March 2015 – Page 4 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Learning Rest: Dealing with C-PTSD

March 3, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. It was originally published on July 9, 2013.

My therapist looked at me and told me that I have PTSD.

C-PTSD to be specific.

I had just finished describing her how I rarely got a gift or anything from my parents, specifically my dad, that wasn’t conditional. I told her about a mountain bike I had gotten one year for Christmas. It was a really nice bike, probably cost about $1200. I was thrilled when we all came rushing down the stairs and I saw the bike with my name on it. I eagerly looked it over, and then I got the second part of the “gift.” I had to pay the stupid thing off. I. Had. To. Pay. The. Bike. Off.

I was maybe 11, had no job, I did most of the house work around the house, did a lot of the meals, cleaned the kitchen after every meal, and now I was expected to pay off a bike that was a “gift”?! Paying off the bike meant giving up my birthday money, Christmas money, doing extra yard work (on top of everything else), as well as extra, extra work around the house.

That bike became a thorn in my side the older I got.

I loved the bike, and the fact that I had to pay it off back then barely fazed me. I was so excited to have a really nice bike (it was one step below my dad’s expensive mountain bike; a fact I was very proud of). That bike was one of the nicest things I ever had. But that bike is also one of the reasons that I absolutely refuse to ride a bike today.

My dad does not simply give one of his children something without expecting something in return.

He gave me a ring for my 13th birthday, and I found out the price of that ring when I tried to get married. He believed that he owned my heart. He believed that he must give his consent before I “fell in love” with a man. My parents gave us the use of a timeshare for our honeymoon. Sorry, gave is not the right word. They let us a rent their timeshare for our honeymoon. My dad/parents seek profit from their children, including threatening to make minors pay rent, babysit without pay, making unwilling children pay for their bikes that they didn’t want but dad bought anyway.

Being told I have PTSD makes me uneasy.

It’s almost compared to how I felt when I was told 7 years ago that I was depressed. It’s a feeling of “no, that’s not me. I’m not broken.” It’s like someone saying they’re not crying as tears race down their face, sobs on every breath.

The truth of the matter is I am a classic case of C-PTSD.

I have an underlying depression that has been there for many years, breaking the silence every once in a while to put me in a viscious cycle of multiple days of bad depression. I may seem bold on here, but believe me when I say that the bold things are written after I’ve had a major breakdown, my world seems to fall apart, and/or I feel like shutting down and forgetting who I am. And yes, this post is being written after two weeks of some of the lowest spots I’ve reached in a very long time. It resulted in an emergency therapy session last week because I knew I needed help fast.

I don’t let people see me when I hit those days of emotional breakdowns, but truly, I need someone to be there. I need someone to come sit with me, hold me, and tell me that crying is a release of the poison that has built up inside of me. I just don’t know how to ask, or who to ask. I fear making people uncomfortable and making them uneasy by my open, bleeding heart. To deal with that fear, I push people away because once I know I’ve made someone uncomfortable, I am then extra sensitive to what I say around them, tell them, or ask them to do. It’s pretty screwed up, isn’t it?

I am slowly learning to take care of myself simply because I have to, or else into the deep end I go.

I had a light-bulb moment today when I realized why it is so difficult for me to take care of myself. Growing up I was never allowed to really rest. I used to love going to bed at night because it meant that I finally had time to myself, I could rest, and I wouldn’t be told to go clean or do something. That was until I couldn’t sleep, and then there was no place where I actually felt I could rest. My dad would come bursting into my room with this look of almost blind fury, yelling at me, shaming me, about how mom was doing such and such, and how dare I not do my job.

Even if I was sick, had a massive headache, or simply just needed to rest, I wasn’t allowed to.

My dad would constantly tell me and my other siblings about how mom shouldn’t have to do anything. My dad wouldn’t do shit when it came to cleaning or doing anything around the house. He only did the outside work, putting my siblings to work when something needed to be cleaned up, but otherwise wouldn’t let them help him with the lawn, trimming bushes, or washing the vehicles. (I can honestly say I have never washed a car before.) I only really remember maybe 2 or 3 times of him actually doing some cleaning.

