The morning after this very devastating conversation, I woke up early, drove to the bus station, and started back towards New York. As I was leaving the house the family member who I believed had attacked me the day before gave me a tight hug. “Remember, I still love you, and we’re still going to hug,” they said. I felt numb, and bile rose in my throat.
This is when things started really falling apart. I’m having an incredibly hard time trying to write everything down retrospectively, as it’s now muddled in my head as a conglomeration of ideas rather than a series of events.
On the bus between my home and Boston I took out my laptop and wrote an entry for this blog. I intended to post it as my explanation of why the blog was going down that evening. A piece of it says “I don’t understand how this can hurt so much.” It’s hard to read now; it is far more revealing and far more raw than I now want to be. It was a little miniature catharsis in words.
(Why didn’t I post it that night? Three years ago I would have, in a heartbeat. Perhaps I’ve grown beyond such impulsive gestures. I know I’ve become far more private in my pain. My writing is histrionic and melodramatic when I’m hurting, and somewhere along the line I kept enough sense to know that.)
I cried the entire way to Boston, and even banged my head against the window of the bus for a few long moments.
From Boston to New York I slept.
Coming over the bridge into the island of Manhattan I have never felt more grateful to be coming home. I was dull and very, very tired. And yet, I’d woken up. I had settled back into almost rational thinking.
What do I do? What are my options and where do I go from here? Why did they do this to me?
If a person attacks some part of myself that I hold dear, what should I do? Do I want to keep writing? What does being out mean to me?
My family is incredibly dear to me. And yet, consistently, my wounds trace back to them. Usually I understand this, usually I forgive it as the inevitable push and pull of strong-willed people who love each other.
But this? This was wrongful, this was unnecessary and stupid.
I was suddenly, passionately angry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell and hurt and wound and accuse. I wanted to disappear forever and never speak to them again, to punish them for hurting me.
When I got to the bus stop I sank down by the wall near the door and silently fumed. After 20 minutes May walked in the door. As he pulled me in his arms I burst into violent tears.
“I’m supposed to have coffee with Blaise,” he said, once I stopped crying and kissed him. “You should come. Is that okay?”
I nodded. When Blaise came down the street to meet us, all silver boots and that bright, quirky smile, he pulled me into a hug and I started crying all over again. This was becoming a theme.
I explained. We hugged more. We picked up my bags and went to Burgers & Cupcakes on 9th avenue. “I need cupcakes,” I declared.
After a little while of watching May and Blaise talk, ordering food, and pawing through the bags I brought for gifts, I interrupted. “Can we talk about this thing with me?”
“Yea, of course,” May answered. Blaise nodded. “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it.”
I shook my head. “I definitely want to talk about it.” I stopped for a moment to eat some cupcake and gather my thoughts.
“Okay, these are my options,” I said, surprised that I even had options. When did I come up with options? “Option one,” I continued. “I give up being kinky, and therefore stop writing about being kinky.”
Blaise gave me an incredulous look and burst out laughing. “Why is that even on the list of options?”
I laughed for the first time in two days. “For the sake of completeness, since they think it’s an option,” I answered.
“But not really,” he stated.
I shook my head and made a motion to brush the idea away. “Obviously, not really.”
“Okay, good,” he answered, still smiling at me.
“Option two is that I continue to be kinky in my private life and stop writing about it publicly. Option three is that I continue to be kinky in my private life, and I continue to write about it publicly. And then, if I take option three, I can either choose to try and explain myself to my family, or to cut off communication with them.”
My throat started closing up again at the end of this list. Blaise looked at me thoughtfully. “Could that really happen? You could potentially just never talk about this with them again, move your blog and pretend it never happened?”
I nodded slowly. “That’s totally possible. In fact, that’s probably what they’d like to have happen.” I turned this option over in my head, and realized how exhausted I am with things that go unsaid.
“There are two separate problems here,” I said. “The first is how to teach them that I’m not the things they say I am, so that we can actually have an okay relationship.”
Sick, immoral, addicted.
I continued. “The second is to address the problem of whether or not I want to be out, whether being out will affect me negatively, how that might happen, and what I can do about it.”
A wry thought crossed my mind. I guess I’m learning negative affects the hard way.
And then, More important than what I’m going to do is why I’m going to do it.
That night when I got home I changed every entry in my blog to “Private.” I posted a cryptic, painful note, essentially uncertain of what I wanted to reveal. I wanted to say that I was in hiding, and I was in pain. In retrospect, I wanted help.
I curled up on our bed and pressed my back into May’s body, and thought how tired I was of being in tears. Can one be with tears, as one is with child? I felt pregnant with tears, full up with them, the subject of an inexhaustible pressure of sadness.
Pressured, angry, and shredded.
18 Comments
I always assumed that Eileen wasn’t your real name, that you were posting anonymously.
Patty-
Eileen is not my real name. However, plenty of information about me can be deduced from this blog. I’ll write more about this in a couple of days.
It just occurred to me that if your family member found and read your blog… that person is possibly (or probably) still reading these entries.
I think you’re very brave, Eileen.
Sue-
Thank you.
You’ll see. It gets better. I’m trying to follow chronological order at the moment, which means one chunk of ideas at a time.
I’ve always been paranoid about being unexpectedly outed to people who’d judge my sexuality (family primary among them). I imagine this is exactly what I would have done, too. (Down to the “options” discussion; I’d probably have written out a list…) But I don’t think that I’d be handling it half as well as you seem to be; I probably would have put some thought into the “stop being kinky” non-option, for starters. And I’m not sure I’d yet be considering actually trying to talk to my family, rather than holing up and never speaking of it again — which, like you said, is always the most exhausting and frustrating option.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with this. I’m sure you’ll figure out what’s best for you.
