In my blog this week I will discuss my aunt M (my mom’s sister) who decided after living 35 years of her life as a heterosexual woman that she was and always has been in her heart a lesbian. She married at a young age and had a son, Chris with her husband when she was around 30. She was the only one out of my grandma’s seven children that stayed in school and graduated. She went on to be a successful general manager of a couple different food chains, where she earned a middle class income and was able to buy a nice house and drive nice cars and raise her son as a spoiled only child.
As a child I remember I always looked up to her because she seemed really successful, happily married, a proud parent, etc. Then she meets a woman who starts to work for her and they become close friends, close enough that eventually her husband was actually jealous of this other woman in my aunt’s life. So he threatened my aunt, told her to fire this woman and stay away from her or else. When my aunt refused her husband called my aunts boss the district manger, a man of course, and told him my aunt was having an affair on him with another woman that worked for her at this place of business, and when confronted both denied the accusations calling it only a friendship. At this point it was too late, the District Manager fired my aunt and her friend saying it was against the rules for managers to have relationships with their employees. No proof besides for my aunt’s jealous husband starting this controversy and at that she was married, so without proof it seemed so wrong of him to fire her, but at that time “gays” were just beginning to stand up for their right to be openly “gay”. This District Manager obviously opposed to this as shows in him firing my aunt with no real evidence because her husband was spreading around they were having relationships. Anyway my aunt divorced her husband and ended up in a relationship with this woman for 6 or 7 years. Although she still to this day swears that although there was an attraction between the two of them they were only and just friends up until she filed for divorce and left her husband which she did after being fired from her job because of him starting rumors over jealousy.
My aunt was fortunate in that her mom and the rest of the family accepted it without many questions. My mom told me that she was always the tomboy growing up, she played with the guys, ran with the guys, fought the guys, etc., so it wasn’t really a big surprise to her. That was the first time someone I loved and admired changed so drastically in my life and I was young so it had to grow on me. At first I thought it was so wrong to just decide one day you’re gay when you have a young child that she was dragging through this life altering drama …with her.
Eventually I asked her how she could just decide she was gay one day after all the years living as a heterosexual and she told me she was attracted to woman as far back as she could remember but that it wasn’t socially acceptable so she tried to run from it and do what she was expected to do as a woman…marry and have a child, but that not even that could change her attraction and desire of the same sex. Once I realized that she had always been attracted to the same sex but just lived in an era that didn’t accept gays what so ever and where you had to worry about bad things happening to you when exposed as being gay, I kind of understood why she lived a lie for all those years. From the day she left her husband and still today she lives as a woman who is attracted to only woman. She’s even had some bad relationships with woman over the years and she still only searches for another woman. I think she’s relieved that after all those years of living what felt like a lie that she could finally be honest with herself along with everyone else and become the person she always knew she was.
