awakenings

At some point yesterday – perhaps while I was watching the 5th episode of Peppa Pig, or when I was feeding a plastic croissant to Buzz Lightyear – I realised something absolutely terrifying:

I’m going to have to date again.

I am not interested in being in another relationship right now, or any time soon. D. and I will doubtless spend a long time wading through the muddy waters of emotional and physical separation, and I plan to expend all my energy on my son, on myself, and on my studies. But eventually there will come a time when I have no more excuses. There will come a time when I feel steady enough and ready enough to open my heart to someone new…and I will have to start looking.

SHIT.

I hate lesbian dating. There, I said it. I may be gay, but there is something so refreshing about men’s directness in the early stages of flirtation. They leave very little to the imagination, and you’re left confident and completely convinced of their attraction to you (whether or not you reciprocate). With women, there is subtlety; there are nuances, fleeting glances, a whispering touch that lingers just a fraction of a second too long. In many ways it’s sort of beautiful, and god knows it is ridiculously erotic. But it’s also risky: what if the woman with whom you are flirting is straight, and is simply being friendly? What if you risk leaning in for a kiss, and then she flips and belts you in the face? The whole process is like trying to break a code when you’ve only got half the cipher: exasperating and perpetually confusing.

I have also been informed, by my family and friends, that I am ‘about as subtle as a brick shithouse’. In other words, the opacity of lesbian flirting etiquette is utterly lost on me. In the presence of beautiful women, I turn into a pubescent twelve-year-old; I end up blushing indiscriminately and yammering like a loon. A few people find this endearing, but most presume that I fell on my head as a child. (I did, but that’s beside the point.)

I tried being honest about my sexuality from the get-go once, but that failed quite spectacularly. I met a woman who was both married and straight, and despite the fact that she knew I was bisexual, she began a merciless campaign to get me to notice her. It worked. She didn’t half string me along, the vacuous tramp. She texted me all the time, and the messages she sent me were like something out of lesbian erotica. When I asked if she was being serious, she told me yes – twice! – so I tentatively asked her out for lunch. She readily agreed. She bought me a drink and I sat across from her, trying my best not to stare longingly at her sultry mouth. My stomach was twisting itself into knots; I couldn’t eat a thing, and I kept having vivid visions of dragging her into the bathroom and having sex with her up against the door of a dimly lit toilet cubicle (ah, sweet romance!). In the end, she listened and smiled, talked and laughed, but somehow always managed to keep her distance. Soon after, she told me it had all been a joke.

A joke? A JOKE?! In what way was that remotely funny? If I had told those kinds of jokes around the dinner table, my dad would have had a fucking coronary.

Needless to say, that friendship did not work out.

So, from the newly initiated lesbian, a plea for help: anybody got any hints? Tips? Tricks? Attractive and conveniently available lesbian friends who can wait a while (and then look past my nervous verbal diarrhoea)?

I’m not sure exactly when idea crystallises into intention, but it does. I decide that today will be the day that I tell him. I expect to feel more fear, and the lack of it makes me wonder if I am simply kidding myself. Will I actually go through with it? I do not trust myself, and I’m sure that the answer is no.

We drop our son off at my mother’s and head back home in the growing dark. In my car’s CD player is an album that I have listened to for most of this experience: Joshua Radin, We Were Here. I discovered a song of his when watching Ellen and Portia’s wedding video. His gentle, whispery syllables cradle my soul into silence; listening to the songs on continuous repeat gives me some fleeting sense of peace that is addictive. As D. tries to make conversation, I turn the music up, clinging to the snatches that come through between his sentences.

‘Isn’t it weird how –’
So we’re alone again
‘ – I can watch footy and Match of the Day –’
I wish we were over
‘ – better on your laptop than on our TV – ’
we seem to never end
‘ – because of that bloody satellite, we really need to sort it –’
only get closer to the point
where I can take no more
‘So what shall we have for tea?’
the clouds in your eyes
down your face they pour

When we get home, I find a million and one reasons not to speak. He softens onions in oil and makes soy burgers with salad and chips; we eat quietly, side-by-side on the sofa. He asks if I want to watch a DVD, and against my better judgment, I tell him yes. I curl with my head in his lap, and as always, he combs his gentle fingers through my hair. Hours pass, and the fear begins to rise. It is the kind of fear I have felt only a handful of times before: the kind that comes from your core and makes your gut shudder, the kind that slowly eats at your bones until you are rendered immobile.

