I'm Sorry, So Sorry
I've spent a good portion of my life apologizing almost compulsively. I had friends laugh about it in college. I have some adult friends it confuses. I have one friend that it seems to anger. Apparently sometimes I apologize and the person I apologize to is confused about what I'm attempting to apologize for. Sometimes I do it less. I'd actually actively worked on doing it less over the past year. Sometimes when I feel anxious or uncertain or like something has gone wrong, I feel like I must to try to fix it. Part of it is my religious background. As an evangelical, you're essentially taught to constantly try and figure out what all is wrong with you, apologize for it, and fix it. Part of it is southern etiquette. But, part of it is more fundamental.
A year and a half before I was born, the younger of my two brothers (who was about two and a half) was killed in an accident as my eldest brother (then five) watched.
I don't remember ever having not been aware of his existence. His room became my nursery. I played with a lot of his toys. My extended family told me regularly how much I looked and acted like the missing brother, and told me how much my mother had always wanted a girl. There were these two slightly surreal sets of family photos from things like easter where the families stood in the same pose in the same location, only my older brother was taller in one picture and my father was holding a curly headed toddler in a sailer suit in one photo and a curly headed toddler in a dress in the other. It's almost as if there were two alternate reality versions of my family. His family (the happier, more innocent one) and mine. The other part being that there was this massive experience my parents and brother had been through that I hadn't been a part of. There was this entire person who was a part of their life that I hadn't known at all except from stories. There was this grief that was theirs that I wasn't sure I had a right to. That I was outside of.
One might think that I wasn't alive yet when this happened, so how much could it have affected me? The reality is that it set up a lot of my family dynamics and set the tone my childhood. I want to say on the front end, there were much worse fates to have had. I never wanted for food, clothing, shelter, education or love. But, the reality is that I was literally born into a grieving family, and it did absolutely affect the way I grew up, a lot of how I felt about myself and my role, and the way my family interacted and to some degree, still does.
For one thing (and probably less relevant to this post), it caused my family to be incredibly protective of me (particularly my father). I have no idea if that's what caused it, but I tend to be a very independent person and that caused a lot of fireworks until I was old enough to create some space.
For another thing, for my entire life, I've always been desperate to never hurt or cause problems for my mother because I knew she had been through so much. To be clear, it's not something she ever verbalized or intentionally instilled in me. It's just how I felt. I knew she had lost her son, and I didn't want to ever cause her pain or disappointment.
Then with my brother, he was angry a lot. I'm not sure how much of that was adolescence and how much was grief. It wasn't rational, but young me wondered if he didn't resent that I wasn't his brother. He looked so much happier in the pictures with the brother. They were both boys. They were much closer to the same age. They could play together. There was a seven year split between us. We had almost nothing in common except Star Wars. I was always in the way. He wasn't allowed to lay a finger on me because I was so little. I couldn't keep up. Then, pro tip, don't recommend the Mary Tyler Moore version of "Ordinary People" in front of a 3rd grader who lost a sibling. It's a movie about a family that lost a child and it comes out that the mother resented that the younger child was the one who had survived. I caught it on cable and recorded it and watched it alone (because I was an 80's latchkey kid). It's a very well-written well-acted acted movie. I shouldn't have been watching it. It shaped the way I thought. The thing it put in my head was the question of whether I should even have existed. That I was a mistake.
The thing that exacerbated that a bit is that it was also kind of around that age that I started to realize that something was off about me. The gay hadn't really kicked in yet, but I knew I wasn't normal. I just couldn't pinpoint why. I knew my mother had always wanted a girl, and I knew I was none of the things she had likely looked forward to. I had no interest in dolls. I hated bows. I only wore dresses because I was forced to, and wore the least frilly dresses I could. I hated pink. I mainly played with boys. I was obsessed with video games (which girls weren't supposed to like in that era). I loved computers. As I grew into my teens, there was no gossip about boys to be had or dating advice to be doled out. I wore just enough makeup to reasonably blend in, but I didn't actually care that much about it. Moving on to adulthood, there were no bridal showers. There was no wedding. There were no grandbabies to rock and coo over.
And so, I wasn't able to provide my mother, who I can't stand disappointing, with any of the experiences that a mother of a girl would expect. And not only did I not do that... if and when I tell my parents I'm gay, my devoutly religious mother is likely going to feel like she abjectly failed instill religion in me (which she desperately and diligently tried to do for 18 years) because she likely believes that homosexuality and Christianity are mutually exclusive. And then my father may or may not feel like I need to be cut off. Just to thoroughly complete the failure and disappointment.
