Those of you that read my blog know that I support the LGBTQ community and every once in a while I make a post about it. This time around I asked those in the community to write about their journey so I could share it and help educate those that see nothing wrong with denying them their basic human rights. This is Meaghan Louise's story. It is long, but please, take the time to read it all.
“You support Blasphemy!” “You’ll be denied in front of the
holy father!”
Those were the two most common responses I received from the
elders at the church my family belongs to when they found out that I wasn’t
against LGBT as a child. The youngest I can remember feeling sympathetic
towards LGBT was probably when I was about seven-years-old. It was also around
the same time I was first introduced to homophobia, horrifically enough at the
hands of my fundamentalist Christian mother. Now that I’m older, I also wonder
how much of a key factor mental illness played in her homophobic ramblings.
I’m an only child, and my parents divorced before my third
birthday after a brief five year marriage. My mother had some of the most psychotic
ideas of humanity that I could ever fathom, but I regress. The start of my
story as an LGBT ally and later, as an asexual, begins in the winter of 1993.
It was around Christmas time. My mother lived in a geared-to income housing
apartment building. Working minimum wage, full time she was unable to pay the
rent fully on her own, so our city stepped in and paid a good portion of it. If
I remember right, my mom only had to pay about $200 out of her own pocket for
the rent. It wasn’t a large apartment, a one bedroom, with a living room, a
bathroom, a kitchen and a small area for a two seat dining room table. For a
single woman who only had her child on weekends and every other holiday, it
worked out nicely for her. It was an ideal living arrangement for her, but
she’d mess it up horribly. You see, despite the fact that this building was
owned and operated by a Christian based fund (there were even nuns on the
building management staff who serviced the building as counsellors) there was
one woman employed by the building owners whom I’ll refer to as Carol, and she
was my first introduction to the LGBT community. Carol had a girlfriend, and
they had no children to call their own, not even from previous relationships as
some lesbians or gay men do. With me being the youngest child within the
building, the entire staff, and the building tenants took it upon themselves to
become like a community to help raise me and take care of me.
When my mother became ill late one night, so ill she
couldn’t get up the entire day, I got scared and snuck out of the apartment to
go down to the main office on the ground floor. Carol was in the office,
getting ready to go home, when she saw me she stopped in her tracks, “Acacia?
What’s wrong honey bunny?”
I told her that mom was acting weird. She’d been in bed all
day with all the lights off and kept saying her stomach was bugging her. Carol
immediately went back up to the apartment with me, helped my mom to the
building’s underground parking and put her in the front passenger seat of her
car. I went in the backseat, and off we went. Carol stayed with me in the
emergency room while the doctors diagnosed my mother with a cluster migraine,
and began trying to relieve the pain with medication. After that, Carol made
sure to visit us every few days towards the end of her shift. I’d recently
become entranced with the song “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous brothers. I
already listened to quite a few of the old records my mom had, Peggy lee,
Lionel Richie, The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, The beach boys, to name a few.
Another incident that I can remember with Carol was when she taught me to slow
dance to Peggy Lee’s album.
She didn’t mind that I liked to mimic how Belle and the
beast danced in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’, she would even dip me during
our dances. It was fun. I hadn’t met another adult as easy to get along with as
she was. Carol was even the one alongside my mother to encourage me to
participate in the monthly Karaoke night at the building. Sadly, my mother’s
homophobia began to stir up as Carol and I developed our friendship.
I can remember her screaming at my father that Carol was
trying to ‘convert’ me.
“I want to be a grandmother one day! Dawson, we have to keep
Acacia away from her! I have to move,” she had cried out.
I didn’t understand, what was wrong with having an adult
friend? Carol’s one hand was always at my middle back, while the other held my
hand. There was nothing inappropriate about it. She didn’t touch me in ways
that made me feel ‘funny’ and I didn’t feel scared when I was around her, so
what was the big deal?
Next up came the AIDS scare tatic, this basically is just as
the description implies. My mother tried to convince me that all LGBT were
infected with HIV and that it was God’s wrath against them. I didn’t understand
that either. I’d always been taught that God loved all of his children,
equally, no matter what their sins. I also didn’t understand how sex between
two women or two men worked, and my mother’s facial expression betrayed that
she was too disgusted at the idea to say how it occurred. I wouldn’t find out
until my early teenage years. So I said to her, “I’m gonna ask *my family
doctor* when I see him.”
“Why? I’ve already told you all you need to know. AIDS comes
from gays,” my mom reasserted herself.
“I think you’re lying, mommy,” I replied.
My mom glared angrily at me before telling me to go to
bedroom and stay there until she told me I could come back out. While in the
bedroom I heard her slamming and throwing things around. Yes, my Mom was
definitely a loose cannon, and I was better off with my Dad.
When I was about ten years old, my mother was evicted from
that building, for multiple offenses against other tenants, mostly those who
identified as LGBT. People that I had no issue with, but whom she, as soon as
she saw me conversing with them, would grab my wrist, and yank me away.
Again, I didn’t understand why. I just wanted to make
friends, what was wrong with that? Absolutely nothing that my young mind could
comprehend, and even now nearing 30 years old, I still don’t fully understand.
These were people we both knew. People I saw every weekend, I knew these people
well enough to know that they meant me no harm. Even at my young age, I’d
learned how to tell a good person from a bad person. There was only a small
handful of people in the building that set off warning bells in my young mind.
One was a paranoid schizophrenic and pyromaniac. By the time the police would
catch and arrest him, he would’ve set fire to the building six times. Another was a pedophile who obviously
molested his granddaughter while he babysat her. There were times when you
could hear the young girl screaming loudly, “No! Grandpa stop! Stop it!”
It killed me inside to hear her panicked cries, and although
the staff reported the incidents to the girls parents, the parents did nothing
to protect their daughter. That made me wonder, ‘Some parents are willing to let family members abuse their own
children… and yet mom’s worried about me being around a woman who has a girlfriend?
What would she want with me? She already has someone.’
