I am stuck with negative tests and no period, but it’s coming. I have been spotting off and on since yesterday but no actual flow. I talked to the nurse and we’re sitting June out because of being out of town all this next week. I’ll miss all those blood draw and ultrasound appointments that are soooo important every 3rd day. So, we’ll take a break. I am grateful to be done with the progesterone and have a month off of Clomid. 2 straight months was nuts, I never got over the first side effects before I was taking it again.
I went to my brother’s wedding in AL this weekend – yes we took 4 days off to drive 15hrs down there and back for about 30 hours of family overload. Things went well until they didn’t anymore. I don’t think I’ve talked much here about the craziness that is my divorced parents but having those sides of the family both in attendance was too much and after the ceremony there was screaming in a restaurant and a lot of out of town guests left without even saying goodbye and congratulations to my brother and his new bride. I am so glad that I hadn’t got there yet. I hate being witness to family conflict. My policy is if it doesn’t concern me, I don’t want to know. Don’t talk bad to me about my mom or my dad and if you do, I walk away. I love both of my parents even though they have really f’n disappointed me in a lot of different ways, and other times they’ve made me so proud to be their daughter. I don’t care what I feel about them, no one else can talk shit about them! Anyway.. I’ll post wedding photos soon because it was a lot of fun and now I have another sister.. as if I needed more. I gained 2 when I married C and gained 2 when each of my parents re-partnered. This brings my total to 6 sisters! I also have 3 brothers (2 biological and C’s brother), so that is even, yes?
Tomorrow we are flying to St. Petersburg, FL because C got told on Tuesday that he needed to be there for a convention next week. They pay his flight, our hotel, his food and other “expenses” so we’re only out my flight and food. Not a bad deal! I was so excited to get the time off work and I’ll be able to actually relax because I’ll be away from “the land”. Working and living in the same place can get routine and bla eventually. I miss my dogs like crazy though. We just got home 2 hours ago and we’re heading to the airport in 10 hours. ugh. I’m so glad to be sleeping in our bed tonight and waking up in a familiar place tomorrow. Then it’s store bought food for six days. That part also makes me want to gag. I have a hard time after 2 days of non-home cooked food. I hope that I don’t gain 10 lbs and feel pukey the whole next week.
A no baby Vacation
May 27, 2012 at 9:23 pm (Family, TTC)
Are we there yet
May 19, 2012 at 9:36 pm (Family, TTC)
This week has flown by! I’ll be testing on Wednesday and I really, really hope that it’s a BFP. We leave on Thursday to head to Alabama for my little brother’s wedding. Who gets married on a holiday weekend? Ugh. I don’t want to think about how stupid traffic will be – and it’s a 16+hr drive from here to there. We’re splitting it up on Thursday and we’ll get into AL in time for C to pick up his tux and us attend the rehearsal. We are both in the wedding and let me tell you it is STRESSFUL. I don’t feel like my wedding was very stressful for my wedding party. We communicated very often and clearly with our friends so that they knew exactly what we expected and what the day was going to be like. There were NO surprises. My brother doesn’t even know who has RSVP’d. His soon-to-be wife has kept that hidden, but told him “lots” of our family are coming. This is really interesting because only 10 people in my family have expressed that they are coming to my brother or anyone else. The bride isn’t communicating with me or my sister but expects us to know what she wants. My brother and I are REALLY close and on the wedding morning I am getting ready with him because he doesn’t have any men best friends to be there. C and I are taking breakfast to his place and we’ll hang out and get ready. My sister-in-law was disappointed that I wasn’t getting ready with her, even though she didn’t invite me or my sister to until I made these other plans. She wants people at her beck and call and that doesn’t work for me. I feel bad for my brother that this might not be a long-term relationship. She’s made him so mad during this wedding process. She purposefully didn’t send invitations to family members on our side that she didn’t know or didn’t want to come. She didn’t invite some of his friends because “they are weird” and no non-relative female in his life was invited at all. There have been so many upset relatives and friends who were expecting an invite but who didn’t get one. He had to get some invites from her and hand deliver them to relatives in driving distance. WHAT?! This is a wedding disaster. I love him and I hope that there marriage is nothing like this wedding. They haven’t worked together on anything and for me, that’s a sign. I believe relationships are partnerships and he should have been way more involved in this wedding stuff and he should want to me/she should let him be. Once they’re living together, I expect total chaos. Her family wouldn’t let her move in with him until they were married.. which is why she moved the wedding up a YEAR! They were engaged on Christmas 2011 and are getting married five months later! He wanted a wedding next year so that they had time to plan properly and graduate college. She couldn’t wait. I have so many thoughts on this, I could write about it forever.