My family was this happy family that used to go to Disney World and the beach with two brothers who enjoyed each other. And then my brother died. And then I came and made my brother miserable an introduced the gay and all the disappointment that brings (even without acknowledging the gay) to a fundamentalist Christian family that hates gays. And so, I think, deep down sometimes I apologize for existing. For taking up space I wasn't sure should be mine to take. For not being able to be what I should be. For being in the way. For disappointing. And the idea of coming the rest of the way out brings that part flooding to the forefront.
I'm Sorry - Brenda Lee
A year and a half before I was born, the younger of my two brothers (who was about two and a half) was killed in an accident as my eldest brother (then five) watched.
I don't remember ever having not been aware of his existence. His room became my nursery. I played with a lot of his toys. My extended family told me regularly how much I looked and acted like the missing brother, and told me how much my mother had always wanted a girl. There were these two slightly surreal sets of family photos from things like easter where the families stood in the same pose in the same location, only my older brother was taller in one picture and my father was holding a curly headed toddler in a sailer suit in one photo and a curly headed toddler in a dress in the other. It's almost as if there were two alternate reality versions of my family. His family (the happier, more innocent one) and mine. The other part being that there was this massive experience my parents and brother had been through that I hadn't been a part of. There was this entire person who was a part of their life that I hadn't known at all except from stories. There was this grief that was theirs that I wasn't sure I had a right to. That I was outside of.
One might think that I wasn't alive yet when this happened, so how much could it have affected me? The reality is that it set up a lot of my family dynamics and set the tone my childhood. I want to say on the front end, there were much worse fates to have had. I never wanted for food, clothing, shelter, education or love. But, the reality is that I was literally born into a grieving family, and it did absolutely affect the way I grew up, a lot of how I felt about myself and my role, and the way my family interacted and to some degree, still does.
For one thing (and probably less relevant to this post), it caused my family to be incredibly protective of me (particularly my father). I have no idea if that's what caused it, but I tend to be a very independent person and that caused a lot of fireworks until I was old enough to create some space.
For another thing, for my entire life, I've always been desperate to never hurt or cause problems for my mother because I knew she had been through so much. To be clear, it's not something she ever verbalized or intentionally instilled in me. It's just how I felt. I knew she had lost her son, and I didn't want to ever cause her pain or disappointment.
Then with my brother, he was angry a lot. I'm not sure how much of that was adolescence and how much was grief. It wasn't rational, but young me wondered if he didn't resent that I wasn't his brother. He looked so much happier in the pictures with the brother. They were both boys. They were much closer to the same age. They could play together. There was a seven year split between us. We had almost nothing in common except Star Wars. I was always in the way. He wasn't allowed to lay a finger on me because I was so little. I couldn't keep up. Then, pro tip, don't recommend the Mary Tyler Moore version of "Ordinary People" in front of a 3rd grader who lost a sibling. It's a movie about a family that lost a child and it comes out that the mother resented that the younger child was the one who had survived. I caught it on cable and recorded it and watched it alone (because I was an 80's latchkey kid). It's a very well-written well-acted acted movie. I shouldn't have been watching it. It shaped the way I thought. The thing it put in my head was the question of whether I should even have existed. That I was a mistake.
The thing that exacerbated that a bit is that it was also kind of around that age that I started to realize that something was off about me. The gay hadn't really kicked in yet, but I knew I wasn't normal. I just couldn't pinpoint why. I knew my mother had always wanted a girl, and I knew I was none of the things she had likely looked forward to. I had no interest in dolls. I hated bows. I only wore dresses because I was forced to, and wore the least frilly dresses I could. I hated pink. I mainly played with boys. I was obsessed with video games (which girls weren't supposed to like in that era). I loved computers. As I grew into my teens, there was no gossip about boys to be had or dating advice to be doled out. I wore just enough makeup to reasonably blend in, but I didn't actually care that much about it. Moving on to adulthood, there were no bridal showers. There was no wedding. There were no grandbabies to rock and coo over.
And so, I wasn't able to provide my mother, who I can't stand disappointing, with any of the experiences that a mother of a girl would expect. And not only did I not do that... if and when I tell my parents I'm gay, my devoutly religious mother is likely going to feel like she abjectly failed instill religion in me (which she desperately and diligently tried to do for 18 years) because she likely believes that homosexuality and Christianity are mutually exclusive. And then my father may or may not feel like I need to be cut off. Just to thoroughly complete the failure and disappointment.
My family was this happy family that used to go to Disney World and the beach with two brothers who enjoyed each other. And then my brother died. And then I came and made my brother miserable an introduced the gay and all the disappointment that brings (even without acknowledging the gay) to a fundamentalist Christian family that hates gays. And so, I think, deep down sometimes I apologize for existing. For taking up space I wasn't sure should be mine to take. For not being able to be what I should be. For being in the way. For disappointing. And the idea of coming the rest of the way out brings that part flooding to the forefront.
I'm Sorry - Brenda Lee
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