The living room somehow seems too benign for my admission. It is the place of habit, the place of routine, the place we come to eat and love and rest our week-weary bodies. It feels somehow sacrilegious to fling a dramatic and life-altering truth into this room. And so I wait until we are in bed. What is the bed, after all, if not a place for sharing?

He knows something is wrong, and when he tells me that he loves me, I stare at the ceiling as tears slide down my temples. They thump gently onto the mattress, a stuttering heartbeat that breaks the silence. He wipes them away, but they come so fast that he cannot catch them all. Still, he says nothing, and neither do I. I stare and stare at the ceiling, trying to find in its blurred white pattern some shred of courage. None comes. He wraps his whole body around me, and I know he is trying to comfort me, but his arm is across my throat and I feel strangled. I work my throat, my mouth, my lips, and still nothing comes. I expect him to ask, but he does not: he only watches me quietly, waiting, knowing. This makes it harder.

I am not sure how long we stay like this, each offering comfort to the other without ever saying a word. Perhaps it is an hour, perhaps more, perhaps less. Eventually, I whisper to him that I am sorry. He only shakes his head sadly, and scoops me back into his arms.

‘I’m sorry I can’t make you happy.’

No. No. I cannot let him walk away thinking this is his fault.

‘D.’ My voice is barely audible, and I feel him go still. ‘I think…I’m gay.’

I burst, and the sobs come so hard and fast I feel I might choke. Between them, I can hear a litany that is soft and broken and I realise it is coming from me.

‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry oh god I’m sorry I’m sorry please don’t hate me I’m sorry.’

He only holds me tighter, sweet man, and shushes me, and strokes my face and back and hair and tells me it will be alright. Oh, I thought the truth would break him, but instead it has broken me. I am in pieces that are razor-sharp and he picks me up with his bare fingers even though it makes him bleed. His love is everywhere, everything, and it is all that keeps me from drowning.

I thought I would never say it out loud. I thought I would never be able to know myself. Oh, it is so beautiful that it hurts my eyes to look at it, but look at it I do, and I have never felt pain like this, I will never again feel pain like this. It is pain that comes from relief, the kind that radiates through your aching limbs when, after pushing them beyond all endurance, you finally get to lay them down.

When calm descends upon me, he asks me questions. He weeps quietly at the thought of what is to come, and turns his face away so that I cannot see his tears even when I tell him not to. Eventually, he tells me he feels empty. I grope beneath the duvet for his hand and grip it tight. He squeezes my fingers until they are numb but I do not let go.

‘Maybe we should hire a lesbian au pair,’ he says, and I turn to look at him and burst out laughing. For a moment, I see in his soft green gaze a microcosm of the future: the point where our relationship has transcended our mutual pain and become something simpler, more honest. Hope flutters shyly in my chest.

‘I love you,’ I say, and he smiles through his tears.

‘I know.’ His hand reaches out to cup my cheek. ‘I love you too.’

I am told – by the few I know who have been through this – that there will come a moment when I will know. No amount of soul-bearing, heart-rending self-analysis will bring that moment closer. I can fret and flap until I am blue in the face, and I can argue with myself until the cows come home – but none of it matters, in the end. I will be ready when I’m ready. I will know when I know.

It’s coming. The knowledge of this rolls over and through me, like the shadow before the crest of a wave. There are flickers of fear, of eagerness, of love and pain and wonder and awe – but mostly, I’m still. It will be here soon. There is nothing I can do to change that. And most of the time, I’m okay.

I think he feels it too, though of course I don’t ask. Despite our heart-wrenching talk, he has said nothing on the subject of separation. Instead, he clings tighter to our life, talking about our future as if it’s concrete and grabbing at me like a greedy child. This infuriated me at first, but I eventually made a decision: he can keep his fragile peace for now. It is the holidays, after all.

