“We broke up,” I spout.
A tense silence. My eyes cling to the lettuce cups. Seconds take an eternity to pass. Anxious for her reply, I peek up. Her eyes twinkle with welling tears. She was my best friend growing up, and though we’ve had it rough since puberty, my aching loneliness craves her support, so I push on. “I, mom—I—I like…guys…I—I thought it was a phase, as Dad told me, or something, but it’s not going away and—and…yeah, we broke up.”
The window for a quick positive response closes. The approaching waiter retreats. Steps away before speaking. He knows a breakup when he sees one. “Do you have AIDS?” she says with a sudden urgency.
“What?” Not that question. “No.”
Her ignorance flings her so far from where I need her to be, yanking my hope away so fast that it leaves me breathless.
“What about grandkids?” she panics.
I claw at anger to stay afloat. “What? I don’t know. It can still happen, I guess.”
This was a terrible idea.
She scoops a lettuce wrap, tears falling down her face as she piles the chicken on top. “Well, of course, we love you and accept you…but just, you know, not the lifestyle,” she says, crunching into a bite.
“Lifestyle” is the Mormon codeword for sex with other men, even though if asked, they’d say “lifestyle” means all the partying “they” do.
I sink into the booth, disgusted with the families of mall shoppers around me shoveling mounds of fried rice into their mouths. We cut into our dynamite shrimp in silence.
It’s clear, my mother won’t turn on the Mormons. Should’ve kept my mouth shut.
My mother asks for the check. Escape.
*******
I was nineteen when I came out to my mother; forced to tell her after a failed suicide attempt. I hadn’t known it would be the beginning of my end.
My story was horrific: after being a closeted, gay Mormon in the 90s, I found relief as a tweaker. I drove a car under an eighteen-wheeler and walked away, was arrested for possession and distribution then pushed through the Washington D.C. judicial system, became an informant for the federal government, watched friends OD, and evaded threats to my life…basically, all the “that would never happen to me” consequences times ten.
But I walked away, alive, having never “ratted” and with my case dismissed. I don’t know how other than I was one lucky SOB. Thankfully, since then, recovery has stuck.
But it meant I had to deal with life on life’s terms.
In 2008, the journey with my mother took a significant hit after the Mormons funded the California vote in favor of Prop 8 to ban gay marriage. Even in sobriety, despite those early recovery years feeling closer to her than I ever had, I was still clinging to the hope that she would one day renounce her beliefs.
But that was a pipe dream.
The years that followed were met with more disappointments. And the more my esteem grew in recovery, the more painful the disappointments became.
I had to accept that she would never change.
I had to protect and save my little boy self.
I needed to let go of the mother I expected her to be and let her be the mother she was, which wasn’t enough.
So I made the impossible choice to never speak to her again.
To grieve her as if I lost her.
And I thought getting sober off methamphetamines would be the hardest thing I’d ever have to do…
But there is a happy ending.
When my now husband met my mother for the first time, it was one of the first few interactions I had with her after years apart. She was unavoidable at life-marking events in my siblings’ lives, and gradually, the waters were tested until I felt confidently free from emotional reactions toward her (aka being triggered). But, I was very wrong. She made an innocent comment that set me off.
Later, in our hotel room, my fiancé casually remarked, “Why don’t you just forgive her?”
“Forgive her? Do you have any idea what she’s done to me?”
“Yeah, but, like you said, you’re not that person anymore.”
I scoffed – as if forgiveness were that easy.
“She should be asking for my forgiveness!”
He laughed. “Don’t laugh at me!” I snapped.
“Sorry, but you did all that work to stay away, yet you still hold resentment. What was the point?”
I scoffed again. My mouth dropped. I thought I had moved on. I thought I was healed. Was I still expecting her to change?
Damn.
I needed a new approach.
That’s when I realized forgiveness is an active verb.