Do NOT, ever, give up who you are, for anything, anyone, and in any way. This is not an option. If anyone feels threatened by the real you, he/she has the right to act DEFENSIVELY, and it is your right to use your resources to defuse the perceived threat, if that is your choice, or even to remain a threat (and accept the consequences.) But no one has the right to deny or attack your real existence. Even you. That is murder. I trust that you will find peace, despite the sadness, worries and sense of loss.
“sick, immoral, addicted” – I have heard these exact words before myself at 17 from parents who then demanded I “change” before I horribly influenced my siblings. Nothing like being confronted at the dinner table – my choice was to promptly move out. I can understand some of the feelings and know that it isn’t easy weighing out the value of being “you” and true to yourself versus the familial relationships. I look forward to reading more if you care to share.
My parents found one of my blogs once, about a year ago, because I made the mistake of telling them I kept one. It wasn’t at all sexual in nature, but it was still a very bad thing. I moved it and started over, and kept going, and didn’t say any more about it. I hope they never connect me and my current blog and pseudonym. So just to say, I do have some knowledge of that fear and sadness.
Your family member may see your blog as dangerous or disturbed, but to a lot of other people it’s basic reassurance that they are not alone and they are not insane. When I first became aware of my kinky inclinations, I was convinced I was crazy and perverted and a weirdo. The internet told me I wasn’t alone; blogs like yours have helped me figure myself out. Providing that “service” to folks you don’t know is the greatest thing ever, and that’s why I’d beg you to keep going. I don’t want to be selfish at the expense of your own well-being, but just know that you could be doing some great things for some anonymous, confused people.
I was once told that the greatest presents you could ever give are those you give anonymously. I’m not really sure I’d agree with that statement literally, but the sentiment I took from it is something your writing here is exemplifying.
Be strong. We love your writing and who you are.
Lucky for me, my Mother knows of my blogs, and she never judges.
S
An interesting point from Alterisego and Maymay. That’s precisely what I was taught in Sunday school: the highest form of tzedakah (charity, basically) is to help people you don’t know, who will never know it was you that helped them. Though for some reason Wikipedia describes it as the second highest. Whatever. The point is, ironically, religious authority has declared you’re doing Good with a capital G. Here’s to hoping a time will come when no one has a problem saying that without any irony.
Outness, and particularly family outness, is very tough. I may have/choose to out myself (as kinky) to my parents sometime soon (due to academic/career things), and I’m really not sure how, or indeed whether, to handle it.
What alterisego is saying is also correct; although equally you don’t have a *responsibility* to do that if you don’t want to any more.
subversive_sub: when it happened to me (very different situation – I was outed at work, not to my family), I DID make a list of options. :) I had heard from a friend who was kinky and used to work at my office that someone else in my office had found out (I was indiscreet about what was on my computer screen, I think) and had gossiped about it with others in my office. It really tore me apart for a couple of days. I went through the list: confront the coworker in person, email the coworker, take someone else in the office out to lunch and ask what they’d heard, leave it alone. In the end, I left it alone. And tossed out the list.
Subversive Sub-
Honestly, if this had happened to me a few years ago I would definitely have put more thought into this option. I think my dismissal of the possibility of “just not being kinky” is largely to do with how active I am here in the kinky community, and how positive my experiences have been with the majority of the people I’ve met.
That said, I did some second-guessing. Absolutely I did. I also felt as though I was never going to manage to have sex again. This has been thankfully proven untrue, but I’m definitely coming out of this more cautious than I was going in.
Robin -
Yikes. My family dynamics are too private to produce such a scene. Thankfully I wasn’t pushed into a corner immediately, but I was admittedly very thankful to have my own space to flee to.
Thanks for your comment.
Alterisego-
Thank you. The trouble, it seems, is going to be striking a balance between the value of having these ideas fully expressed and the trouble of expressing them for various audiences.
Boston Boy-
The irony of this is indeed poignant.
I think I should clarify, however, that at no point was I accused or spoken to from a religious perspective. My family is not religious.
I think that the automatic assumption many of us have that all of our sexual censors are objecting over religious grounds is an easy out. Too often it’s a way we give ourselves of dismissing the opinions of others.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I should also clarify that through out this process my family member has demonstrated an encouraging and open attitude towards sex. We struggled (and are still struggling over) the issues of pain and consent.
Juliet-
Since all of this happened I have been doing a lot of looking at the materials that are out there for people trying to come out. So far the books “Bound To Be Free” and “When Someone You Love Is Kinky” have both been recommended to me unanimously. I’m planning on reading and reviewing them. Maybe this is a good place for you to start as well?
I have to admit, being out to my family (*really* out, not just “Oh, I thought you got this memo” out) may make my later career/life decisions much easier to explain.
Eileen is a lovely nick. It was my mother’s first name, though she always went by her second.
I’m reading all this recent stuff and am not sure what to say, other than that I’m glad you’ve been finding the positives, the support, the love.
Eileen:
I can see why you’d want to make that point on religion clear. In case it’s a concern, know that I didn’t actually infer any religious content from your description of events, I just played with a Jewish idea brought up by your commenters (or is it more universal than that?). But more clarity is always a good thing. Interesting point about blaming religion being an easy out, I’ll have to chew on that.
Were I more serious about religion than your average atheist-Jew, I’d take it as a point of pride that there are respected ancient writings discussing how much sex a Jewish husband is required (not allowed, required) to have with his wife, depending on his career and other obligations. Apparently back in the day if you were out of work for a while, you were basically on call. But I don’t think those texts address kink, I’ll have to check.
Frankly, I’ve always thought religion to be an easy out for a lot of things, not just this.
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