A woman writes to Dan Savage:
So I am in a really bad place right now and maybe I just have to hear "buck up" and "it will get better."
I'm a 32-year-old lesbian who's been out for 10 years. I was raised in a very conservative Pentecostal family and I am the baby of my family of 15 kids. The day before my college graduation from Liberty University I came out to my family, as a way of explaining why I was not going to walk to get my diploma. The day before I just realized how crazy it was to be going to that school listening to those messages when I knew it was all wrong. I packed everything before telling my family that night—I wanted to make sure I had all my pictures and the bible my dad gave me for my 13th birthday—because I knew how it was going to end even though I, of course, tried to hold on to hope. My father slapped me that night and told me that I was no longer his child and I was no longer a child of God. I haven't seen my family for 10 years. I've always held out hope that they would change their minds and realize that they do love me.
I got a call from my oldest sister last month. I wasn't sure what she was going to tell me—had one of my parents died? was I going to be let back into the family?—and then she told me that she needed my help. Her son was gay and she needed me to come and get him. I didn't understand what she meant at first. I thought she wanted me to come and talk to him. But, no, she meant come and get him. She didn't want that "filth"—her own son—in her home. When I picked him up a large part of my family was there, and I swear to God I had never felt so much hate in my life. I don't understand it and I know I never will, but I swear it broke me.
He is here with me now and the family that I have made for myself over the years. In my little group he will get to meet every color of the rainbow flag. I will help him learn to love himself for who he is if it is the last thing I do in this world.
But I feel like I'm broken. I feel like everything I have made for myself over the last 10 years is nothing. How can my whole family not only not love me anymore but hate me with so much passion? I don't understand why this is affecting me so much. I already knew all of this. I've known it for a long time. But to see it on their faces was something new.
I need to know how to pick myself up. A 15-year-old boy is relying on me.
