My Heart’s Keeper
As the oldest son, I grew up burdened with the expectations of my parents about what it meant to be a boy and a man. I was taught to believe in the fallacy of perfection, and pressured to be a shining role model for my siblings. I was pumped up with hopes and dreams and the promise of happiness, if only…
“If only” meant embodying the values of my parents (in spite of my own inclinations) to become the man they wished me to be. Too young to know who I was or what I liked, I just kept leaning in the direction that was easiest and most secure. My existence was shaped by an all-consuming need to be validated, especially by my mom. I would do anything for her love.
Outside of my mom’s gravitational pull, I learned who I really was. By age 10, I knew I was attracted to other boys. I was unsure what this meant, so I observed my mom’s reactions to me in an attempt to understand which behaviors to emphasize and which ones to stifle…which parts of myself were lovable and which parts were not.
I had no clue what it meant to be gay. But it was the mid-eighties and I received a crash course via the evening news, staring in horror at images of gaunt-faced men dotted with open sores. The AIDS crisis was exploding in NYC, 30 miles from the safe suburban bubble where my nagging sexuality was demanding to be heard.
The “gay virus” was killing gay men. When these men weren’t on display in the throes of undignified death, they were shown as flamboyant caricatures.
The notion of gayness that formed in my mind was scary and sad and completely alien to me. If I “allowed myself” to be gay, it meant I’d never have children, I’d never get married, I’d be an outcast. My greatest fear would be realized: I would be unlovable.
No. I would shape my destiny. I would repay my debt to my parents by becoming the man they expected me to become. I would create a lovable persona and build a happy, normal life. I would not be gay.
With quiet determination, I dissembled. I dissociated my idealized self from my actual self.
I begrudgingly accepted who I was. Then I set out to destroy him.
I was a cruel and effective jailer. For over 30 years, I lived with a terrified gay boy locked up in the darkest recesses of my being. I abused him relentlessly — delegitimized and degraded him. He never died, but he suffered terribly.
Back when I could still cry, I would let him out into the quiet solitude of my bed and we would soak the pillow with our tears. In my innocent insanity, I believed pain was the price of admission to the “normal” life I so desperately wanted.
I became a man in full knowledge that the deep, abiding love I craved so much as a child was something I could never give. Even as a beautiful life took shape around me, I knew it was built on a faulty foundation and girded by the big, strong, generous heart of the woman who married me. I’d convinced myself that the gay boy was dead and I could proceed, unencumbered and guiltless, into a heterosexual marriage. We built a good life together. I wept in grateful disbelief when my son was born. Two daughters would follow.
But marrying a beautiful woman and producing children didn’t change the truth. The gay boy wasn’t dead. Self-loathing spread like cancer inside me.
Over the years, alcohol was my accomplice in my erasure of self. It was the escape, the numbing, the destruction, the blissful blackout into the endless night of my loathsome existence.
The space where my heart should have been — the cold, drafty center of my idealized self — was an echo chamber of lies and deceit, guilt and shame. Yet somehow, miraculously, I was loved. The love of my wife and children nourished and sustained me, though I was unworthy, and guilty to receive it. One thing was clear: I could not be a loving father to my three children while simultaneously abusing the child inside me.
I stood at a dizzying height, atop the fragile construct of my life. Ahead was the great unknown: a new life that was terrifying to behold, where nothing would be the same. The identity I’d carefully constructed for 42 years would crumble into oblivion.
Behind me was the life I knew, the status quo, all the toil and sacrifice to become the person and create the life I thought would make me happy. I knew how the story ended down that well-worn path: a slow alcoholic suicide, my horrified children watching their father self-destruct.
The old adage repeated in my head: The Truth Will Set You Free. I leapt forward into a vast, unknowable space. A miracle occurred as Doubt was replaced by Faith. I felt the rush of fresh air as I fell away from the Big Lie, toward myself. I felt my body grow lighter but stronger. I had wings my whole life and never knew it.
Three weeks after my leap of Faith, I said these words aloud to another person for the first time: “I am gay.”
I could hear the bolts slam back as the lock to the dark cell burst open. I stood at the scene of the crime that had defined my life up to that point. My entire body trembled at the sight of the little, ginger-headed angel emerging from the darkness. In his outstretched hands he cradled what I’d been missing. He offered me our heart.
Overwhelmed by decades of stymied emotions, my eyes burst with a torrent of un-wept tears. When I could finally see, the boy was gone. He’d entered my body and placed the heart that we’d battled over for 40 years into the cavity of my chest. The war was over.
I am middle-aged now. I will never be that gay boy, nor any iteration of the fabulously authentic gay man he may have been in his 20s and 30s. But there is no place for regret in this story. There is only gratitude.
I finally love myself. I am not the cruel jailer I once was. I am whole, and my heart explodes every day with joyful appreciation for everything in my life. I am a father to 3 miraculous children who were borne of love, however imperfect it may have been. I accept and love my kids for who they are, free from impossible ideals and expectations.
I am divorcing, navigating single parenthood, and learning how to be true to myself as a gay man. I am processing my guilt and shame with the loving-kindness I deserve. I am learning to value everything I thought made me unlovable.
Despite my years — white whiskers be damned — my reclaimed heart beats vigorously, like the heart of a child. I am sober now — no longer destroying myself with alcohol. The little gay boy who guarded our heart through all those years of abuse is finally safe. Every day I make amends to him by leading my best (gay) life! I love him so much — I sometimes feel that my heart will burst. At last, he is home. As one, we are free.