In the moments between tinsel and candlelight, between crumpled paper and piles of gifts, I have been quietly preparing myself. The practical details of my exit once filled me with abject terror – the vast nothingness where my future used to be was too dizzying to look at, let alone plan for – but now I realise: the blank space only remains so because I have not yet made a mark on it.

And so I worry less and less about the uncertainty of student loans and finances and housing, instead focusing on the solid facts of our situation: there is money, even if it’s not mine. If worse comes to worst, D. and his family will not see us out on the streets. I would rather buy my own way to autonomy, but the truth of the matter is, I am simply not financially able. To reject all offers of help would be martyrdom for its own sake. If it were only me leaving this home, I would happily move back in with my mother – who, I know, would welcome me with open arms – until I finished my schooling and got a job. But it’s not only me: I have a son to think about, one whose needs must come before my inflated sense of pride. As much as it galls to have to depend upon someone for independence, it may be a necessity I cannot avoid.

I know that D. will do all he can to actively co-parent our son, but circumstances alone dictate that I will be the primary caregiver. I have to think about where I want us both to be living. I do not want our son growing up in the red-brick gloom of the city, where the children are wild and the streets are riddled with crime. If there is a way I can live close to this village, to his sweet father, to his friends, and to the school we’ve chosen – even if it means swallowing my guilt and being humble enough to ask for money that is not mine – I will try my best.

There is a gulf between the life that is ours and the one that will be mine; I inch closer to it with every passing day. When I feel strong, I curl my toes at its jagged, fractured edge. It pierces my skin, and I let myself bleed. I hurt. I weep. I fear. I am.

I hope.

I went to university at eighteen and discovered an entirely new concept: fuck buddies. Here was a way to experience the fantasy without ever having to commit to it. Despite the fact that casual intimacy had never appealed to me, I tried it out.

The first girl I slept with had soft curves, full lips, and limpid green eyes. We met at a pub, and she extended her forearm across the sticky surface of the beer-splattered table to show me her tattoo. Tracing the dark shapes with my index finger, I drank glass after glass of Malibu and Coke, until the coconut-and-sugar taste drowned out the acrid tang of my own fear.

We walked back to her flat in the pouring rain and peeled off each other’s clothes, curling our clammy thighs around one another under the duvet. A pinkish glow rose like a blush from the fairy lights she had strung around her bedroom, and minutes rolled into hours as we kissed, touched, and talked. When she lay flush against me and rested her cheek against my collarbone, I felt – for the first time in my life – complete and utter peace.

I came back for more, of course, only this time I was sober. I overcame my fear by lunging at her without pausing to think, and luckily she was pleased – rather than terrified – by my apparent eagerness.

She was the first person to give me an orgasm. Her fingers danced and gripped and stroked, and I rose for her like a tide. She tipped me abruptly into a sensation that sent shock waves down my spine, and then she peered up at me in the half-light and said, with a mouthful of accented attitude, ‘I bet a man’s never touched you like that, eh?’

Indeed.

I had an insatiable thirst for the taste of her mouth, and I drank her greedily and without apology. I had no idea what I was doing, but my hands moved over her independently of thought or design, as if they already knew her. When her body vibrated under my touch, I felt something close to invincible.

That was the second and last time I ever saw her. She revealed shortly afterwards, over the phone, that her feelings were going beyond the unspoken boundaries of our circumstances. I nodded and murmured in all the right places, and then I ran like fuck.

Before I met D., there were several more like her, but none that I enjoyed quite so viscerally. By then the fear had taken me in a stranglehold. Physical intimacy has always been bound up with my emotions, and I was terrified that surrender in the bedroom meant surrender in everything else. I told myself I had made my peace with my sexuality: I dated some guys, but mostly girls, and I never shied away from showing affection to the latter in public. When I snaked my arm around a girl’s hip at the bus stop, and a bunch of pre-pubescent boys on bikes yelled ‘DYKE!’, I did not move away. I did not apologise. In fact, I gave them the finger. But every time someone got too close, I took to the hills as though my feet were on fire.