I was a very articulate and intelligent child. Lying to me,
or trying to scare me, wasn’t an option. To demonstrate this point, I’m going
to bring up something that happened even further back than my realization that
homophobia didn’t sit right with me. When I asked my first sex question at the
age of four (“Where do babies come from?”) my parents were going to tell me the
truth, but my grandmother interrupted and told me, “The stork.”
“What’s a stork, Genny?” I asked. At that age, I had a hard
time saying the ‘r’ in ‘Granny’ or just about any word where the ‘r’ was near
the beginning of the word I was trying to say.
“It’s a big bird,” she replied with a smile.
I knitted my brow together in thought, then went to the
national geographic books that my Dad had.
“How do you spell ‘Stork’?” I asked.
“S-T-O-R-K,” My Dad answered.
I found what I was look for and looked to my grandmother
with an accusing glare, “Liaw! Birdies beak would bweak.”
My grandmother’s face twisted in anger while my parents
laughed.
“Can’t get anything past Acacia,” My Dad mused. They then
proceeded to answer my question with the simple response of, ‘Babies come from
the mommy’s tummy.’
“Oh. Okay,” I replied and went back to playing with my
blocks.
Let’s skip forward a few years. After my mom was evicted
from that building, we lived in a duplex, owned by a family friend who rented
the two apartments within the house out. My mom loved it because there was a
“Wholesome family” living below her apartment. I didn’t like the family. The
father was loud, obnoxious, and loved to make assumptions. He usually stunk of
alcohol and bad cheap cigarettes. The mother was an overbearing, presumptuous,
and dismissive passive-aggressive. In many ways, reminding me of my own mother.
Their four year old daughter was apparently a gift to the world who could do no
wrong. Even when she blantently did something to deliberately upset her older
sister or myself.
The older daughter was a few years older than me, and we got
along somewhat, although she and I were quite different. I wasn’t very sad to
see them go. I had been more sad leaving my first home when my parents divorced
and my mother had to move the first time. By the age of nine I had already
moved three times in my life. Once from the first home I went to after leaving
the hospital, over to my grandmother’s to live with her and my father. Then
when my mom also left the townhouse and moved into the apartment. Then from the
apartment building, into the duplex.
At school, there were already rumours starting at school that
I was a lesbian. You might wonder why. Well, the truth is, I wasn’t all that
different from anyone else. I had my celebrity crushes, the one I crushed on
the hardest back then was Aaron Carter. I also liked playing sports, I was
involved in vocal performance, track and field, basketball, I’d done dance
performance for eight years at that point.
During 1997, my mom was always asking me, “Who are you sweet
on?” “What are the boys in your class like?” “Does my little girl have her
first crush?”
Dad was more laid back, easy going, didn’t ask questions
unless I seemed upset or overly excited about something. Ya know, the typical
laid back approach to parenting stuff. Despite being laid back, Dad knew way
more about what went on in my social life than mom. Mom was always demanding to
know. Dad was more the variety of, “If you want to talk, I’ll listen.” Just looking at those words as I’m typing, I
gotta add: Talk about opposites attracting then repelling!
My mom had the dream of seeing me wear her wedding gown at
my own wedding. Even as a kid, I thought it was the most hideous dress in
creation, but I also knew at that young age the emotional fits my mom was prone
to if you said no or went against her wishes.
Even at the age of eleven, I knew that dream would always
remain a dream. I acted as if I had interest in the social norm of dating,
getting engaged, settling down and starting a family. The truth is, I only had
interest in setting down roots and raising a child or two. I didn’t want a
husband, I knew even at that age that I didn’t want a girlfriend either. I
didn’t want anyone. Just some close friends, and I’d be good.
I had been seeing a child psychiatrist for about six five
years, the school believed I had Attention Deficit Disorder because I’d fall
asleep during class in my first year of school, and didn’t complete my work.
The truth of the matter was, I didn’t sleep well at night. I guess a form of
separation anxiety, I couldn’t sleep until I knew my Dad was home. As soon as I
heard the Windstar pull into the drive way, I’d relax and be able to sleep. If
Dad was out of the city or even the province at a meeting for work, I’d go a
whole day or two without sleep until he came home, and then I’d just want to
sleep the whole time. As for not completing my school work in first grade, the
first two weeks I was in first grade I was off sick with pink eye and a throat
infection. I had asked the teacher to catch me up and teach me what I’d missed,
and she said it wasn’t important to catch me up. As a result, I didn’t
understand the work. When I tried to approach my teacher about it, she’d call
me an idiot, and say that I was disgustingly slow at my work. All of my work
papers from first grade had ‘disgusting slow’ written in cursive across the
top. I’d go home feeling like run road kill covered with dung and set on fire,
especially when she’d yell at me in the class room to get to work, loud enough
that the entire class would jump in their seats. Due to that teacher and the
separation anxiety, which I wouldn’t understand about myself til many years
later, I was held back a year and my parents were told that if I wasn’t on
medication to control what they felt to be attention deficit disorder, they’d
call the Children’s Aid Society on them. Well, thanks schoolboard, you let a
teacher who was too old and grouchy to teach practically ruin a young student’s
outlook on school in general. That same year, during the winter of 1991/92, I
was playing outside during recess with my friend Emma, when a group of boys
decided they were going to chase us. My grandmother always had me in dresses, I
didn’t understand why. I wanted to wear sweat pants, turtle necks. She deemed
those clothes too ‘boyish’, so I was stuck in a dress every day. The boys
cornered me against a wall, and I just remember thinking to myself, ‘what’s going on… what are they doing? Are
they planning something?’
My answer came quickly when one boy swung his hand forward ,
under the skirt of my dress, and groped between my legs. I froze stiff, fear,
panic and anger raising inside of me while I gave a blank stare to this boy not
knowing whether to scream, punch him, or cry.
I snapped out of my daze when Emma grabbed my hand, and
shoved her way through the crowd of boys. Although to be honest, it didn’t look
like the boy’s friends were trying very hard to keep us locked in. They seemed
to know what had happened, and that it was wrong. One boy even told me to just
tell on the one guy who had touched me. I did tell on that boy, and the teacher
called him out into the hall way and made him apologize. I wasn’t satisfied.