He would sure rant about how privileged mom was and how she shouldn’t have to do any cleaning.

This is making me rage as I write this because the shame and guilt my dad was so good at pouring on me has made it difficult for me to relax in my own home, listen to my body especially when my hands aren’t working well enough to clean. Can you imagine my rage? Can you hear the frustration I feel as I try to function in a healthy way only to be thrown back when this garbage sneaks up on me?

I am finding it relieving to be able to name my mental state.

It is relieving to have something to explain why cleaning freaks me out. I see the dust at the back of the bathroom sink and I have flashbacks to my dad viciously pointing out all of the things I had done wrong with cleaning the bathroom. I tried my best to please him, really, I did, but it was never enough. The only time I can remember where my dad actually didn’t require perfection from me was one fall afternoon as I was raking leaves. I was doing my best to get every leaf I could with the rake when my dad leaned out the door and told me I didn’t have to be that particular. I have never felt so confused.

Dealing with a named condition is easier than fighting in the dark with no idea why you are reacting that way or what triggered it.

Dealing with something that is real, something that is legitimately affecting behavior, mind, memory is easier than being told I am crazy, bitter, or simply vindictive. Dealing with C-PTSD is something I can manage. There are a lot of difficult days still ahead, but I can work with this because I want to get better. I want to feel healthy, whole even though I will always carry scars. I want my healthy, happy marriage to become more consuming than my past.

I want to put my past to rest, resolve what I can, so I can focus wholly on loving my husband, being with him, and being at rest.

When God Wrote My Love Story, Part Two

March 3, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on January 11, 2015 under the title “Well Then, God is a Shitty Author, Part 2.”

< Part One

Part Two

Alex’s dad called mine because he wanted Alex not to be crushed if he asked and dad said no. Or so the story goes.

Anyway, not long after, maybe the next day or later that night, Alex called and asked dad The Question (because asking to court is basically asking to marry me. I’m not joking either, courtship is “dating with the intent of marriage, and also with no privacy, and your parents controlling everything” but I think in the actual quote they use the word accountability), and to my surprise, my dad said yes. My mom was ecstatic, because her life-long dream of being pregnant with me simultaneously might actually be a thing.

We started courting (marionette dating) when I was 16 and he was 18, my mom heard wedding bells immediately. We had maybe a month of courting in peace before my parents (mom) started asking when he was going to propose if I really wanted to marry him or not. Something along the lines of, you graduated high school, now you can get married! was said, to normalize, I suppose, the pressure they were suddenly putting on their 16 year old to….tie the knot. And I told them then, and I said this before, it’s not that I didn’t want to marry him, eventually, but neither of us were ready.

To their detriment, in their eagerness to marry me off, they spent the last half of the year I was 16 drilling into me that I was an adult and capable of making my own decisions even though I was still technically a minor.

Sneaking around the TeenPact “Special Relationship” rules at the FRC Action conference 2007 (if you can call having permission “sneaking”)

I ended up being in the general vicinity of his college a couple times that fall, due to campaigning and TeenPact events, so we got to see each other a couple times, though, never alone (obviously). Which was so nice. We even gasp held hands a couple times. This was happening simultaneously with my leg infection, and one of the campaigning trips I was on (where I walked for 10 hours with an abscess on my knee) was the one he was at, and he hung back and walked at my pace with me, while I hobbled along. Why didn’t he just carry me? because RULES YOU GUYS. RULES. Nonetheless, while everyone was miles ahead and oblivious, I didn’t mind having the company…and the relative privacy.