I ran from what was to be my last relationship with a woman straight into the arms of D. He was a kind and generous lover – and, to my utter surprise, I was deeply attracted to him. He was endlessly patient and he taught me how to relax again, how to give myself over to sensation. I told myself that I could not be gay, that the pleasure I felt with him during sex was far more important than the emptiness I felt after it. I told myself that it was time to break away from everything that had gone before. I told myself that it was time to move on, to create something new, to forget everything old.

And for a little while, with his help, I truly did.

Dear Moonchild,

It seemed inadequate simply to leave you a passing ‘thanks’ after that beautiful letter. And so I sit in my study, drinking green tea with agave nectar, and offer up my own words in return for yours.

I won’t lie: your truth damn near broke me. I read it this morning while I was cleaning the kitchen, my forearms immersed in a sink full of bubbles. I read it once through, and again once more, and then I bent double over the counter and wept until I could not see.

You are right: truth has its own gravitational pull. In the carrying of it, you can scramble for a foothold or shift your position – and sometimes that works. Sometimes it does. But inevitably, your bones begin to shake with the weight of it, until letting go becomes less of a choice and more of a necessity. I am at that point, I think, or near it. As your body fought against your husband’s, so mine does with D. Each time he tries to kiss me, I slip through his fingers like air and I am gone before he has chance to voice a protest. I feel the full force of his sorrow at my retreating back and it brings me to my knees. But still my body will not – cannot – let him in.

The inevitability of this is what left me sobbing this morning in the butterscotch light of the kitchen. It is happening, it is coming, and I don’t know when, but I know it is soon. I can only sit and wait and watch for that moment of heartbreaking clarity – that moment you talked about, the one where you just know – and let it knock the air from my lungs. I can only hope that once it does, I will have the strength to get back on my feet and learn how to breathe again.

You are right, also, in that our communication has been ‘buried’. The sad thing is, it has always been this way. I am a talker: I talk to heal, to resolve, to reach out and comfort; I talk for honesty, for fun, for a challenge. D., on the other hand, has been taught that problems go away when you pretend they don’t exist. I often wonder if things would have turned out this way if I had succeeded in my attempts to open him up. But I am beginning to realise, just as you did, that it is not my job to fix him.

Sometimes I wish that I, like you, had a ‘catalyst’ – a woman whose eyes and mouth and voice gave me reason to doubt the life I was living. Then, at least, I could seek solace and affirmation in her arms, and know that my sacrifice was for her and not just myself. But then that’s not really the point, is it? The whole reason this began was because I wanted to find out who I was. I need to learn the rhythms of my own body before I can explore someone else’s.

And so – to my other questions. ‘I feared for our kids.’ How did they cope? Did they understand? Were they angry? My sweet boy is sleeping off a fever in the room directly above my head. He already knows that something is amiss, and he has been following me endlessly around the house like a wounded puppy. I am not the best mother in the world – I am honest enough with myself to know that – but I adore him. I could not live with myself if I made him hate me.

‘Choosing your own presence and wholeness will only bring more love into the world.’ Oh, Moonchild, I hope more than anything that this is true.

With much love and gratitude,
Bee
xox

Dear Bee,

I’ve been sitting near your questions for a few days now, aware of them waiting, each an invitation for me to move into a space of remembering the long, agonizing moment that I couldn’t believe at the time would ever live in the realm of memory. I sit here in a dark, cozy lounge, drinking a Cosmo. Wondering where to begin. Knowing that whatever responses I’m able to offer may give you comfort, a sense of not being alone, and knowing how that counts for so, so much. And also that you will move through this in your own days, your own way, finding your own places of what you are able or choose to tolerate, where you are able or willing or unwilling to negotiate with yourself or someone else, your own places of learning that you cannot break another human being, that choosing your own presence and wholeness will bring only more love into the world.

But I know the fear. More like terror. Sheer terror. And later the guilt, the body-curling loss. The disbelief mingled with the laser-sharp clarity.

How did I find the strength to tell the truth?

