Blog Hop Against Homophobia

I thought for a while about what I wanted to say here. I mean, honestly, what is there to say that someone hasn't said?

I've always known I was queer. My friends always knew. My family always suspected, but, when and where I was a young woman, people weren't queer, not if they wanted to live.

Lesbians didn't live in East Texas. Gay kids were beaten to death in the county fair grounds. Girls that were too friendly with each other had bricks thrown at them in the cafeteria.

So I got married to a decent man and got pregnant. Basically like the women I knew in my home town that were like me. I had amazing, intense, breathless relationships with women that I called friendships, that ended disastrously because I was lying and there's a difference between friends and lovers. I managed, though. I functioned. I churched. I raised my family, went to school, began my career. I did fine, too, until I fell in love.

And the world changed.

And I changed.

I was in my early forties when I came out to my daddy. He still loves me. My mother's response was, "We always knew that."

Hate sucks.

Being afraid to be yourself sucks harder.

Thank heavens I stopped.

BA

PS -- my gift is a donation to the Lambda Legal Fund, $1 for every comment made on this blog up to $250. I know it's a different sort of prize, but I'm a different sort of person. ;-)

 Go visit the other blogs on the Hop. These folks are dear. http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com.

http://www.batortuga.com