–aside– My brother went with me on one of the TeenPact trips (the one pictured) where Alex got a pass from his school to go because it counted for some class or other, and at first I was annoyed, but then figured out that siblings can totally piggyback and no one cares. So that was the best. Honestly, I feel bad that I didn’t want him to come, because it was actually fun to have him there (not just because I didn’t have to walk in heels the whole time). Go figure.–/aside–

The first time we held hands, it was like trying to put together a puzzle while blindfolded. It took us a while to figure it out. I’m not kidding. It was awkward and weird, and we were trying to be sneaky, and anyway. We eventually DID figure it out, but man, fingers, guys, they are complicated.

I went up to meet his family in December. It was intense because my parents and his parents (who to this day, have never met) were already starting to have issues with each other. Mostly because his parents were like, no, you can’t get married yet, and my parents were like, YEAH HUH THEY CAN. And they pressured Alex into buying me a promise ring, if not an engagement ring, because…my parents really wanted me married.

The ONLY reason I’m not wearing a jacket is because it was 70ºF that day, weird, right?

Being as excited as they were, however, they wasted no time in taking me to turn in my bonds and fully stock my hope chest.

You know, because two months into courting is totally the time to fully prepare for your future together.

When I came home from Maine and I wasn’t engaged (keep in mind, we’d been officially a couple for barely 4 months) my parents were disappointed. There was other drama, that at the moment is sort of blocked out. Needless to say both sets of parents were draining me and I wasn’t thrilled with them. My parents started questioning his commitment to me because he didn’t ask me to marry him that trip.

They started being more outspoken about their reservations when he still didn’t propose after he came to surprise me for Valentines day. Not that he would have been able to anyway, because I and everyone else had the flu and I sort of willed myself better to hangout with him but still. Funny though, because it was a surprise, so I didn’t know, so I was chilling on the couch being sick and my mom kept asking me if I wanted to brush my hair. All afternoon she asked me this, and I was like no, I don’t want to brush my hair, I’m sick. I don’t care if it’s messy. And then Alex came and she was like THIS IS WHY I SAID YOU SHOULD BRUSH YOUR HAIR. And I was like, eh, he won’t care. He didn’t.

Alex came to visit me over spring break 2008 (we’re 17 and 19 at this point), met my paternal grandmother, who’s still the strongest woman I know and it was one of those weird trips where it’s like, well, Gramme has to like him, and she did, even though she was like, months away from parting. At the time, both sets of my grandparents lived in Florida, so that meant a 10 hour car ride south, Alex, my brother, and I in the back seat of the 15 passenger, to meet my grandparents and go on our annual “vacation”/fulfill some of our residency requirement, to Florida. I showed him around the city I grew up in sorta. We went on an incredibly awkward and overdressed date, but we looked cuute.

We went to Ruth’s Chris, it was a bad bad idea.

Short trip to my hometown and to see my Gramme aside, most of what happened was Disney World and Sea World which sounds like it would be THE BEST THING EVER, but in reality was…not. My parents had unspoken expectations of things they didn’t communicate (not unlike the time the year before, they said we could do whatever at a GA park thing and were livid that we didn’t hang with my brother, despite not having told me to), said we could wander and got upset over stupid stuff that wouldn’t have been an issue if they told us ahead of time. Were mad about my phone dying, and mad about Alex and I talking (just talking, not anything questionable) at the timeshare my grandparents had gotten for everyone, and about us getting stuck on a ride (mechanical failure). Generally, it was a horrid trip, my parents were insane and tense and ready to explode at any given thing – even the kids were on edge and anything they or I did just……it was bad. I don’t remember a lot of details, just a lot of awfulness.

I need to go back to Orlando without my family there to enjoy it again sans the horrid baggage and guilt that came with that trip.