I’m not sure I did, as much as it was the truth that kept telling me. It was unrelenting, visceral, fierce, raging, refusing to be pushed back just as a river cannot be made to flow upstream. Once I knew–and I knew in an instant, a song, a moment of my eyes catching hers for that extra beat. I knew that the beautiful life I had built stood on a fault line bigger than the San Andreas, I knew without a word, without thought, shuddering, violent, feeling-knowing.

I did not let go easily. I told the truth within a few days of that experience–sat on the couch one night and said, “I have something to tell you.” That was the kind of marriage we had. The kind where we told each other things. His initial reaction was shock, and then to flee, to bail, to say, “This is not what I signed up for.” In the months that followed–and I am condensing a lot here–I feared he would hang himself in the garage. I feared that I had “snapped him down the middle.” I fought with my knowing, or tried to. “How could I leave, how could I leave”–this was a constant question that plagued me. My body was on overdrive for months; I’d wake up at dawn with my heart pounding as if I’d been running. There was deceit. I felt a total rejection of him to my core, cried every single time we made love, or tried, despite my attempts to stay open to him. My body said “NO.” It roared. It raged. It railed against him. All I wanted was to go to her bed, surrender. I read Adrienne Rich and wept. I feared for our kids.

It was tormenting. Torturous. I consulted friends and family. My mother insisted that I turn my attention back to the sacred commitment of marriage. I raged some more. I lost fifteen pounds from an already small frame.

I see the difference here, or part of it at least from what I understand of your story, which is that you are suffering in silence. He may be in denial, but the communication between you is buried. I don’t think one is easier than the other; one of the wrenching things about my process was that he went back and forth between raging, hurt, rejected, terrified husband (and little boy whose father died), and amazing, seeing, loving friend who understood that I needed to come out.

I could no longer cover his pain or take care of the family system. The toll this took on me during the few years leading up to this moment with increasing intensity just exploded, no longer containable. I remember blurting out to a therapist, “I DON’T WANT TO BE MARRIED.” But, you see, I was married, for a decade or more, to a man who loved me beautifully, unconditionally. He used to say he hit the jackpot with me. And we had babies. Magic. And yet. And yet. My other refrain. And yet.

Was there relief?

Yes, in bursts. Fits and starts. Moments of searing freedom, exhilaration, letting go, sexual pleasure and hunger beyond anything I had ever, ever experienced. And there was grief, so crushing I thought I would die. And rage, a lifetime, that poured out over the course of many months. And confusion, and doubt, and longing to go back, to go home again, and enough drama to make up for decades of avoiding drama. So many pictures of each of these in my mind. And yet–you will have your own story, your own pictures, your own moment of moving through the thing that still lies before you, that feels insurmountable, the thing that consumes you, robs you of sleep and presence and appetite.

Finally one day, we stood in the woods. There was no one else to consult, no more time to take to see if “things would shift.” We stood under a tree, summer sunlight streaming down through the fullness of the leaves. And we called it. We surrendered. I told him that this life force was flowing so powerfully through me, from my vagina through my core, up and out of my mouth, a flow that could not, WOULD NOT, be reversed.It was a quiet moment, followed by many harsh moments and deep, illuminating conversations and shutting down and sorting out years of projection.

How could I face myself?

Every single day, I have had no choice to but to keep going. To face myself in the mirror, sometimes looking destroyed, sometimes sexier than I ever imagined, sometimes depleted and aged, sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeless and scared, sometimes shaking with resentment or shuddering with guilt. But never once has the mirror cracked.

How do you gather the strength it takes to snap another human being right down the middle?

He did snap. He broke. Bereft. Angry. Hurt. Alone. Lost. Abandoned. But slowly what became so, so clear was that he was already broken. I did not break him. I did not abandon him. His father did that, when he was a small boy. For many years, I protected him. And being with him protected me from myself, too, the raw power I knew was there was did not know how or was afraid to access and let out.

I saw that he was broken the day I met him when he spoke of his childhood. There he was, exposed without my comfort, faced with his own survival. And I could not bear responsibility any longer.

I will close for tonight.

Send me your next questions, and I will share what I can.