I hope that I get my BFP this week so that I can be happy and joyful in the face of crazy family stress!
Symptoms at 7 days past iui (8 days past ovulation) – mild cramps, gas, exhaustion, weird feeling in my lower area. Some of this has to be progesterone related, right?
Bully-Movie review
May 6, 2012 at 9:03 pm (Family, Queer Families)
Yesterday we went to see Bully.. I’m sure most of you in the US have heard about this documentary. It focuses in bullying in schools in small towns (yes, I noticed they avoided big city bullying). As a person who was bullied as a kid, and who had parents that stood up for me, this movie was really hard to watch. I was particularly upset about Alex’s parents saying that he needed to learn to fight back when he was being strangled, punched and stabbed with pencils. They wanted him to be tough, like a man. It hurt to hear those things because when you’re being bullied it doesn’t even occur to you that you have the power to do anything about it. He was so accustomed to being treated badly that he’d just shrug it off and not tell his parents. The filmmakers showed his family and the school the footage that they shot and everyone was so surprised. They said they had no idea that things were so bad. The Assistant Principal was total bitch, inconsiderate and said there is no way to guarantee protection for every child.
This is one of the reasons I’m terrified of sending my kids to public school. I had a really crappy time at school from 8th-12th grade. I transferred schools and became an outsider. I was harrassed, called a lesbian (though I didn’t know what it meant until 2 yrs after I first heard it and didn’t realize I was a lesbian until I was 18), and threatened on a daily basis. My life was so hard. Two weeks after I started the new school, I transferred out. I told my mom that I couldn’t take it anymore. It really was that bad. I’m dramatic, but not that much. I agreed to go back a year later because it was more convenient for my mom. It was worse than it had been before. We ended up at the police station because we didn’t know what else to do. These girls were torturing me verbally on a daily basis and had started to call my house and be really obscene. It was a mess. In my freshman year, a senior kept pushing me around and telling me she was going to beat me. I told the principal, they brushed it off. Then one day, I’d had enough. She started threatening me and I hit her. I didn’t even think about it, I just swung at her. It resulted in a rolling around on the floor in the hallway kind of fight with her banging my head on the floor and me punching her in the stomach. Definitely, not my proudest moment. We were suspended and everyone was so SURPRISED that I’d do something like that. I’d been dealing with this intimidation for months and they acted like it happened over night. I don’t understand why schools, especially those with security officers, aren’t taking bullying more seriously.
The excuse that kids will be kids is NOT acceptable. Parents acting like it’s okay and that kids will outgrow it, is naive. Kids do not grow out of being bullies. People that were bitches as teens are generally still bitches as adults. It’s not okay to tell your kids to stick it out and it’ll get better. I do not believe that it gets better if you are a bullied person. Telling someone to hold on to hope that it’ll pass is not constructive advise. Not every youngster can hold on without help from adults and strong people in their lives. Kids are not strong enough to take abuse without either fighting back or withdrawing into themselves. It’s a touchy subject that parents aren’t sure how to handle.
I hope that all of this work to get legislation that holds people, including children, responsible for their actions is passed. It can’t be crazy with horrible punishments like life in prison for punching someone and threatening them, but they should be penalized for being cruel and purposefully hurtful. Here’s hoping for a brighter future for my children!
checking in
April 4, 2012 at 8:26 pm (artificial insemination, Family, Queer Families, RE, TTC)
I’m on cycle day 9 right now. woo hoo. I just took my last dose of Clomid for this cycle! yahoo. I have been a CRYING mess every night about an hour after I take it. My pelvic area feels weird, but not as heavy and painful as the last time. Thank goodness! Tomorrow I’ll get ultrasound and bloodwork and start talking about possible insemination days.