This wasn’t accidental. They knew it was wrong, and the boy who’d done that to
me, I’m certain had deliberately planned to do it. A question floated around in
my mind, ‘what does he see at home? What
kind of home life does he have to think he could do something like that in
public and to someone who didn’t want it to happen?’
Things were even worse when the principal found out. He just
shrugged, smile and said, “Boys will be boys.”
My Dad stared at the principal and said, “’Boys will be
boys’? If that was my boy he’d be bent over my knee and my belt would be off.
You’re giving this kid a pat on the back and my daughter’s scared to be around
boys her own age now! Tell me how you see that as being fair!”
But my mother was the most adamant in her stance, “If you
don’t do something to prevent this pervert child from doing this to another
girl, I’ll go to the board of education, I will go to the newspapers, I will go
to the TV news stations and raise hell until he sees punishment for his
actions. Think I won’t do it? Try me.”
The “nobody contact” rule at school came into play in my
city after that incident. It was taken to extreme, it should’ve been more like,
‘no inappropriate body contact’ but things happen. This was another reason I
saw a child psychiatrist. The year that I was eleven I found something else out
about this child psychiatrist that I was seeing. During one of the
appointments, my mother said to the doctor, “Acacia has been exposed to
homosexuals, though I’ve tried to keep her from them. It seems they’ve had an
impact on her or maybe it was the boy at school who did this to her. I don’t
believe she’s had a real crush yet, and she has no interest in dating, or
marriage.”
The doctor looked at me, “you must get married, Acacia. It’s
how we survive in this society.”
“I don’t want to get married to anybody, ever. I never have,”
was my response.
The doctor gave a cheesy smile to me, which I know was meant
to be sympathetic, “All little girls want to get married.”
He decided that I must be depressed or experiencing some
adverse effects from the school ground incident. He increased the ADD
medication and put me on Prozac. I scowled the rest of the day. I was a B
average student, and this doctor wanted me to have straight A’s across the
board before he’d take me off the medication. If I wasn’t getting A’s, he’d
increase the medication and mess about with it. More than anything, I felt
violated in a way, as if I was back on that play ground again, being groped and
felt up. I hated that no one was taking me seriously, that no one actually
listened… I didn’t want anything to do with sex. I never had. I always wanted
to adopt or use AI, I never wanted to be in a relationship with anyone, and was
in the process of trying my hardest to make myself undesirable to men by using
the social ‘norm’ stereotype and making
myself as polar opposite as I could. I was actively trying to stay single. I
didn’t want anyone crushing on me and I dreaded the day when I’d get a crush,
if I’d get a crush, or the day when my hormones would make me curious and I’d
actually want to have sex to see what the big fuss was about.
The Prozac made me feel physically and emotionally numb. I
felt like I was dead inside, there was nothing. No joy, no pain, no happiness,
no sadness, no anger, no laughter, no hobbies, no dreams. It was just a giant
void where my emotions and ambitions used to be. I walked around like that for
weeks, not feeling anything. I grew desperate. I wanted to feel something, just
anything to know that I hadn’t died. I wanted to know that I was still alive
somehow.
I was in school, picked up a pair of scissors, separated the
blades of the scissors, and ran my finger over the blade. No pain. Was I dead?
I looked at my finger, it was bleeding. Blood. Flowing blood… I was still
alive.
I lied and said that I’d gotten a bad paper cut. The
teacher sent me to the office to get a
band aid.
When the next family that moved into the lower duplex
apartment, I was excited and my mom was terrified. The family had five boys,
ranging in age from high school freshman to 7 years old. At this point, I was
now eleven, and it was the summer of 1997. My mom was instantly afraid that
these boys would molest me, or play with me too roughly.
I had to mentally smack myself to keep from rolling my eyes
at her near hysterics over the new tenants. I asked her, “Mom, have you
forgotten that Daryl’s a boy? I play with him, and he’s bigger than these boys.
Have I broken yet?”
“But playing with too many boys while you’re young will make
you a lesbian!” She cried, now in full hysterics.
I excused myself to the washroom, and hopped into the
shower, all so I could laugh at her ideas. Her thought that playing sports and
tag with boys would make me a lesbian was absolutely laughable. I had no
interest in dating anyone. I had no interest in ever getting married, or having
sex with anybody. I was eleven and already knew one thing that I’d known since
I was nine years old, I wanted to be a mom someday, but I wanted to do it
through a newer practice in medicine called artificial insemination. The idea
was pretty neat to me. From what I understood at the time, a guy would go into
a clinic, go into a room with a container, ejaculate into the container and
then give the container to the clinic to freeze so someone who was otherwise
unable to have a baby, could. I liked that idea. I liked it far better than the
idea of a penis being shoved up my vagina.
Of the five boys who moved into the apartment below my
mother’s, the three youngest boys, Darren, Keenan and Craig were closest to my
age, although still younger than me. I was born in ’86, Darren was born in ’88,
Keenan in ’89, and I believe Craig was born in ’90. Darren tolerated me for the
most part. Keenan and Craig were the two I became closest to. All of these
years later, Keenan shines in my mind’s eye like a radiant light. In all of my
years, all of the friends I’ve had, he’s the only one I could ever recall who
would run up to me and hug me the moment he saw me. Through the following
seasons, we grew closer as people, and more so, as children do.
I was beginning puberty which put my mother on edge even
more. Now I had to take an interest in boys, I had to have my first crush, and
I had to have an interest in dating and bring a boy home to ask for permission
to date him.
I was beside myself. Around Keenan and Craig, I smiled, I
laughed, I played, I was a kid. Behind closed doors with just mom and I, it was
hell on earth. I constantly felt like I was dying right in front of her,
wondering to myself how I could make her understand. She asked me one day,
point blank: “Are you thinking of turning lesbian?”