Please, Bee: be good and gentle and patient and forgiving with yourself. Feel you way. Trust what you feel. Take your time. Everyone, so many people, told me, “You’ll know.” Oh, how I doubted this. “But HOW will I know?” I wailed. “WHEN will I know?” And then I did. I just did. Not that that was that, but those moments do come, and you can’t force or rush or push them. I hope you can rest a little there.

With so much love,

Moonchild

Though I like to be thought of as opinionated and strong-willed, at heart I am what I have been since I was five: an insecure little girl who just wants to be liked. And, as everybody knows, the best way to do that is to be perfect. Make no mistakes, do what is expected of you, and for god’s sake don’t ever let them see what you really are.

I am what Americans call a ‘straight-A student’. I am also maddeningly obsequious with teachers; as a result, they have always treated me just that little bit better than the rest of the class. In life, my decisions are rarely the wrong ones – and if they are, I am eloquent enough to make them appear otherwise. I work exceptionally hard at appearing infallible. Occasionally I am told that this makes me seem conceited. Upsetting as this is, it does not motivated me to change: I would rather they judged me for something that is not true than for something that is.

So what I’m thinking of doing flies in the face of everything I have ever known. It is the equivalent of stepping naked into the spotlight on a stage facing an audience of thousands. My bones shriek with the desire to flee, to go back, to bend myself into the familiar shape of the shadows. The last thing I want is for them to see me stripped bare.

And yet, absurdly, it is the only thing I truly do want. A small part of me recognises that there is a certain freedom in living without clothes. I yearn to feel the air on my skin, without the restrictive abrasion of seams and sizes and labels. Look at me, I want to say.

Don’t you see how beautiful I am now?

Back when I was tiptoe to the doorway of adolescence, there were several more ‘gay moments’ like the one in the changing cubicle. With the perfect vision that comes with hindsight, I remember them all. I remember the sweet, lazy heat that rolled up my thighs when my first-year English teacher leaned across me to collect my homework. She was petite and blonde, with delicate hands and a tiny bow mouth. When she moved, a ribbon of vanilla-scented perfume trailed behind her; it made my young body thrum like a harp string. Even now, twelve years later, I never fail to be moved by the smell of that perfume.

But then, of course, there are memories which are not quite so pleasant. Like the time I found out what happened to people who came out in high school.

Victoria – Vicky – was her name, though I doubt anyone remembers but me. Teenage girls have that ability to effortlessly crush someone’s spirit under the heel of their designer boot and forget it almost instantly. The only reason I remembered was because some small part of me knew, even then, that it could so easily have been me.

From what I heard at the time, a popular and aggressively beautiful girl named Sam approached Vicky and asked her a question. Try as I might, I can’t imagine how that particular question came up – and, more importantly, why on earth Vicky answered it. The fact that Sam casually flung such a crude offering at someone she barely knew should surely have alerted the poor girl, but it didn’t. Perhaps Vicky’s vision was misted with hunger for someone – anyone – to understand, and she mistook the glitter in Sam’s eyes for a reflection of the same. In fact, it was simply malice.

Either way, she said yes and agreed to meet Sam later in the school yard. Vicky came, and she waited, and suddenly there was Sam – Sam and a baying mob of thirty other students. Elevated in my position at the top of the school steps, I saw understanding bleed into Vicky’s face by degrees, and then her shoulders went rigid with panic.

Pushing her way to Vicky’s side, Sam raised the bewildered girl’s hand in the air like a prizefighter and crowed, ‘She said she’d fuck me! She’s a friggin’ dyke!’

An appreciative audience, the kids erupted in whistles and catcalls. A boy at the back threw his empty water bottle; it sailed over their heads, bounced off the wall behind Vicky and snickered across the floor.

‘I didn’t say I would!’ she squealed, tugging her hand away. ‘I said I might!’

God help me, I threw back my head and laughed at that, along with the bullies and the bastards. Did she honestly think that would work? Did she think that admitting she’d considered it would help her case?