This week has been a weird one. I dreamed that one of my high school BFFs died and that no one would tell me. I told Cole about it in the morning and I texted my other high school BFF to tell her about the dream that I’d had. Cole was checking out her Facebook and it turns out that she’s pregnant with twins right now! So, of course, I text her.. but didn’t mention my she died dream. She says “Oh, I should have called and told you but I didn’t have your number” and that’s totally okay. I move a lot and my number changes and we talk mostly when we’re in the same state. I still have tons of love and respect for her and I like to think that we’ll be friends throughout the miles, even if we’re not best friends. I am really happy for her and her husband and I’m terribly sad/jealous at the same time. Of the 3 amigas, I thought she’d be the last one to get pregnant but she’s the first. Our other friend is least likely to procreate but she loves everyone else’s babies. I thought I’d beat them at something, but I kind of feel like the loser friend at the end of the line. They both got married before me and one got divorced. They both graduated top of our class, I was a way down the line. They graduated college many years before me, have stable good paying jobs and homes of their own and I’m STILL finishing my degree and have no place to call “home”. Yes, it’s a woah is me kind of week.
I called my mom to cry/vent about everyone being pregnant but me (there have been 3 announced pregnancies this week!) and she keeps saying it’ll happen. Then she and my sister, who is on speaker phone, are offering their wombs to me because “obviously something is wrong if you can’t carry a baby to term”. I wouldn’t honestly consider either of them as a surrogate due to their crappy health patterns and inconsistent medical care. Also, my freakin womb isn’t broken! There have been no tests that have shown that I have any issues in there, it’s just an issue of the right sperm meeting the right egg. My mom thinks this whole assisted reproduction business is really crazy and that it’s all IVF. No matter how many times I tell her that we aren’t doing IVF she always comments on all the drugs that I take to get pregnant and that the IVF has to work eventually. I’m like “yea the IVF might work when I get $30k in the bank or our insurance begins to cover it!” Geez, I wish she’d listen to me sometimes, but I do know that it’s a hard topic to discuss and comprehend.
I want to have a baby and I want it now!
In-law Drama
September 25, 2011 at 1:08 pm (Family)
C and I are planning on going to New Hampshire for Thanksgiving to spend it with my in-laws (MIL, SIL, BIL and his wife). We let his mom know that we were hoping for this situation and the holiday had already been planned out to happen at my BIL’s wife’s sister’s house.. got that? lol. My MIL let the BIL know and his wife said that she wasn’t amused with that idea because I left her out on my blog. We were confused about what she meant by blog, because I surely don’t share this with any of his family and she’s anti- internet anyway so it makes no sense. C called his mom to see what she was talking about and she meant my wedding website that we had set up to share with the family. I had said on there that the reason for ceremony #2 was because wedding #1 was to be inclusive of his mom and sister who have illnesses that prevent them from traveling. The issue is that I didn’t mention that his brother and SIL were there and that they had provided a cake for us and stood up for us as witnesses. OMG, seriously? Can she be any more dramatic!?
This lady tends to find issues with everything. C’s mom was living with them, at their request, because her husband died and she’s in sensitive health. She’s not disabled, doesn’t need any nursing care..she just shouldn’t be alone because she’s on oxygen and doesn’t get around well. Plus she doesn’t have a vehicle. After a few months, she kicked out my MIL because she said she doesn’t like sharing space, even though they have a ton of space and she was never in there way. She tends to stay in her room and not interact with them. Now, she’s living alone in an apartment that costs way more than what she can afford and has to rely on someone to come pick her to up take her to dr appointments and grocery shopping, etc. It’s a mess. I feel so bad for everyone, especially my brother-in-law. I just wait for him to divorce her one day.
So, it looks like we’ll be having Thanksgiving at my MILs house with just her and the BIL will probably come by too. I think that’ll be just fine. I like spending time with them and I have an increasing dislike for my BILs wife. gah! She’s so special.
