April 2022 was the first time I’d seen my mom since moving to Los Angeles at the start of the pandemic. Despite regular phone calls and a “morning devotional” text chain I could almost set my watch to, it had been a full two years since we’d been together and the excitement was deep. She wanted to enjoy a full L.A. experience but two things were non-negotiable: doing “all the things from ‘Pretty Woman’” and enjoying a full meal at Tabitha Brown’s Kale My Name. Over the course of our five-day reunion, we would find time to do that plus a full day at Harry Potter World. But the most satisfying, soul-stirring, and spiritual moments we shared weren’t at the beach, on Rodeo, or buying Hogwarts robes. The most beautiful space we shared over those five days happened right in my living room.
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I knew opening up about my sexuality would change things and that was the last thing I wanted, so the idea of it didn’t seem liberating as much as terrifying. Brené Brown describes shame as the fear of disconnection; the fear that this truth — my truth — might cost me the very relationships and friendships that made up my support system. But, Codie described it best in “After Love”: “It’s self-love. Ultimately, you’re deciding to choose yourself and honor your love, which is the thing that makes us reject those that aren’t interested in us having that.” It took seeing someone fully live in his truth with absolute freedom. Living as carefree as I saw my straight friends who’d never considered “coming out” as straight or worrying about how to break the news. Why was I carrying this? Why was I the one panicking about how to explain something that should be so normal?
The more that I came into self-love, the more I found myself moving from shame to resentment. I resented the fact that despite striving for perfection academically, professionally, and personally, this would be the thing to make my mom turn away from me. The fact that one aspect of my humanity, something that makes up a fraction of who I am, would be the tipping point despite doing my best to be a perfect child. So since I resented carrying it, I didn’t. I went from being terrified of what her response would be, to being completely unbothered. I approached my sexuality with all of the normalcy I knew it deserved. Was it the best choice? Depends on who you ask.
Shortly after I opened up to my mom, it did change things. We went from talking every day to speaking once a week and as I expected, it didn’t feel great. “Be patient with her, you did just basically come out,” my friends would tell me to which I would reply with a simple, “no.” What I needed was for this to be as normal to her as it was to me because why shouldn’t it be? Ali said explicitly in “After Love” how critical his mother’s love for him was in building up his confidence. “When they teach you to love yourself and that slips into your soul, you push out of whatever they tell you to do,” he said speaking on the fire that comes from that confidence, “because you change your family when you begin to love yourself.” And that was my goal. What a disservice it was to sit in the face of my mom who knew me this deeply, who I’d seen navigate through some of the most significant obstacles of her life and allow us to continue pretending that this was fully authentic. Because outside of our roles as mother and son, who were we as people? “Parents are human,” Lindsay said describing how her therapy journey prompted her mom to explore her own childhood. That’s when I realized that while I thought I didn’t want anything to change, in a way I wanted everything to change.
Yes, I wanted my mom to still love me, but I needed her to love me. I wanted to know that by opening up about this part of my life she could actually love me more fully. I wanted us to speak like people. So I did. The next time we spoke I told her plainly, “I feel like you think this changes something about my life?” “No,” she replied in a dry tone. “Eh,” I said suspiciously, “I feel like you had expectations and ideas for what my life look like and you think I’ve changed that.” “Well didn’t you,” she asked. “Not from my understanding,” I said, “I still see myself married. I still see myself being a father. I still see all of those things, but I feel like you assumed I didn’t.” The conversation was brief, but it seemed to be the thing that moved us forward. What I assumed was shame or judgment, was actually disappointment and the mourning of an expectation. While I didn’t carry responsibility for that, I could empathize. And she realized that while some things had changed, they actually hadn’t changed as much as she thought.
That one conversation was a turning point for us. We slowly got back to ourselves, and with time, came perspective. A few months later, I flew to L.A. for the first time to celebrate Pride. That same weekend a man entered a gay club in Orlando, Florida, killed 49 people and injured 53 more. The very next day a man was stopped on his way to L.A.’s Pride event with a cache of weapons, ammunition, and materials to make explosives. In that short span of time, our perspectives shifted and true to Ali’s words, that new perspective came from love. Suddenly, who I loved was irrelevant and what might or might not happen in the future was unimportant. In that moment, we were brought back to our priorities.
Having this experience as an adult likely meant that I had language and understanding that I might not have had 10 years prior, but the needs were the same: I wanted to be loved for all of me, not for parts of me. I wanted to be loved more deeply, not boxed in because someone made me the cause of their discomfort. I wanted security and to know that you would be there for me just as fiercely, if not more. In my opinion, none of this was difficult in my mind. Isn’t this what most people want? I’ll tell you what queer children want – we want our identity to not require conversation. We want our existence to not require an explanation or a tearful sit-down. We want to not look over our shoulder or feel a pang of shame when we hold hands or want to kiss in public. We want those around us who don’t identify as LGBTQ+ to acknowledge the privilege they take for granted and use it to make space for other forms of love. Simply put, we want the liberation we’re due.
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