Before anyone had time to stop her, she vaulted the small wall at her back and ran for the building. Like a swarm of angry bees, they followed, funnelling in through the door of the science block. I did not chase her, but neither did I try to stop them. I only felt an overwhelming sense of relief that it was her instead of me. She was locked in a classroom by a member of staff, I heard, for her own safety.

Vicky never did come back.

I am drifting further away with every breath. He senses it, I think – my movements, however small, vibrate along the ghost of a chord that once held him fast to my insides. When I take a few steps away, even just to pick something up or go to the bathroom, he is instantly vigilant.

Where are you going?

Mummy, come back and play with me.

NO, Mummy. Stay here.

It is simultaneously heartbreaking and suffocating. I cannot go anywhere without being followed by the patter of his footsteps, the impatient tap of his hand. Self-reflection requires solitude – at least for me – but he allows me none. The anxious rope of his voice repeatedly tugs me backwards; I am not sure whether I resent this or am grateful for it. Often, it is a mixture of both.

He is not quite three years old, yet he is more attuned to me than D. is. Sweet and exquisitely sensitive, he mimics my moods so accurately it hurts me to watch him: for weeks now, he has been weepy and bad-tempered without ever seeming to know why. As he lacks the all-too-adult capacity for denial, his face crumples in the most innocuous of moments and he gravitates instantly towards me, crawling up my torso like a kitten. It is all I can do not to weep along with him, but instead I do what I know I must: I rock and stroke, whisper and soothe. I rub slow circles on the small of his back. I kiss him.

I lie.

I have learnt that skill all too well from his father. The man worships denial as though it’s his life source. Never in my life have I met someone so capable of ignoring the elephant in the room; it could be trampling over the furniture, crushing everything in sight, and still he would deftly step around it and paste on a smile. I used to find it astonishing, and would try poking him into an argument just for the fun of it – after all, nobody’s that perfect. I used to joke that his loudest expression of anger was a sigh. After growing up with a volatile father whose temper was fierce and unpredictable, it didn’t exactly seem like a problem.

Now, however, I just find it exhausting. I cannot fix anything if he will not admit that it’s broken. My once unwavering sense of honesty has all but been strangled into silence; it takes me months if not years to work up the courage to talk about our problems, and within minutes he has changed the subject.

I’m so tired. I’m so unbearably tired. I need to be strong for my son’s sake; I need to somehow find the courage to confront this before it gets too big. But years of crushing who I am for the sake of everybody else has taken its toll: there is nothing left in me to give. I am finding it difficult to care about anything but getting the hell out of here. My job, my degree, my house, my future – what does it matter, really? What does it matter when I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning?

I’m sorry. I’ll try to be a better mother, a better girlfriend, a better daughter. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anybody. I’m sorry. I tried my best to make you all happy. I’m sorry. I’m gay.

I’m sorry I’m gay.

Shortly after I turned eleven, I climbed onto the bench of a changing cubicle at the swimming baths. My discarded bathing suit clung wetly to the wood; I nudged it out of the way with my knee and pressed my cheek flat against the cold tiled wall. I was half-dressed and shivering, but if I squinted and tilted my head just so, I could see a narrow slice of the cubicle next to mine.

She was changing with her friend, and their bare limbs flickered in and out of my vision like scenes from a garbled videotape. Underwear and t-shirts and words passed easily between them; their laughter was girlish and relaxed. For an instant, I simply marvelled at their indifference – to them, their shared nakedness meant nothing. And then she turned to face the wall behind which I was furtively crouched and dropped her towel.

Oh. Her breasts were full and heavy, the kind I’d only ever seen behind flimsy strips of lingerie in the clothing catalogue. So far, she was the only girl in my class who needed a bra. The skin-pink circles around her nipples were puckered with cold; at the sight of them, something nameless shifted inside me and began to ache. Later, shame would creep up my throat like bile and burn through the sharp edges of this moment – but for then, at least, I knew exactly why I was there. I knew why I stayed frozen until my limbs felt thick and drunk. I knew why my heartbeat had dropped to the base of my spine, and why my fingers stuttered a restless tattoo against my chlorine-soaked thigh: because I wanted nothing more than the chance to reach out and touch her.