Today is the re-Wedding
August 20, 2011 at 8:34 am (Family, Wedding)
Today we will have a big smushy ceremony with our friends and family. We’ve spent 2 days visiting with out of town guests and generally wearing ourselves out with last minute planning. I’m at the stage where I want it to be over. There have been a few last minute drop outs, one in the wedding party and my mother. The guy organizing the “guys night out” last night, threw $20 at C and told him to go have fun and then he left the rehearsal. WTF?! I was so frustrated about that because he’s the only local guy and it was all his plan and it went to hell. Grrrr!
My mom didn’t tell me that she wasn’t coming, either. She just didn’t get in the car. My brother told me after they were on the road that she said she couldn’t make it. I’ve talked to her several times over the last 2 days and it upsets me every time. I love her, I’m not mad at her but I’m so disappointed that I don’t know what to do with myself. My mom is the closest relative to me, we talk daily, she’s never missed anything in my life.. until now. She’s still in a fragile mental state and we’re lucky if she gets out of bed in the mornings. She felt that she couldn’t come here because she couldn’t control her anger and other emotions. She didn’t want to risk ruining everything for me due to her own instability. I don’t even want to talk to her anymore today because in a few hours we’ll be getting all dolled up and I don’t want to start crying again.
Last night I cried for over an hour because I was feeling overwhelmed as we finished the last minute tasks. I’m frustrated about my mom not coming and about the other guy ditching us. I’m upset at the lack of my mother’s presence here. She’s the constant in my life and it’s hard for me to handle her not being here. My friends are here and without them, I wouldn’t have made it through the day. This hasn’t been necessarily easy and it’s so lovely having people around me that know me well. I miss having those kinds of friends locally. I wish everyone could transport themselves here! ha ha. It’s not that easy.
Ok, folks, I’m off to enjoy some more quiet time. I asked to be left alone for a little while, so I’m at home with no distractions, no conversations, just quiet! I LOVE IT!
Where’s the wedding?
July 6, 2011 at 12:08 pm (Family, Wedding)
I know you are all wondering what happened to me updating about the wedding… which is now 40ish days away.
Our plans are going well. I should be picking my dress up from the seamstress this weekend, as long as it fits me still. ha ha. There is concern that I’d be gaining weight and it won’t fit. I say pish-posh. I won’t have gained much weight, if any, by that time. I’ll only be 10-11wks along. I think I’ll be alright.
A few of my desired attendants have had to drop out for various reasons. It’s totally understandable and I’m not bitter at all. Life happens and we have responsibilities to ourselves before that of others. The wedding will go on!!
The cake – we are having a mini cake for the cake cutting tradition and there will be cupcakes for our guests to enjoy. The flavors of the cupcakes are: marble with cream cheese butter cream frosting, strawberry with lemon frosting, watermelon with strawberry frosting and another flavor combo that I’m forgetting right now! Sorry. They will be displayed in a circular cupcake holder and it’s going to be adorable. Our cupcakes will be decorated with our elephant theme. It’ll be so so so cute.
We have arranged catering instead of the do it ourselves approach that we kept battling. It’ll be easier and a LOT less stressful having someone else cook and deliver the food. We are excited about our food options and we hope that everyone will be able to find something to eat.
This is my ideal bouquet, I’m still working on making my creation look this good. I’m using yellow flowers instead of white.
At the 1st fitting, it looks AMAZING.
Accidents Happen
April 1, 2011 at 9:47 am (conception, Family, Queer Families, TTC)
WARNING – You might be offended if you had an “oops” baby or a teenage pregnancy.
It’s been an exciting year for my family. Almost every teenage girl in my family has gotten pregnant. Even the 18 year old lesbian who occasionally has sex with men recently announced her pregnancy. Her 20 yr old sister had a baby last year. My other cousin had a baby a year ago. My 19 yr old cousin has been trying to get pregnant for 3 years. I have a few relatives still in high school who are at high risk for pregnancy due to careless behavior. I am the oldest woman in my family to not have a child.
I had a friend who was near divorce until she found out that she was pregnant. It has held her family together even though they don’t have the best relationship. I went to high school with a girl who had 2 pregnancies before we graduated – neither were planned. It was lack of precaution and teenage “love” that brought about those babies.
