and harvested?
I don’t have the answer, but I hope someday I will. Not only for myself, but for the boys of the present and future. While shirking my diffidences may be my life’s work, helping young Queer children is my mission. They must know they are protected and loved, but most of all understood. Because while protection and love can do a great deal, they are not always executed in the best methods. Protecting a child from a world that aims to demean them can take shape in words such as, “Well, why make your life harder than it has to be?” or “Can’t you just be like everybody else?” You see, if we all employ our methods of what we think protection looks like, it could very well do more damage than good—just the sort of damage Hannah Gadsby talks about trying to undo. And again, there is no easy switch.
But to understand a child, to know what he or she or they are going through—to see the world through their eyes—now that could very well be the best way to inform ourselves as to how to protect and love them. Because humans do not come with a Read Me file. We are too beautifully complex. Each one of us has slightly different needs, and the only way to know what they are is the key to understanding anyone in our lives—listen. And accept that no part of this has to be easy. For you, for them. We are all just fumbling through this dotted infinity with very little answers. Mistakes and mess-ups are bound to be made, but that is how we learn. Then examine what it is you can do better—perhaps differently—to help that person (your sibling, you parent, your friend, your child) feel just a little more like they belong. You are the first line of defense as well as acceptance.
Really, that is all anyone wants—to know we are accepted; that we each have a place in this world. A fair place. A starting line that can lead us all on our own tracks to success. Because the things we carry from our past set the foundation for what we build in our future.
