The Queer Experience - Internalizing Expectation
"Anger is a sign that a boundary has been violated, a line has been crossed, a law has been broken, or an injustice has been done." -- Wangari Maathai
As we've gone through the week, I've been hinting at something I think deserves a little more attention than we tend to give it. When we're in the closet, pretending to be something we're not to satisfy the people around us, the predominating emotion we feel is fear. Fear of exposure. Fear of loss. Fear of being alone when what we are hiding is revealed. We fear others turning away from us, and shoulder the expectations of the people we love, who love this version of ourselves.
But when we come out, often, it's not just relief waiting for us. Sure, the positives are all there for us to revel in if we're ready, but for many of us there are also other, less comforting things waiting that we will have to unpack, accept, and then let go of.
Echoes of Anger
Anger is one of those things. A certain amount of grief might be waiting there, too. Those two senses may even be connected to each other, as we reflect on all the wasted time we spent in hiding, and lament that we can never get it back.
A first kiss may have been delayed until adulthood, because we didn't want to risk exposure. Crushes may have gone unexplored, because the person we were attracted to might have retaliated against us if they knew. We might have had the courage to make a move on someone we believed to be like us, who we understood to be shouldering the same burdens, to then play out this relationship in secret. Each little death, each motion stoppage, may have created some momentum through fear and sorrow that led us to come out when we did, and under the circumstances that we did, and to the people we did, but each of them also left a mark on us.
Anger, then, might await us on the other side of the closet, because our actions, the way we lived our lives, was predicated on a central deception we believed was necessary at the time, and even that likely came out of a very dark place.
You Can't Just Pray It Better
Few people, I think, start off understanding they cannot pray or alter their way out of being queer. In adolescence, most of us grow up in households who ascribe to a faith, and most often those faiths do have some clause built in that makes this "deviation" spiritually illegal. Living our truths is equated to living in sin. Even well intentioned parents might seek to bring their children in line with heteronormative conceptions of gender and appropriate expression. The messages we receive about queer people may not even be directed at us, but may come in the form of casual conversations between adults in our lives about queer people, how fine they are with our identities when outside the family, and how that general tolerance may break down when it comes to their own kin.
What festers inside needs to be released eventually, but it isn't always done in a healthy way. Resentment might build until it becomes an unbearable weight, and in attempting to shake it off, we might inflict it on others, or internalize those feelings because we are still expected to behave in line with what our communities tell us is acceptable. But those social structures are also what placed that burden on our shoulders, and living our truths does not always mean cleanly fitting into our environments. Sometimes, being ourselves requires taking up space, and reversing expectation such that it lands on others to learn to accept who we are.
Releasing Resentment
I explored this concept in Wicked Hunger Iron Law extensively. Oliver holds onto anger because he knew a life outside of Iron Fundamentalism (a homophobic cult) that might have accepted him as a gay man, leaving him with no need to hide his identity. Adrien, in turn, experiences anger because he finds no reason to be ashamed of his sexuality, and yet exists inside a relationship with a man who cannot overcome his own sense of shame. Oliver stays in Iron Fundamentalism because he does not want to leave his siblings wondering why he left them. He stays because he does not want to be like the father who left them alone with a mother who had become entangled with a cult whose teachings told him he was poisoned, diseased, and in need of spiritual healing. Adrien stays behind because he wants recognition from his lover of two years, wants him to want him. He stays, because he has fallen in love with a man who cannot overcome the shame he associates with his sexuality, who cannot leave a wife he has used for decades as a shield, in order to maintain the pretense that he is himself straight.
These systems of belief resonate because they are somewhat true to the coming out experience. When we come out, there is a phase immediately on the other side of the act that requires us to look into ourselves, decide what is important to us, recognize what is holding us away from embracing our new lives and the selves we stuffed down when we were still hiding. But that metamorphosis is still predicated on complicated and messy tangles of emotionality that need to be worked out for us to move forward.
Often, the key is forgiveness. Just as often, it is learning to understand the difference between what a person is capable of now, and what we must accept within them in order to maintain our sense of peace. That may mean some relationships don't survive this process, while others can be rekindled later, when the people in our lives come around to accepting who we are and allowing that we live our truths. Absolving ourselves of anger means learning to let go, so that we can continue on in joy within ourselves, and though that progress may not be linear, may even feel overwhelming at times, it is a necessary step in becoming reacquainted with ourselves.