I know that if women could get one another pregnant, I probably would have birthed a kid or two by now. You know us lesbians, never taking precautions. lol. (Truthfully, I have used condoms on dildos and dental dams during oral sex) But since I haven’t had the luck of these teenage girls, I am quickly becoming an old maid.. in the childless way not in the no love in my life way.
I hear arguments all the time about why worry about making your own when you can just adopt. But that diminishes the importance of a person’s desire to have their own children. Buying a child is more expensive up front that getting yourself knocked up or going the fertility treatment route. It requires a lot of things that having your own biological child doesn’t – paperwork on your personality, preparedness and ability to parent. When you birth your own child, no one asks if you can handle their needs or if your job gets in the way of parenting. We keep the door open for adoption in the event that I don’t get pregnant within the next few years.
For now, I want an accidental pregnancy. My partner and I both have jobs, are responsible adults and have a strong desire to parent. We will be able to take care of a child on our own and won’t have to rely on our parents to babysit or help out financially. We understand the processes of my body and what it takes to conceive a baby. It’s a lot more than going to a party, having a few drinks & blacking out to wake up with morning sickness a few weeks later. I feel undermined when so many people around me are accidentally getting knocked up. They are freaking out because “it can’t happen to me” and they have no job, no place of their own and now they are going to be parents. Babies are big responsibilities and I’m so jealous that the most irresponsible child can get pregnant without wanting it while some of us try for years perfecting the science of it and still it doesn’t happen. I wish that my hubby had magical sperm and we could spontaneously pop with baby joy.
My Fears
February 13, 2011 at 8:43 am (Family, Get to Know Me)
I fear that one day I will look back on my young years and feel that I should have done things differently. I have spent the last ten years in college and moving across the country when great opportunities came up. I don’t regret any on my moves because I’ve had amazing experiences. I have met so many fantastic people and I’ve done what other people will never do – leave everything behind and start new (several times). I don’t want to be fifty and look back and say that I wasted my 20s on adventures when I should’ve been “settling down” and starting a family. I am working on the starting a family part, ya know!
I fear objects – spiders, bridges, dark rooms, the telephone. I recently learned a statistic that on average a person eats 3 spiders a year! OMG, as if I wasn’t scared of them enough now I’m worried that I’m accidentally ingesting them. Bridges have always been a source of anxiety. I used to dream that I drove off a bridge and was trapped in water. I lived in MN at the time when the bridge came down and luckily that wasn’t a path that I had ever taken. I am always afraid of the boogey man in the dark room. Yea, I’m one of those women that is worried that there is someone lurking in the corner. It’s not a healthy fear! I hate talking on the telephone- I am afraid of who’s on the other end. It’s not like aliens are going so suck my brains out through the phone line but someone might ask me something that I don’t have an answer to. lol.
I fear for my family and the likelihood that I may not procreate. My love and I are a great 2 person family but it’d be nice to add a little person. I don’t want to become bitter that it didn’t happen for us and frustrated with everyone else who does have babies. I fear the unknown future of our family.
Something that Makes me Cry
February 6, 2011 at 9:39 pm (Family, Get to Know Me)
What’s with all these sappy journal entries anyway? Bleh.
Right now, when I think about my mom I cry. She is in a very new and vulnerable place right now. She is alone in Alabama basically and I hate it. I hate that I can’t go see her when I want to and that she doesn’t answer the phone when I call sometimes. She has told me that it’s hard for her because so much has changed so fast and she just needed some normalcy.
Sometimes it’s tough living your life for yourself instead of other people. I could have stayed in AL and been there for my mom. I hope that she doesn’t resent me for leaving.. she was very supportive of me taking this opportunity. I don’t want her to be miserable because I’m away. I miss hanging out with her and shopping and eating fries together. lol.
I cry for my widowed mother. Widow! That is such a new and foreign term, it’s hard to wrap my head around it. She still cries a lot and misses him. I cry for him and for her. I hate that they didn’t get to grow old together and see more grandchildren and take other adventures.
woo.. this one is getting me all teary.. I guess that was the point, huh?
in Philadelphia, near my gym
Another Moment
January 27, 2011 at 11:42 pm (conception, Family, Get to Know Me, pregnancy, TTC)
Another phenomenal moment in my life is when I became an aunt!!
