A Friend in Need...

My best friend's name is Annie (that's short for anonymous). She's a straight chick but I love her anyway. She was the first person in real life that I came out to. I remember going to her house that fateful night, flinging myself across her bed and crying for 2 hours. I used up an entire roll of toilet paper. After I had quieted to a whimper she got this excited look on her face and said, "God some of this stuff could be really funny!" then she grabbed her notebook and began scribbling down snippets of my tirade.

There was the time that a man tried to stick his hand up my skirt at Pengilly's. I spent another 2 hours of my life crying and throwing up in their bathroom. She took me home and watched me do the same thing at my house for 30 minutes. She held my head. Took off my ear rings and pulled my hair back. And she still loved me in the morning. That was the night that convinced us that we needed a plan to keep men away from us while we are out and about in Boise. Out whipped the book of funny.

Of course, there was also the time that I found myself flung across her bed (again) crying because I was about to lose my very first girlfriend. That time I think I was the one to remind her to grab her notebook.

Don't condemn her...she is a comedian and we both love/need to find funny inside pain, even/especially mine. Come to think of it...she must have a whole lot of funny in that notebook by now.

Coming Out

coming out appears to me
to be a series of leaps and creeps
not always in the same direction.

coming out appears to me
to be aided by
the slight of hand of a magician.

coming out appears to me
to be a lifetime of lefts and rights
a constant imperfect navigation.

If She'd Only Wear a Dress

I am out to many people in my life but I am not out to my dad or his wife. I have pretty much decided that my dad will die thinking all his children were hetero. My dad is a good and kind man but it only takes one evening with him and Bill O'Reilly to understand that he wouldn't take it well.

His wife is the salt of the earth too but while watching Ellen yesterday commented "Oh I think she is hilarious! But I don't approve of her lifestyle and I really wished she would just wear a dress now and then." Ugh, my stomach sank as I closed the closet door again.

It's just no use. I have an overwhelming need to be loved by these people. They will die approving of my lifestyle. I will hid like the chicken that I am and at their funeral I will probably be seen wearing a dress.

love, nina

Snow Globe

Its as if my life is a snow globe. I took it and shook it up. I never equated all those little flakes inside to pieces of my life that had settled softly to the bottom. I just shook it. Once those flakes were in motion though I realized, they were pieces of me, they were people in my life, promises I made, dreams I helped build. I just sit horrified now realizing that all those pieces will have to find their way back down to the bottom and will never again lie in perfect alignment. I chose to shake it. I can't unshake it.

He took his ring off a while ago. Once he realized that I am not the woman either of us thought I was. It didn't really bother me that much until tonight. When I realized his sister noticed... When I watched the interaction between him and my kids (his step kids). I dont think he sees them as his anymore either. Why should he? He is angry and unhappy and the blame lies at my feet. My kids are angry and unhappy and the blame lies at my feet. The blame will forever lie at my feet.

Even if I said today that I would be happy to live with him as I have done for 8 years and ignore who I am for the sake of kids and marriage, its too late. I have to face the fact that I will be alone (I already am). And perhaps an even greater harm, I may have sentenced him to a life much the same. My children will grow up knowing that mom shook up their world and caused them confusion and sadness. She stole away everything familiar and normal because she realized at 44 that she was gay.

To say that I am unprepared for the world I must live in is an understatement of the greatest proportion. I have no marketable skills. I haven't worked in 8 years. I have no degree in anything. I will have to work in minimum wages jobs and worry about having a roof over my head. I would be lying if I said I am not sad to give up my life of priviledge. I have loved being a stay at home mom. I have loved wanting for nothing. My beautiful house, car and the inherent expectation that everything will be the same as today, yesterday and tomorrow, forever. Even though, these things are only mine because of who I married I still think of them as mine. Or thought of them, I guess.

I hesitate to even get into my thoughts of utter despair and hopelessness. Everything I could say would come across as if I were writing a suicide note. Which I am not. But I damn well want to wallow and tell, at least a little corner of the world that I am in the worst place of my life. A place that is unbearable. A place with no door for escape. And I put myself there. I can never be who I was a year ago. That woman is indeed dead, if in fact she ever really existed in the first place. I am ashamed and embarrassed and I truly do loathe myself right now.The question I will forever ask of God is why I had to wait until I was 44 and forehead deep in life to realize this. Why not at 20 or 80? Either seems better than 44.

It's been almost a year since an unfamiliar wind began blowing through my life. It woke me from a 40 year sleep. It left me astonished, confused and more than a little bit intrigued.

If you listen to me recount it I will say that I just "woke up gay" and while that is the easiest way to explain it it isn't as simple or as tidy as that. But at quick glance I suppose it appears that way to others.

I did wake up one morning with a crush on a long time friend and I remember wondering what the hell was going on. I felt silly and embarrassed and tried to push it out of my head. I would reason with myself that a woman of my age, married twice with 4 kids could not possibly be gay. I would point to all of my hetero history as proof but find myself later mentally wandering back to this woman and I would long to kiss her softly and tell her how beautiful she was.

And so began my unexpected journey. It's a journey which I am told is not that uncommon yet by virtue of its subject matter, it is fraught with isolation and fear. I have and continue to experience these feelings. That is not to say I haven't also felt joy for that too is part of the journey.

This blog is to be my witness. It is also here, I hope, to find those who are on a similar journey. I hope to provide solace, personal insight, community links and perhaps... I may say something funny along the way. If that happens I hope I have made you smile. After all, if I am to be a lesbian, I want to be a funny one.

love, nina