The question stunned, disgusted, and offended me all at
once. Stunned that she’d think sexuality was a choice, disgusted that she’d
have the gull to ask anyone, let alone her own daughter that after her adamant
display of homophobia over the past four years, and offended that it seemed she
hadn’t listened to a word I’d been saying for the past twelve months.
I didn’t know how else I could spell it out: I’m not
interested in anyone. Period. No dates, ever. No sex, ever. No marriage, ever.
It was always the same, she’d verbally and emotionally
attack me. Bombard me with questions that made my head spin. Not with the idea
of answering said questions, but that any parents could even think such things
about their own child. The one that stuck out in my mind the most was, “Do you
want me to find a church that still does exorcisms? I’ll do that to save your
mortal soul, Acacia. I will. I love you that much.”
It all left me feeling drained, deflated, like an ant was
more of a person than I. Try as I might’ve to hide everything, there were times
when the pain and the sadness overwhelmed me and I couldn’t put on my smiling
mask.
During those times, when Keenan and Craig would ask me what
was wrong , I’d make up an excuse for my depressed mood, and sometimes what I’d
come up with was so off the wall and utterly insane it would have sent me into a laughing fit complete with
tears running down my cheeks and my stomach aching from the muscles contracting
and relaxing with each hearty chuckle. That is of course, if my despair hadn’t
claimed my laughter and sense of humour at that time. I lied to my friends, it was all I could
think to do. After all, my mom was already certain that Keenan was gay, and that
because he was gay he was dangerous.
That remark had irked me to an awful degree and I
sarcastically asked her, “Okay so let me get this straight, lesbians are
dangerous because they’ll ‘convert me’. Straight boys are dangerous because
they’ll molest me, and gay men who want to have sex with other gay men are
dangerous because, what? They’ll hunt me down on a purple unicorn and sprinkle
pixie dust on me until I fly off to Neverland?”
“Because he’ll rape you to prove to himself and his family
that he isn’t gay. He might even force you to have his children,” was my
mother’s answer. All I could do was stare at her blankly. Her paranoia knew no
bounds, and I briefly wondered what it was like to be a prisoner of your own
mind.
A few hours later, I was in the backyard. There was one big
tree in the backyard that Craig, Kennan and I liked to hang out in. We’d sit in
it, chat, the boys would climb it (they were much better at it than me), and
there was a hose swing in that tree that sat on the largest branch. It was made
from an old garden hose. I sat on that hose swing, thinking everything over,
wondering how I’d survive the next six years of my life and stay true to who I
am, what I am.
I was so lost in thought I hadn’t noticed that Keenan had
come out of his apartment and was standing next to me.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
I shook my head with a forced smile, “Nothing. Just
thinking.”
Keenan’s expression said it all, he knew something was up.
Something I was hiding, something I didn’t want him knowing. I wondered then
how long he’d known. Without a word he
gripped one side of the swing, pulled towards himself before he let it go.
I swung away from him, then came back again. This time he
gripped the swing with both hands, his eyes boring into mine. The next thing I
knew I was spinning, very slowly as Keenan wound up the swing. He wound it up
tightly and held it for a moment while he shifted off to the side, and in one
swift motion let go of the swing while he ran a safe distance away from me.
Legs out, back stretched out, I looked up towards the sky and the top of the
tree as the swing spun until it had straightened its self out, and I fell off
of it, the world still giving the illusion that I was spinning.
That was my favourite thing to do on that swing, and by then
I had a genuine smile on my face. As the spinning stopped, I sat up and looked
over at Keenan, he smiled back at me before running to grab the grey ball in
the backyard. The realization dawned on me, he’d known that I was out of sorts,
and knew exactly how to make me smile. I wasn’t used to that, normally I was
the one being strong, protecting everyone around me, and making them smile.
That smile he had was a smile of childhood innocence, still. Gloom briefly
settled over me as my logical mind forced me to acknowledge that it wouldn’t stay
that way forever, but for however long he could still bask in the innocence he
still held onto, I’d protect him as much as I could even if it meant making
myself hurt. One thing I did know now, whatever happened to me in my future,
whatever path I walked, Keenan would be forever burned into my mind. I hadn’t
needed to tell him the truth. He could read me. He could read me better than
Daryl, who had known me since kindergarten. It wasn’t even just that he could read me. He knew me.
He knew me in a way that I wasn’t aware I’d allowed anyone to know me. As much
as I tried to hide everything I felt, somehow he knew how to find me when I
wanted to be lost. Was it instinct? I still don’t know. I don’t think I ever
will. That’s why, even though I only knew him a year, Keenan became a very
important part of my past, and a part of my past that I’d often visit in my
mind, when no one was around to interrupt me.
“What’s
your favourite colour?” A boy in class asked me.
“Purple,” I replied without hesitation.
“Eww. Purple’s the international gay colour. Did you know
that?” He replied.
“You know what they call it in hospitals when a patient has
no vitals?” I shot back.
“What?” He asked.
“Code blue,” I responded before continuing, “so my favourite
colour is a colour that’s used to symbolize people with enough inner strength
to be who they are in a world that tells them not to be the way they are. Your
favourite colour is a colour used in a code that means someone’s knocking on
death’s door.”
The boy wasn’t letting up and probed, “How’d you know that?
Is your Dad a doctor?”
“No.”
“Is your mom a nurse?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know that a code blue means a patients
dying?” The boy asked.
“Because I have seen a code blue,” I said.
My classmate blinked and dropped the conversation at that
point. The conversation left me reeling. It was Friday afternoon, more and more
my first year of middle school was turning into an absolute nightmare. That guy
and the favourite colours having some deep psychological connection with sexual
orientation drove me bananas. I hadn’t
been lying either. When I was three years old I was hospitalized overnight for
a severe asthma attack. The kid next to me went code blue in the middle of the
night, she didn’t survive. Later in the
day a girl in class compared her breasts to mine saying that I had some hooters
while she was flat. I blushed deeply, and tried to find a different topic for
the conversation. The only thing I could think of was the work we were supposed
to be doing.
But Bridgette insisted we talk about my breasts, which had
seemed to spring up overnight. What size was I? Did I wear a real bra or a
training bra?