My niece was born the same day that I graduated high school so I was unable to be there due to that and being a thousand miles away. My sister gave birth in Michigan and I was in Alabama at the time. The day after graduation I moved to Michigan – I got a scholarship to UM-Flint. Seeing that little baby was awesome! She was so tiny and cute and everyone wanted to pinch her little cheeks. ha ha. I think people always feel that way about babies.
I wasn’t allowed to babysit her on my own for a while because she was the new baby and I was inexperienced with munchkins. However, I did get to visit her often and watch her while my sister was sleeping. ha ha. Does that even count for anything? Watching her grow up has been an amazing experience.
Two years after she was born, my nephew was born. I was there for the birth of E and it was scary as hell! I remember telling my mom afterward that it was the best birth control that I’d ever seen. ha ha. My significant other and I took tons of pictures of the awesome moments before and after. My sister was a real trooper.. she didn’t get any drugs because the labor progressed so fast it was too late by the time she got there. She was screaming so bad it made me cry. I felt horrible for her and wanted to do something to make the pain stop. It wasn’t an easy thing to witness.
Once he came out of her body it was a flood of emotions. If you’ve seen birth.. you know how magical that moment is. When the little one sees the world for the first time and it’s like everything in the room stops just because he’s here now.. precious! He was so alien looking for the 1st few seconds and then it was cuteness. I cried so much during those moments before and after his birth, you’d think that it was me pushing him out.
For a long time I was terrified about the idea of having kids because of how painful it seemed and how much responsibility a little person is. Sometimes I still get scared about the idea of having babies and then I tell myself that I’m a strong woman and if my sister can do it, I can do it!
That being said.. we are talking about starting to try to conceive once we get settled in Philly!!! Yea, our break lasted a few months.. and it looks like it might be over soon. YAY!
This Month
January 26, 2011 at 12:36 am (Family, Get to Know Me)
WOWZA! This month has been CRAZY TOWN!
It started off slow with nothing exciting for New Year celebration and my birthday was shortly after that. We had some fun ventures as birthday celebrations and have been slowly passing the rest of the month by. The day before my birthday I got a call from my friend in Philadelphia. His wife’s employer was looking for someone to take the place of a couple who had decided to quit. He told me all about the position, the employer and why I would be great in the position. It took me a few days to really get myself in the mind set that I was willing to move at this moment and that this job would be PERFECT for me. I wrote my cover letter and updated the resume and away it went. The rest of my month was spent waiting.. waiting.. impatiently for this organization to start interviewing people.
They were extremely slow about calling people for interviews and then took a week after that to call me and say that I got the job. Tonight I got the official call from the committee guy and he emailed me the job offer. I knew that I had it a few days ago because my friend has told me on the down low. ha ha.
I am extremely excited to live in an area that has a LGBT community. Living here as sucked the life out of me. I’m so far back in the closet that I choke for air sometimes. It’s going to be fantastic to not feel like I can’t make friends because they don’t get it. It’ll be great having my Philly friends in my life again. We used to spend a lot of time together and now we can be queer together! I see lots of awesome adventures in our future.
The past few days have been very hectic with trying to pack and get our affairs in order to move across country. I had to drop some of my classes because the professors wouldn’t let me do them online. So, I will have to transfer into some other school to finish up my degree. Ugh. I know that I could have just passed up this job and stayed in college full time and graduate in May but it’s not what I wanted to do. This job is so perfect for me and what I want to do with my life that passing it up would have killed me. Once I do finish up and I have this work experience under my belt, I will be able to get even better jobs.
Meanwhile, my mom is still devastated about my stepdads death. I spend as much time with her as I can but it’s not enough. It has been a month since he passed away and she sometimes seems like it was just yesterday. It isn’t as hard on me because I don’t live there and have to see all the reminders but I wouldn’t say it’s easy. I had a dream about him the other day – a pre-cancer dream. He was coming home from work and acting like his usual self.. opened a beer and started jabbering about stuff I could care less about. It made me miss him and how predictable he was most of the time. I miss him for my mom more than for myself, I think. Today we went to pick up his death certificate and that made her even more upset. They didn’t list cancer as the cause of death. The put cardiac arrest – brain tumor. She wanted it to say cancer somewhere and it didn’t. I was appointed “in charge” and had to call the coroner to ask why they put that as the cause of death. He explained it to us and it made sense, he just went by what the person told him who brought the body in. Due to there never being a name for the cancer he had, they didn’t want to list it. After all of this talking, mom felt better about it and was calm enough to breathe.