The ride back to GA was even worse. My parents stopped at chick-fil-a near the GA/FL border and sent the kids to the outside climbing area and sat down with Alex and I and gave us a stern talk, because we had fallen asleep in the back seat. All three of us had (my brother was there too), and my parents were like, WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SEE YOU, YOU COULD BE DOING WHO KNOWS WHAT BACK THERE. And we were just…aghast at the violent outburst in such a public place. My parents were angry, because Alex, my brother, and I fell asleep on a 10 hour car trip and all three of us were leaning on each other. They said we were doing foreplay and didn’t listen to us when we said 1) no, we weren’t and 2) we didn’t even know what that was. Which was TRUE. Because we were homeschoolers who’s parents thought it best to give NO EDUCATION TO AT FUCKING ALL and decide that meant we were equipped for life.

Your teenager hearing the word foreplay for the first time during a lecture from you in which you are mad at them and then you refuse to explain what it is and also disbelieve them when they tell you they’ve never heard of it. Just no.

I didn’t learn about what foreplay was until months later, on fucking wikipedia thank you.

Things went south (even more) quickly after that.

Part Three >

The Courtship Commandments: By Rachel

March 3, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

The following list is intended to be somewhat satirical.

The Courtship Commandments

1. Thou shalt prize thy emotional, spiritual, and physical virginity above all else, as it is a special gift to be given to thy spouse on thy wedding night.

2. Thou shalt never be alone with thy intended, for, as Jeremiah remindeth us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Therefore, thou shalt not be without the supervision of a chaperon. After all, everyone shall act the same when alone with thee, as they did in front of thy family.

3. Thou shalt not hold hands, kiss, or hug (other than a brief side hug) for that may spark desire, and lead thou and thine into unforgivable sin.

4. Thou shalt not have crushes, nor enter into a relationship with one whom thou will not marry, for if thou dost so, thy heart shall be irrevocably compromised, and shall not be able to adequately love thy future spouse.

5. Thou shalt adore, revere, and worship thy father and mother, since they are the direct voice of God in thy life

6. Thou shalt utterly spurn any male who doth not first approach thy father to discuss his interest in thee.

7. Thou shalt always treat thine intended as thy brother or sister in Christ in all purity, forgetting not that any desire for physical relations with thy betrothed is sin.

8. Thy body belongs to thy future spouse, therefore, thou shalt not defraud him/her, through any means.

9. Thou shalt loudly proclaim that God is capable of restoring the damage done to thy emotions/heart/body, done when thou didst not know any better, yet vehemently declare any person who doth not live up to thy laws to be damaged goods.

10. Thou shalt always remember that Emotional Purity + Biblical Courtship = Godly Marriage.

11. Thou shalt carefully screen thy son/daughter’s future prospects, and pressure them into the match which thou determinest to be the fittest for them.

12. Thou shalt look down upon those who, through worldly influences and corruption, allow their children to date.

13. Courtship is to dating what homeschooling is to public schooling – the obvious Godly choice for thy house, and to be followed if thou desirest to say ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’.

14. Thou shalt attend purity balls, wear purity rings, and claim thy father or thy Lord as thy spouse in the interim.

15. Thou shalt feverishly work on thy hope chest, learn traditional tasks done by thy gender, in preparation for the traditional western gender roles which thou shalt assume after thy nuptials.

16. Thou shalt not become close friends with an individual of the opposite gender, for doth thou not know that it is emotional adultery?

17. Family knoweth best. Always. Thou shalt have no private communication without their knowledge and screening. Thy brothers art thy guardians.

18. When asked by strangers whether or not thou dateth, thou shalt always reply that thou escheweth such a worldly form of relationships, and passionately proclaim the wonders of courtship.

19. Thou shalt save thy first kiss for the altar on thy wedding day.

20. Thou shalt be committed to a virtual stranger, during thy courtship.

21. Thou shalt hold thy intended to the high standard of Fitzwilliam Darcy, and loudly bemoan the lack of “real men” in thy generation.

22. Thou shalt marry the first person thou courteth, for otherwise thou shalt have given away an irreplaceable piece of thy heart.

23. Thy heart hath only so much love to give. Squander it not.

24. The man is the initiator. Thou shalt not, if female, express interest in one who has not already expressed interest in thee.