‘Can I crawl into a
hole in and die? Or bind my chest? Get a sex change? Anything?’ I thought
to myself in sheer embarrassed desperation. I think the guy at the table took
pity on me because with him backing my insistence that we focus on our project,
the conversation drifted back to school work. I was grateful, but still
embarrassed, and angry.
I was still in a bit of a bad mood when I went over to my
mom’s, that is until I heard a very familiar, excited voice.
“Acacia!” Keenan’s voice called out as he ran over to me
with his arms wide. When he got to me he wrapped his arms around me in a hug
and much to my discomfort, his head rested on my newly developing breasts. It
was a bit painful, but more than that awkward and embarrassing.
The moment of elation was replaced with humiliation and I
froze, and then I remembered I can’t freeze around my mom, but I didn’t want to
have Keenan’s head on my breasts. I was starting to feel like that was all
people saw of me, and I hated it. I’m not breasts, I’m a human being. I tried
to gently move Keenan off of me.
He gave me a shocked look, his eyes full of concern while
his brows knitted in confusion, “What’s wrong?”
He asked me.
“I don’t want your head on my chest,” I answered.
‘God. I’m so embarrassed from school I can’t even say
‘breasts’,’ I thought to myself, trying to keep myself from blushing.
Keenan seemed to be even more angry at this, “I was just
hugging you!”
I felt like an eel then, but I still didn’t want his head
there.
“He’s just trying to be normal,” Darren remarked.
“Shut up Darren. He’s Keenan and that’s all he needs to be,”
I snapped at him. That weekend seemed to be full of emotional turmoil for both
Keenan and myself. We made up from what I can only say was our first fight the
same day, and we were friends again easily.
The next day when I went out into the backyard to play,
Keenan looked to me with this huge grin on his face, “Acacia, we’re going
fishing!”
I guess my face conveyed something hidden I didn’t even know
I was feeling, because he regarded me for a few minutes before asking, “Have
you ever been fishing?”
“No,” I replied.
It was true. My Dad had wanted to take me fishing several
times, my mother thought it was too masculine and would turn me lesbian as a
result. She threatened my Dad with police, Christian child protective services
and my psychiatrist if he did take me fishing.
The admission however, seemed to only brighten Keenan’s mood
even further as he joyfully exclaimed, “Then you can come with us!”
I brightened at the thought. Although physiologically I am
female, I’ve always had more of an affinity for male bonding and having male
companions than female companions, unless the girls I hung out with were a bit
‘weird’ or tomboyish in some way. A girl I talked to at school constantly, Sam,
was quite the tomboy. Very much into sports, mostly soccer and played on a
little league soccer team.
Me? Well, my mom got me started in ballet when I was three.
I liked dancing, I didn’t like ballet. So the next year, Dad asked me to choose
the type of dance class I wanted to do. I’d liked Jazz music for years having
listened to Peggy Lee most of my life, and went with Jazz dancing, the next
year I took up tap and I had been doing both since. I also took swimming
lessons, and had for about three years at this point. Keenan’s step father
however said that I wasn’t invited to go along with them on the fishing trip.
Keenan was visibly upset about this and tried to insist that I could go with
them. His step-father held firm. I clued in then that between their ages, and
the persistence that the trip was for ‘boys only’ fishing might not be the only
thing that they were going to be doing.
I felt a twinge of fear in the pit of my stomach. Keenan and
his brothers attended a Catholic school, I knew that much. I didn’t know if
they were religious, or how religious they were. I already knew that Keenan was
gay, he didn’t have to tell me. I wondered if he knew, or if he did know how
much he knew. I also was aware that someone else close to me wasn’t straight,
but kept it to myself. I’d known for most of my life in fact, but until they
were ready to say something I wasn’t going to say anything. It wasn’t my place
to out anyone. Young as I was, I knew it could be dangerous.
A sense of helplessness washed over me then. A fishing trip,
out by a pier, or in a boat, Keenan would have nowhere to really go if things
went south for him. At that moment, I wished for something harder than I’d ever
wished for anything in my life, but even as my heart sent out that wish I knew
it couldn’t be so. That was the first and only time I’d ever wished that I’d
been born a boy, if for nothing else than to just lend some support during that
time if Keenan needed it.
He’d be alone. I could only hope that if his step-father
started giving him a morality lecture that one if his brothers would step up
and defend him, or at least try to. It
was only a hope. All I could do was sit and wait. I waited, and waited. I don’t
think time had ever passed so slowly before. It felt like I was waiting for
Christmas morning to come but it was still July. After what felt like an
eternity, my mom came to the kitchen window to call down to me, “Acacia, when
the boys come home don’t go to Keenan. Let his parents handle it.”
‘Fuck me sideways and call me a parrot,’ I thought to myself
with dismay. They knew. He’d said something, or something had happened and the
cat was out of the bag.
When Keenan came through the back gate, his face looked like
a storm cloud. His body was tense, his hands were balled into fists, I felt my
heart shatter. I’d never seen him so upset. Not when his brothers would pick on
him, not when someone at school would bully him. This was the worst I’d ever
seen him. My instinct, the one thing I wanted more than anything, was to hug
him, just hold him and somehow squeeze that pain from his body and into myself.
That was the day, I witnessed death to innocence. Keenan was never really the
same, but life goes on.
Soon though, Keenan began doing exactly what I did, he’d
wear a ‘happy mask’, but I could see the truth behind that mask. Something had
happened on that trip to hurt him, and I had to constantly remind myself: I
wasn’t allowed to be there.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there, I wasn’t allowed
to. I knew my mother, I knew her outbursts, and I knew that if I had disobeyed
her that day, someone would’ve been hurt. It would’ve been me, Keenan, or even
my mother. There was one time when she tried to stop me from chasing after a
friend who’d ran out into the street, I was the fastest and I knew I could
reach him. She wouldn’t give me a chance to say it though, and my friend’s
mother had broken her foot. She wasn’t able to keep up with her son. So when my
mom picked me up, my instinct was to grab her wrists and twist them as hard as
I could. She let me go, and raced after my friend. I grabbed his shirt,
physically making him stay on the other side of the street right at my side
until our moms crossed the street and were with us again. I was four.