I rekindled a friendship that I thought wasn’t ever going to be great again. My friend lives internationally and we haven’t seen each other in several years due to her travels. Whenever she’s in Minnesota, I am not. She’s been on extended vacation here for the last month and we’ve been talking on the phone often and texting. It makes me happy to have her in my life at this capacity again. There aren’t many people that I can talk to about anything and not feel judged. She’s cool like that. lol.
So, in a month.. I have adjusted to a death, took a job 800 miles away, quit my current job, dropped down to half time status in college and renewed a friendship that I thought wouldn’t be repaired.
A Moment
December 9, 2010 at 5:55 pm (Family, Get to Know Me, Queer Families)
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, unsure of what moment is worthy of being written about. After much ado, I have decided to write about the moment I realized I liked girls. Who else can say that they remember the moment this happened?
My senior year of high school I was very ambivalent about relationships. I wasn’t dating anyone seriously and I wasn’t feeling particularly attracted to anyone that I went to school with or was associated with. I remember a conversation that I had one night with my BFF (from previous post) and she said maybe I was gay. I responded that maybe I would be some day but not now, not here. I knew that people in Alabama aren’t accepting of queer people. I had seen a toilet get broken by a girls head because the other girls thought she was a lesbian. This was not the time or place for me to start questioning myself or to come out.
A few months after I moved to Michigan for college I met a guy who became such an awesome friend. He is gay and he took me to the library at our university and showed me where all the gay (men) books were. I guess he didn’t know where the lesbian books were. lol. I read all that day and started going to the library regularly to read them. I was finding a side of myself that I hadn’t been able to explore before. I started getting into online chat rooms and meeting other lesbians and it felt right. I chatted all night long when I wasn’t doing homework. I wanted to meet a lesbian because I didn’t know any at that time.
One night I was sitting in my room writing in my journal (I was an obsessive paper journaler) and it hit me. I stopped writing and I sat there and said aloud “I’m a lesbian”. Yes, very dramatic. I sat there and thought about it and got so depressed. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this was going to effect my family and my future. I thought I’ll never get a job if I’m out and I’ll never be able to have children. I was concerned about my parents disowning me and my siblings hating me. I called my BFF and told her that it had just come to me, I was gay. She was so understanding and there for me. It was great having the first person not be judgmental. If only everyone else could’ve been the same way.
For a few days I was lowkey. I didn’t really talk to anyone as I started to come to terms with the situation. To outsiders it might seem like coming out to yourself is so simple, but it’s not. It’s opening doors you never even knew were there. It’s making a lot of decisions that you never even knew existed. I had to think about who to tell and when to tell them and if I should tell anyone at all. I started thinking about girls and how would I date them and what would I be – butch/femme/androgynous. These are real concerns when you are finding yourself. My sister kept calling me but I didn’t want to talk to her because I was frustrated, angry, excited and I didn’t want to take it out on her or accidentally tell her. I wanted my mom to be the first family member to know. Well, my sister ended up being snarky with me and kept asking what my problem was. I screamed at her “I’m GAY” and hung up the phone. It took me several days to actually call her back to discuss it. Word spread rather quickly after that (my sister is a blabber mouth).
I don’t regret accepting myself and choosing to live as an out person (for the most part). I will always remember that light bulb coming up and me realizing that I wasn’t going to have the easy path in life. There would be no Romeo to my Juliet and there would be no sunshine and sprinkles for my life. Instead I’ve had several Patience’s to my Sarah (do you know this book) and some stumbles on my yellow brick road. In the end, I did end up with a Romeo, just not the traditional kind. I have had a great life so far and expect many more awesome years to come. Being queer isn’t always easy but it’s not as difficult as it could’ve been 30 yrs ago.
My Parents
November 30, 2010 at 12:46 am (Family, Get to Know Me)
Oh my.. what would you say about your parents?