25. Thou shalt always, above all, GUARD THY HEART.

When God Wrote My Love Story, Part One

March 2, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on January 9, 2015 under the title “Well Then, God is a Shitty Author.”

Part One

cracks knuckles

So, I was looking in the archives and realized that in the ~5 years I’ve been blogging, I’ve only mentioned courting like, 4 times (swear it feels like more though), and it’s such a huge part of my story….but also an intensely emotional and painful one, which is why it’s referenced but never really talked about. This is going to change. Probably. Maybe. If I can stick it out long enough to finish it. My locally crafted whiskey and moonshine may be coming in handy for what will most likely become a series – so I can’t promise the best writing ever (which, actually isn’t something I ever promise), but, I think it’s time.

*****

We met at TeenPact National Convention, but we’d followed each other’s blogs before that. He was SmartHomeschool and I was Politically InCorrect. We and a handful of other people were first timer’s at the camp and everyone else we knew had run off to hang with their already established friends, and as we wandered, we kept running into each other and finding a handful of other loners at random times to make our group more TPA. We called ourselves The Magnets, because, we just sort of all ended up at the same place at the same time, snacking on skittles and starbursts.

We had *all* the homeschool moms concerned about us.

Alex, I will have you know (the tall one in the middle FYI – I only look appropriately scaled because I’m 12″ in front of the dudes. IRL I was shoulder height to them), was a tough cookie to crack. Super shy and awkward, I made a point to open up his little clam-shell-self that week, because I just REALLY wanted to know what was inside his brain. Which sounds weird, but I’ve never really felt that much curiosity for anyone else. Plus he was cute to boot, but I would never have admitted it. boops baby alex’s nose SO I MARRIED HIM. THE END.

Just kidding.

If only it were that simple camp love story.

Anyway, back to reality.

Alex was a cool person, we became fast friends, not just because we were more or less stuck together for a week, but he was thoughtful and smart, and interesting to talk to. He argued with me when no one else would, and didn’t just take whatever I said and leave it. We were equal. Which is sort of an unheard-of dynamic in our circles. When we went back home, we would spend hours every night IMing each other about everything under the sun. We had a lot in common, and we had a lot not in common. Eventually he brought me on the board of the magazine he started with some other homeschoolers and everyone basically started shipping us immediately.

We, of course, didn’t see it. We were friends, best friends, equals, that’s it. Everything we knew about marital relationships involved whatever sex was and submission (and not the fun kind), so, we went about our lives as best friends.

Alex came to visit me for my graduation party the week before TeenPact National Convention 2007, and that was when things started changing.

That visit was intense for reasons that actually have nothing to do with Alex and everything to do with my extremely pregnant mother.

It was that trip that Alex learned things weren’t sunshine and rainbows with my family. The day or two before National Convention, my parents sat me down upstairs and started yelling at me about laundry and shirking my responsibilities (Alex, who had been staying in my room while I camped with my sisters, heard everything from the basement). I came downstairs in tears to do the laundry they had exploded about – really the whole thing was a miscommunication, as was…..well, usual. I hadn’t done the laundry because I had to take a shower, mom had told me to do both without specifying the order, but then I had to make dinner and get the kids to bed and do all her other work, so I was going to get to the laundry, but apparently I hadn’t done it fast enough, or enough of it.

I got downstairs to the laundry which was adjacent to my room, and I just collapsed into a pile of tears. I forgot Alex was there and he came over and I tried to brush it off like everything was fine. I think I told him I deserved the verbal abuse my parents had just thrown at me, loudly, for an hour. I sat there and took it and apologized to them. I apologized to him for crying in front of him, and told me it was okay (to cry). He helped me with the laundry (he actually attempted to help me with all of my chores that week, but as soon as mom noticed she’d give me more shit to do), and was just there. I….never had anyone do that before. I always tried to never cry, because my mom told me crying was weak and would get me made fun of. Alex didn’t make fun of me, he was just present and calm and…helpful.