For the most part, I’m a very peace loving, gentle, and kind
person but I will not stand for anyone putting my friends in danger, or trying
to keep me from them when I know they’re in danger. But at this point in my
life, I wasn’t stupid either. I could’ve been tried as a juvenile had I injured
someone that day, and that could’ve made things even worse for Keenan.
I did the only thing I thought I could do, I stayed back
during the storm and decided I’d do as much damage control clean up as I could
in the aftermath.
I’d always known about Paganism, and Druidism. Although
raised Presbyterian Christian, my Dad was quite determined to make sure I knew
and understood all religions to the best of his ability to teach me. So after
that incident, I began teaching Keenan and his brothers about these ancient
religions, hoping to soothe some of the wounds I now knew Keenan was likely
doing his best to hide. I didn’t want to become one of those wounds, that was
my greatest fear, but knowing how mom was I knew it was a strong possibility.
Knowing that, made me hate myself, hate what I was born of, hate who my mother
was. As I felt this I once more found myself wishing briefly for something,
wishing I had been adopted instead of biologically related to her. Or even
better, just adopted by my father, that’s when my train of thought stopped full
force because if that had happened, if my mother wasn’t part of my life I never
would’ve met Keenan.
I smiled to myself a bit as I followed that thought and
realized how curious life truly is. Things happen to us, for us, that we don’t
understand until we step back and look at the full picture. Now as I type this,
fifteen years after these events I realise I was probably destined to know
Keenan only for that one year, and that he played such a key role in my own
self-discovery and acceptance. He already knew so much about himself as young
as he was. He already knew he wasn’t into girls the way most boys are, and he
didn’t try to act like he was. He wasn’t hung up on being macho or trying to
act stereotypically. He wasn’t above telling people that in honesty, his
favourite colour was pink. He had the most unique way to eat a donut that I’d
ever heard of, take a honey cruller, cut it in half, fill it with whipped cream
and sprinkles and eat it like a sandwich. To me, even at age 12, it sounds
sickeningly sweet and not something I’d get into, but he raved about it without
care of who heard him or judged him for it. He’s brave. As brave as I wanted to
be, but felt I could never be. I was that brave when I was around him though.
With Keenan, I had no reason to be scared, he wouldn’t judge me or tell me that
I was wrong to feel the way I did. He knew what it was like to be different. I
think, I hope, he understood that anytime I could stand up for him without
making things worse for him, I would. He was a friend. That’s all that
mattered. For the first time that I could remember in a long time, I was happy.
When the school year of 1999 came to a close in June, I
found out something that turned my happy world upside down until it crashed and
burned. My mom was moving again, the worst part is I didn’t find out from her
it was Keenan and Craig that told me.
Keenan was a bit off all day that May afternoon, and finally
when I felt it could be asked, I inquired about what was wrong. “I’m gonna miss
you when you leave,” Keenan said.
I laughed a little, thinking this was some sort of prank
Darren was playing on him or something, “I’m not going anywhere… well except to
my Dad’s, but I always come back.”
“Michelle’s moving at the end of the summer. My mommy said
she is. So you’ll be leaving too,” Keenan replied.
I blinked, my mind a paradox at that moment. It was as if my
mind were a freight train about to run off the tracks while the world around me
slowed down to super slow motion. Shock, anger, disbelief, hate, and dismay
swirled around inside of me like a boiling pot about to bubble over. I couldn’t
believe it. Keenan had known about this, but my mother hadn’t bothered to tell
me? Why? How could she keep this from me? Didn’t I deserve to know? Didn’t I
have the right to know that she was once more yanking me away from friends?
I don’t remember my conversation with her for the most part
except for her to tell me, “And it’s the best way to keep you from turning a
lesbian because of that boy. Once we leave, you’re never to come back here or
talk to him again.”
I just remember glaring at her as if she were a glass I
could see through, but a glass I wanted to shatter into a million pieces. At
that moment it seemed my whole world would become a million times worse after
the summer. After the summer, she’d have more means to control me, and I’d lose
the person who didn’t seek to change me but just liked me for me, as I was. As
I still am. I made a choice then. If I couldn’t have Keenan, or people like him
in my life, than I didn’t want to live.
I had been diagnosed with asthma at the age of two, ten
years ago. Ten years is enough time for a child or teenager to learn how to
control their illness, even use it in a frightening way. I decided I’d have an
asthma related death. Aside from my mother’s homophobia there were things going
on at my Dad’s that made things even worse. I’d been a behind the scenes
caregiver for my grandmother for a good portion of my life by the time I was
12. I didn’t know what was wrong, only that she’d forget things, a lot. Like to
turn off the stove, not to put plastic items on a hot burner, or that she’d
taken her medication. So I spent a good portion of my days after school looking
after these things, and handling the consequences of some of them.
I’d tried saying repeatedly what was going on, but no one
believed me. After all, who’d believe a child? A child has an inherited evil
and the correction rod will drive it from him. That was my grandmother’s
belief, and it seemed my family’s belief.
In late June, my plans for death came to fruition except the
timing was all wrong. Instead of it happening at school or during a walk home
where it would’ve bared chance of success, for my rotten luck the full effect
of the attack happened at night while my mother and I apartment sat for my Aunt
and my cousin. My mother heard me coughing and after trying a few things to
stop the attack (not that I wanted it to stop) she called an ambulance.
I absolutely hated it. I hated that she’d called the
ambulance, but then I thought maybe, maybe this is another way out. Maybe I can
get a chance to talk to the doctors and tell them that I don’t want my mother
in my life. That all she’s done my whole life is try to change me into
something I’m not, that she can’t accept me as I am and it’s killing me inside.
No such luck. My suicide didn’t complete, and my mother wouldn’t leave me alone
for longer than a few minutes and the times when I was alone with the nurses, I
get a word in edge wise between them instructing me how to do the tests they wanted
done and then making me proceed with the tests without any further delay.
