On a league of their own and a recognition of pain
What if queer love could be kept? :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 31st 2022
I watched a league of their own last week. It was a wonderful experience, my favorite show of the year for sure for sure. I watched it with my mom and I told her, you know the secrecy and the hiding of your connection or of your desire or of who you are, even though this was set in the 1940s, is still how I grew up and how I can sometimes still feel. My mom showed such stunning empathy and I’ve felt so much closer to her and understood by her since.
I came out nearly 4 years ago now. It was in mid October 2018 that I called my mom driving home to an apartment at the very tip of Innisfil Beach Road and I told her I was gay.
Since I came out in 2018, 3 years after the USA legalized gay marriage and mainstream TV shows/ media could show gay and queer storylines at last, and 13 years after Canada legalized gay marriage, and that I am sort of at the tail end of the millennial generation, I didn’t feel entitled to share how hard it was for me to come out.
I remember someone on Instagram had replied to a story I made in 2019 when I came out publicly and had my girlfriend on my podcast, things like this - that only a dozen or so people had unfollowed me after I posted that.
The woman wrote, “It’s 2019. No one cares if you’re gay.”
But I did.
That comment was probably meant to be encouraging like you’re safe girl! Everyone loves gay people now. But it also felt untrue and dismissing. Coming out is still a very big deal. Maybe not so much for kids that my generation is having, I don’t know I don’t have my own kids and I can’t ask them, but for us who grew up closeted and scared shitless of our core desires for various reasons, yeah, this isn’t easy. Of course representation is awesome and thank god, and I am grateful I can be mirrored back to myself in shows/ books now. But I didn’t get that when I was growing up either.
For all intents and purposes, coming out to my family was the easiest thing ever. My parents have not always been parents to me, but the gay thing didn’t even phase them.
When I was bawling my eyes out to my dad attempting to tell him, he said, “Emily is this it? No offence but this is not a well kept secret.” I wrote about his gorgeous fatherly redemption in Can You Turn The Lights Off around this. Get to part 3 and see what I mean. :)
There is really nothing to complain about here right? Right. Very very lucky.
AND… because it was such a big deal to me due to how painful it was for me to be gay in a hetero world, it did feel hard that a lot of people in my life didn’t bat an eye, not in the oh shit we don’t accept you or this way, but in the wow, this must have been a lot to carry on your own way.
I also have dated older women in the past 4 years, and many of them had much worse stories around don’t ask don’t tell policies, being kicked out of their homes when they were teens, not telling anyone about an adult 10-year queer relationship because of religious family issues, their partners hiding them and leaking their shame all over them.
I also know because I am femme, I have had “pretty privilege” or “straight passing privilege”…
And so…
I felt like I didn’t have a right to my pain.
Yet, my sexuality is one of the things I have hurt most about in this life.
In a league of their own (spoiler here), there is this scene where Carson has finally convinced Gretha to go to the gay bar. Gretha didn’t feel safe to. And everyone is dancing and everyone is in love, and it’s quite beautiful, but the music is a bit stressful and then cops barge in and beat people. While it’s a hard scene to watch, I thought it was done beautifully. This is exactly how it feels - they somehow nailed it with the music in contrast to the beauty of the connections- you’re living your desire but there is this looming threat always there and then poof, it’s taken away. Just like you knew it would or suspected it could if you gave yourself over to it fully. Brilliant visual and felt art - really.
I’ve been doing a lot of grief work as per Iman’s loving confrontation in July and I finally did some intense release work around my closeted relationship that I had in high school, the one where we didn’t even talk to each other sober about what we did drunk.
It really wrecks you when you can literally have sex with someone or kiss them, or whatever, the act matters not as much, and they can tell you and you can tell yourself that it does not matter. That it meant nothing. That it was nothing.
I am very aware that what happened in my nervous system to survive was a programming that went something like this: Whatever I do in the realm of sex or love, means nothing and does not matter.
This is also how I kept having sex with men for 10 years without asking myself too many questions about if I even was fulfilled… fulfillment didn’t matter. Interest, desire, none of that mattered. If sex would have mattered to me, I wouldn’t have survived my life.
It fucks with me in an extremely painful way now when women gaslight or don’t name that there is a romantic or sexual interest between us, or if anyone downplays that. The denial of reality really hurts me in whatever shape it takes. And for good reason.
I’ve been doing a lot of healing these past 4 years in general to let sex and love matter to me. To let it mean something… to let it mean everything.
At this point in time, I am not sure I believe in a queer love that I can truly keep for myself. I hope this changes soon.
But I also feel like the times in which I have felt so in love were taken from me eventually. Sort of like in a league of their own, when that bar scene turns violent. I’ve had it - I know it’s possible, but do I get to keep it, or is the world going to take it from me?
Queer people have lived a lot of trauma - both personally and historically. Myself included. A lot of queer people don’t address it, and some can’t. We don’t have rules to follow - no perfect we date for 3-4 years, get engaged, get married, have 2 kids, stay together, go on trips when we get bored. There is no social pressure to do much like you have when you’re in a hetero situation, or hetero seeming situation.
There are exceptions obviously. I know queer people do the whole stability/ life partnership thing too. I see them on instagram and I watched the documentaries of that one lesbian couple who’s been together for decades on netflix, but I also sometimes doubt the health of their unions. Enmeshment, co-dependence, non monogamy that originates from unhealthy parts, power imbalances, misdirected anger, use of drugs and alcohol, avoidance and resistance to true intimacy.
It’s very cynical I know. It’s the opposite of self-help or optimist straight people talk.
But I want to admit it out loud - that I fear that the queer love I want and desire doesn’t exist.
That maybe yes it exists in small moments, in strings of months attached to one another, maybe in temporary years, but what if it’s not permanent? What if I never get to keep it?
What if I don’t get the stability and the small house on the lake and the peaceful quiet life I want with a partner?
And I wonder if I will have to be okay with that. I wonder how many lesbians and queer women have had to be okay with that over the course of history. I think of Sue and Emily, and how Sue married Austin so that she could be kept safe after she was orphaned and that her and Emily stole moments together throughout their entire lives, but they never got to raise babies together or wake up to each other in the morning. So we get love, but we never get to keep it. I wonder if that will change. I wonder if it’s already changing.