Anyway his visit with my family was full of shit like that happening, it wasn’t really awesome and I felt really bad about it, but then we went to camp again and I got to escape it for a while, even if camp was full of religious guilt that just reinforced that my parents were right about me.

Oh yes, The Reb pose. Very edgy. WE WERE ALMOST TOUCHING.

After he went back to Maine, and the life of being a mother resumed for me, things just….I felt halved. I powered through one of the most intense pregnancies my mom had ever had, probably the most intense actually, because she had an emergency c-section after having essentially a one-month long contraction. I had slept everywhere but my room for a large part of June (NC was end of may), including often the floor or a couch upstairs so my parents could wake me to man the house if mom went into labor.

But that’s another story. Anyway, time to myself after that was really scarce, I would be up until 2am because the only time I could talk to Alex was after everyone else had gone to bed and most of it involved him trying to tell me I wasn’t loosing my mind because of everything that was happening.

rewind When we were saying our goodbyes at camp, he told me to look under the coffee cup full of Reece’s in my room (his graduation present to me. Seriously, best. ever.) so that was, naturally, the first thing I did when I got home. He’d written me a letter that…reading it now, basically just said I love you for two pages, but at the time mostly was just the most validating thing I’d ever heard and desperately needed. That I wasn’t a horrible sister, that I was really strong, that what my parents were asking of me was insane and I didn’t deserve to be treated poorly.

“I miss you” was said with all the weight and meaning of “I love you” when it’s said for the first time.

blah blah blah pregnancy, june, july, GenJ camp, CPS visit, all other stories….September.

Alex and I had written each other letters by hand over the summer because it was fun and….I don’t remember why we started, but anyway, he was heading off to college in the fall and I was worried he’d fall off the planet and I’d be alone without anyone I could talk to about life who would really understand. All naturally platonic, stupid shit, jokes; we were basically pen pals who were madly in love with each other and refused to acknowledge it (but secretly hoped).

So one day in September, out of the blue, Alex’s dad calls my dad, and asks what his answer would be if Alex asked him for permission to court me.

And so it began.

Part Two >

Queer in a Courtship: Charis’s Story

March 2, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Charis” is a pseudonym. Also by Charis on HA: Hurts Me More Than You: Charis’s Story.

Sitting around the table surrounded by a beautiful family, someone passes me a slice of pie. I’m celebrating Thanksgiving with my boyfriend and his family, some of the most genuinely caring people I know. I’m happy, having a wonderful day with wonderful people. We played a card game later, laughing and enjoying the fun of competition. His family embraced me with open arms, loved me, wanted my company, and were supportive of my relationship with their son and brother.

This story is as I remember it, but it isn’t only mine. There are many people who were involved and observed; our friends, family, and community. This is the relationship the way I recall it, and is likely somewhat different than others would remember. I don’t pretend to write everything in perfect accuracy, but simply my experience.

So I’m gay. Like super gay. Discovered boobs and my-life-was-changed-forever gay.

How in the world did I end up in a heterosexual, super religious courtship?

Unlike most fundamentalists, my parents were not pushing for courtship. They didn’t really approve of my relationship, but I had just moved out so they couldn’t do much about it. My dad made it clear that he didn’t consent to me getting married. He told me he wouldn’t come to the wedding, let alone walk me down the isle. He said I wasn’t worth “ruining any man’s life.” And all this when I hadn’t even come out. Jeez. You needn’t have worried dad, I have no intention of marrying a dude, and you’re not invited to any ceremony.

How did it all start? I met the young man whom I would get to know at a homeschool speech and debate competition. There were many of these throughout the school year, and the third or fourth time I saw him we talked for several hours. Hitting it off and connecting on a lot of the same angsty issues that young people have, we talk about our values in life and anything and everything else. He asked for my email address. I said yes. We continued our conversation through email, lengthy letters about our thoughts and happenings of life. I was thrilled to have a friend with whom I could be relatively honest, few and far between at this time in my life.