I didn’t want to go home. Not with her. I wanted to be with
my Dad. I wished that I had died, then I wouldn’t feel the pain I knew was
coming when we moved. I wouldn’t have a chance to miss Keenan. I didn’t want to
miss him, ever. Then I remembered something and suddenly wanted to slap myself
til I left marks on my face for being so stupid! I didn’t want to wound Keenan.
In my desperation to not be pulled away from him, to try to find some way to
have at least a long shot of staying in his life I acted beyond stupidity and
risked doing the exact thing I didn’t want to do, but then again at this point
it seemed I’d become a wound to him no matter what happened.
I’d succeeded in putting myself into respiratory arrest, my
lungs collapsed because of what I did to myself, but at what cost to Keenan? In
that moment, with that thought I wished for two separate things, one that the
attempt had succeeded so I wouldn’t go back to knowing the sting of rejection
at every turn. Two, that Keenan would never find out and have a justified
reason to hate my guts.
It was about two weeks after that incident, when one night a
friend of Keenan’s older brother blew cigarette smoke into my face. My lungs
reacted and I coughed a little. The next thing I heard just added to the guilt
I’d felt over my selfish suicide attempt.
“Don’t do that! She has really bad asthma, you’ll kill her!”
Keenan yelled at his brother’s friend, getting up close to the teenage boy who
only seemed to tower over Keenan.
I had the urge to let my jaw drop, but kept myself in check.
The older boy glared Keenan down and shot back with something that I don’t
quite remember. I moved myself so I was standing between the boy and Keenan, my
hand gently pressed against Keenan’s chest as I moved so I would act as a
shield between the two, “If you raise one finger to harm him, you make sure you
knock me out first and that I’ll never get up because when I do, I’m not gonna
stop until you’re out for the count.”
It was an odd calm that came through me as I did this, and
my voice was foreign to my own ears. Where had that confidence come from? And
why did I care so much? I just did. That’s all there was to it. As much as
Keenan could annoy me to the point where I’d want to scream at him, I still
would rather take the hits myself than watch anyone hit him.
Towards the middle of summer, Keenan did something he told
me he’d never do. I had asked him once before to sing with me, and he replied
that he didn’t sing. That day, he sang to me… or tried to. I can’t remember the
lyrics, or the song he was singing… all I remember was feeling my chest and
throat tighten. I felt like my heart was breaking and I knew it was either
laugh or cry. If I laughed, I risked hurting his feelings. If I cried, and my
mother figured out why he’d become a weapon she’d use against me. Hoping I’d
have a chance to one day explain, I
laughed.
A little later, what I told Keenan was that I didn’t like
just anyone seeing me cry, and Darren had been there, but there was still even
more to it than that. Keenan had only ever seen me cry from physical pain. It
had happened one time when we were playing with a volley ball during summer.
He’d thrown it a bit too hard, and it slipped through my hands when I’d tried
to catch it, it hit my face. My mother had wanted me to actually do the
samething back to Keenan and make him hurt. To get her off of my case so she
wouldn’t harp on about it and keep me isolated from them until it did happen, I
did chase him with the volley ball and throw it at him, but I didn’t throw it
intending to hurt him. I threw it for show. Just so she’d leave me alone about
pay back, revenge. “An eye for an eye leaves the world blind,” I really do
believe that. That had been the one and only time when I cried in front of
Keenan and his brothers. At some point during one of the summers we’d known
each other, I started calling him ‘Keens’.
The last day that I saw Keenan was in September of that
year, some mail had been sent to his house and was addressed to my mother. Dad
and I went over to retrieve it. As soon as they saw me, Keenan and Craig wanted
to play, Dad reminded me that we didn’t have time, I had a swimming lesson that
night. I went and got the mail from Keenan’s mother. I spoke with Keenan and
Craig, briefly. I wanted to say something to give some kind of hope so I
promised I’d come back and hang out sometime. I knew even as I spoke those
words the odds were drastically against me, I still said it. Why? To this day,
I don’t fully know. I guess because I remembered at some point during the past
year Keenan had told me his biggest dream in life was to move out of this city,
get away from some people he knew, and live life away from them. In my
distressed state I guess I figured I’d give him something a little shorter term
to hold onto and look forward to, so even if things got worse for him, he
wouldn’t give in to the same desperate action that I had.
I knew even then it was an extremely short term solution
against future onslaughts against him, I just hoped it was long term enough
until the next person in his fate met him to help carry on the torch of support
from there. I hoped given enough time, he’d completely forget about me as I did
the only thing I could think to do at the time to keep from harming myself
again. I tried to push away my memories of Keenan, and bury them. To forget
what it’s like for someone to like you and accept you regardless of how
different you are from them. I knew I had to if I could ever go through with
the social experiment that would have to take place to appease my mother or
give me grounds to remove her from my life.
The first few months after moving away from Keenan were the
most difficult, for a while calendars
made my eyes tear up, if the real Keenan is reading this then he’d likely be
able to figure out why, just think what each day’s name ends in.
I’d look at a calendar, and wonder if Keenan thought of me
whenever he heard a song by the Backstreet boys or Aaron carter, or whenever he
saw something purple, or cats. I’d listen to a spice girls song and remember
singing in the tree in the backyard. Each time, I felt a pain and tightness in
my chest that only became worse as time went on.
By the time winter winter, 2000 came around, I still wasn’t
over it. I was back to putting on a daily show of ‘everything’s okay’, but
inside I was still a train wreck. I’d lost a lot of self-confidence that I once
possessed. I didn’t sing anymore, I gave up dancing. I just didn’t find it
interesting. Even swimming and my favourite foods weren’t appealing to me. I
was nearing the end of middle school and people were pushing more than ever,
“Do you like a guy?”
“No,” I’d reply.
“So you’re a dyke?”
“No,” I’d respond.
“So which guy do you like?”