My parents were in their 20s when they had me.. My dad is 52 and my mom will be 49 soon. WOW!
My mother is one of the most amazing and complicated people that I know. We are very close compared to her relationship with my siblings. She was the type of mom who made sure she was home to make dinner and get us up for school in the mornings. She worked as a waitress in my younger years and she did everything that she could to show us that we were loved even if we didn’t have a lot of money. I catch her in lies sometimes and I think she doesn’t even realize it. She’s so worried about people finding out about her shortcomings that she makes things up. I hate that about her, I’d rather she just tell me what’s going on. I can usually get over all of that and give her a hug though because I’ve accepted that she can’t help herself sometimes.
My father is a “guys guy”. He has always preferred the company of his friends to his family. He has also always preferred sporty children to not so sporty children. My sister played softball and football and my brother did baseball and football. I wanted to do gymnastics but he wouldn’t allow anything that he couldn’t coach. Our relationship has been mostly sour my entire life. I am the middle child and if you are a middle child you know how difficult it can be to not be first or last. When I was a senior in high school I had to write a booklet “All About Me”. I had in interview my parents on my birth and conception – it was actually interesting! My dad said I was born on a warm summer day and told me who was there and what was on tv in the waiting room. I was born in January, in Michigan, in the midst of a snow storm. He had the wrong attendees but the tv show was right. I didn’t even correct him about the weather and time of year of my birth. I let him think he knew what he was talking about. It hurt my feelings so much that he forgot when I was born. My mom should be so lucky that he was even there.
My parents went their separate ways when I was 12 but didn’t official divorce until over a decade later. Trust me, they weren’t holding on to love. My dad was a douche-bag and wouldn’t sign the divorce papers even though he’d moved on and even had a child with someone else. My dad has been with his baby’s mama for the past 11 years and my mom and stepdad have been together for 14yrs, I think. They’ve only been married for 2 years though.
My relationship with my dads live in girlfriend is nonexistent. She doesn’t approve of my “lifestyle” and doesn’t want it to rub off on her child. (*gag*) My dad allows her to put this restriction on our relationship so I don’t see either of them very often. He didn’t call me on Thanksgiving and I didn’t call him. My birthday goes forgotten almost every year or he’ll call and say a card is in the mail but I never receive one. My dad is caught up in his life and what is fun for him. He doesn’t have regular contact with any of his older children – only with my half brother because they live together.
My stepdad was an alcoholic until he got cancer earlier this year. While I was in high school we had a love/hate relationship. We got along really well most of the time but there were times he’d be drunk and ruin my day/week/month. He kicked me out several times and I had to move in with friends. My mom wasn’t the type to stand up to him and force her opinion. She let him make all of the decisions. This caused a lot of problems between my mom and all 3 of her children. We didn’t and never will understand why she let him push us around over the stupidest things that shouldn’t have mattered. His beer dictated everything when he let it. He was forced into AA meetings and anger management by police after an altercation with my sister. He behaved enough to graduate but it didn’t have any long term effects. I’ve seen him throw things at my mom and talk to her like she’s trash. He talked to me and my hubby like we were garbage. He is sick now, things have changed a lot. He couldn’t drink a beer even if he wanted to. The cancer has made him weak and fragile and all of his time is spent in his hospital bed in their living room. There is no more barking orders and treating people like crap. My mom has a nurse that comes in once a week to help with him but otherwise she’s on her own. I suppose you can’t talk trash to the only person who’s there to make sure you aren’t choking or falling down or peeing on yourself. Our relationship has gotten better over the past few months obviously. The impending death is bringing everyone closer and I guess that’s normal. My relationship with my mom has remained strong through this and I know she counts on me a lot. I am the dependable child and she knows I’ll do whatever I can to help them out.
I love my parents but I don’t like them all the time or agree with the things that they decide to do. I’m sure that they feel the same way about me. I worry that when my dad passes away I won’t care because I am so detached from that relationship with him. On the other hand, when my mom dies I’ll be devastated for a long time. I’m not sure how one deals with their parents passing away but it is inevitable. I think about this too much because I know that death is just around the corner for my stepdad.
This pic is the only family photo I can find of my parents with all 3 of us while they were still together.