We started meeting for coffee, and going on hikes together. It was on one of these hikes that he asked me about pursuing an intentional relationship, finding out if we were compatible for marriage. I agreed.

I found myself in love with the potential, excited for a bright future. I knew our life together wouldn’t be perfect, or even easy. My past had taught me that. But it was a wonderful feeling all the same. I was walking on air, he liked me! And I liked him too. I came to care for, and more importantly, trust this man. Being honest about my life and the things I was feeling became an incredibly healing and growing experience.

I was a wildly different person at the time from where I am now. I wore ankle length skirts and dresses, stayed covered up as much as possible. My long wavy hair went past my waist. I wore it up in a bun most of the time because I struggled with wondering whether wearing my hair loose was a “stumbling block” for men, or too sexual. Incredibly conservative in the way only an abuse victim can be, trying to protect herself from the world.

I was starting a journey of healing that I couldn’t begin to anticipate at the time.

Spending more time together, we developed our relationship over long walks, phone calls, and continued letters. There were conversations about marriage and parenting. What we believed, what we wanted. He speculated that our chances of a lasting marriage were pretty great. I thought so too. I wanted to do all of the right things, check all the boxes, start new. We would settle down and enjoy life together. It would be wonderful.

Together we visited my family. He took the opportunity to speak individually with my parents and siblings about his intentions for our relationship. I can’t begin to express how courageous this was, and incredibly respectful. Impressed my family, made interactions with them easier, and made it more than clear he cared for me.

We were invited to dinner by a couple from my church that were friends and mentors of mine. It was during this time that I had my first defining moment as a queer person. My friend’s husband asked us, and my boyfriend specifically, about how we would stay physically pure as a couple. I distinctly remember the first part of his response, and nothing after. He said “We will be tempted [sexually] but…” and continued. In this moment I realized I wasn’t “tempted” to be sexually active with my boyfriend. I didn’t want to mess around. “I’m not tempted…” The thought rang over and over in my mind. Thankfully the patriarchal culture I was raised in hadn’t too badly damaged my view of female sexuality. I understood that my lack of desire was a problem. That unlike some in the community taught, a wife should be sexually attracted to her husband. And I wasn’t.

Dear god, now what was I going to do?

*****

Our courtship eventually ended. It happened suddenly, I don’t actually know what the reasons were, or understand the timing. I was in a conflicted state at the time, both worried about our relationship and comfortable with it. He spoke of desiring to do what was best for my well being, and that continuing to stay together probably wasn’t part of that. I don’t remember much from our conversations the weekend we broke up, but it was over. I took some time to process. Breaking up was a sad thing. But it was wise, I was somewhat relieved, and I didn’t regret it.

I moved forward, growing and exploring my sexuality. I was becoming more and more grateful that we were no longer together as I became involved in the queer community and found my place in it.Turns out a lesbian in a heterosexual relationship is not such a great idea. 🙂

Years later I am happily settled down with my domestic partner, a beautiful woman I love very much. We’re sharing life together, in a relationship of “mutual support, caring, and commitment” like it says on our registration. I’m working on my career, looking at going back to school, and completely out of the closet; all things I never dreamed possible.

I recently happened to see my ex on the bus, and not surprisingly he didn’t recognize me. My head shaved, wearing a suit and tie and a bunch of body jewelry, I look nothing like the person I was so many years ago. I sat there on my commute home contemplating how different life is now than it might have been. I could have been married to a man by now, with a child or two. Still the long-haired, dress-wearing, conservative girl that I was. But that’s not where I am. I’m sitting here on the bus, going home to my partner, happier and more whole than I’ve ever been.

The courtship was a positive experience in my life, but I am grateful it didn’t end in marriage.

Homeschoolers Anonymous

An Archived Blog

Month: March 2015