I felt like punching them, in the face, with the butt of a
shot gun. I don’t want boys so I must want girls, I don’t want girls so I must
want boys. It was a never ending circle of torment and the social normalcy of
everyone being a sexual being. I was an asexual. Where do I belong? I don’t
belong with straights because I don’t want to have sex with men. I don’t belong
with LGBT because I don’t want to have sex with women, and I don’t want a sex
change.
I was an outcast again, and I felt a great swell of empathy
for Rudolph. I felt like Rudolph. Every single day if it wasn’t one thing it
was another. My clothes were too baggy, I should show off my figure more. I
should dress more feminine, I should style my hair, wear makeup, and high
heels. I should go to dances, I should get a boyfriend, date someone.
Darryl had already had two girlfriends, and kept telling me
when I started dating he was going to make sure to give the guy his, “older
brother approval” before things get ‘serious’. At first I wondered what ‘serious’
meant. For a while I thought he meant serious like spending a lot of money on
each other, and then I realized he meant before the guy and I started making
out.
I felt deflated, isolated, and alone. Even standing right
beside the people who were supposed to be my best friends, I felt like no one
in this world understood me, or wanted to know me. The only person who did know
me, I wasn’t allowed to see. I’d tried a few times to go back without my mother
knowing, only for the plans to fall through and go wrong. Mom had even
threatened to call the police on Keenan’s parents for allowing me onto their
property if I did see him again. That sealed it. I didn’t want to cause any
more trouble in Keenan’s life than he could already be facing.
As I sat in the stall of the girl’s washroom at school,
tugging at my hair, wishing I had a razor blade to cut or hot water to scald
myself, I thought about him, and wondered how he was doing. I hoped he was
surviving his tests better than I. I quietly cried, tears flowing from eyes
while I made no sound. How I wished I could hug him again. I needed a hug, a
real one. Not just one you get as a greeting, or as a familial obligation, but one
where the person is genuinely happy that you’re around them. The kind of hug
where you’re just so relaxed with the person it doesn’t matter why you’re
hugging, you just are. I needed one then, so much I felt a physical pain from
not receiving one. I felt sure I could live the rest of my days without sex. It
never interested me to begin with. Hugs? I couldn’t go my whole life without
hugs, or cuddles.
Not knowing what else to do, I took my nails to my skin and
began scratching. I wasn’t itchy, I just needed something to take the edge off.
Over and over the same area until the skin became raw and small spots of blood
surfaced. Not satisfied, but pacified, I stood up. I flushed the toilet as part
of the scene and left the washroom, the long sleeve of my sweat shirt hiding
the raw bleeding skin.
I caught a glimps of my reflection as I walk passed and felt
an urge to smash my forehead against the mirror until it shattered.
‘Maybe it’s best that
I do keep away from Keenan. That dead look in my eyes, I think I’d just scare
him,’ I thought to myself as I left the washroom and headed back to French
class.
The rest of my life goes into a whirl wind, but this is the
first seven years of my life as an LGBT ally, doing the small things that a
child can do to show support for LGBT, and with my own struggle to accept my
asexuality.
I began practicing bulimia when I was 14, using a drink
mixture as an inducer rather than my finger. I quickly damaged my stomach
lining and esophagus. The bulimia was a high much like everything else, I did
that was self-destructive. The cutting became scratching and I continued to
scald myself until I was 17. I’m now ‘clean’ from self-harming for 10 years, I
haven’t been suicidal since I was sixteen.
I’m now twenty-seven years old.
I’ve had one relationship. That happened mostly because my
parents had sat me down, told me that I absolutely had to date and if I didn’t
start showing an interest in dating they’d ground me from music, tv, video
games and the internet until I did begin to date. I hated being in that
relationship. I was trapped in it, and I was trapped if I left. When things
became really bad and began turning violent, complete with the threats of rape,
I ended things. It’s been two years now and no one’s tried to force me to date
since.
I marched in the pride Parade in my city in 2009, my ex was
marching with me. In 2011, I lost my father who towards the end of his life
admitted to me that he was disappointed I wasn’t married and he didn’t get a
chance to walk me down the aisle, despite same-sex marriage being legal in my
country since 2005. I felt a bit of anger towards him for that admission, after
all it’s not like I can flip a switch and suddenly become attracted to either
gender.
My mother and I no longer talk and haven’t for two years.
After my relationship ended, she continuously tried to set me up with people
whom she felt I should marry because I could spend their money and they could
financially look after me. My response was, “I’d rather financially look after
myself. Thanks.”
She had then replied with tisking and stated, “You’re going
to be in the poor house for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll have more self-respect being poor than living as a
gold digger,” was my reply to that statement implying that all women are financially
dependent on men.
I didn’t realise that what I’d experienced my whole life was
actually called ‘asexuality’ and that there were others in the world like me
until I was about 25 years old. It was through a facebook group called ‘Wipeout
homophobia on facebook’. It was also through facebook that a year ago, I
finally got a chance to talk to Keenan (which isn’t his real name btw) through
facebook as well. I was looking for a facebook fan group for a British singer I
knew of when I saw the picture. I’m looking at it for a bit and I decide to
check out this person’s profile. It was weird at first, I’m looking through the
pictures and I’m thinking, ‘no way. I couldn’t have stumbled across Keens’
facebook’ then I watch a video of this person making a few noises while some
music plays in the back ground there’s a visual effect to the video. My jaw drops and I debate on what to do.
Eventually, I decided to send off a short facebook message, explaining how I
knew him, and that I wasn’t sure if he’d remember me, I wouldn’t be surprised
if he didn’t, but that it was great to see he was doing well.
I did receive a
response from him, it was my Keens that I knew back during that one key
important year in my childhood… and I got a chance to apologize for not going
back. There’s no bad feelings there from what I gathered, to quote him, “It was
forever ago.” To me, it was and it wasn’t, but knowing he didn’t hold it
against me lifted a world off of my shoulders. We don’t talk anymore, but it
was nice that life gave me the chance to find him and talk with him again, if
only, once more for a brief time.
I work full-time, and I live on my own. Life’s good now, and
I plan on becoming more active with LGBT and Asexual movements in the future.
