Spencer Smith, Arkansas

I believe that I have always been gay, and it is everyone else who had to find. I knew that I was "different" from the other boys in my grade even before I was eight, and I first called myself "gay" in middle school. Of course it was a word that only I said to myself – a word that only I knew applied to me. It was a word that I would write in the margins notebooks and scribble them out later. To everyone else I was just the shy, awkward kid who talked about Pokémon in homeroom. And I was fine with that.

I was fine with it up until I went to college. Well, it wasn't so much that I was fine with it – that was just how I had decided it had to be for the time being. I had to maintain the status quo. But college was different; it was the predestined time in life that was supposed to be fertile ground for change. It was a fresh start for me; I was no longer limited by who I had always been or the perception of who I was supposed to be. It was time to be the person I had waited all my life to be.

So I picked an arbitrary date. July 23rd. That was the day I was going to come out, and heaven, nor hell, nor high water were going to stop me. It was not just me coming out just to anyone, it was me coming out to my parents – the people who had cared for me and loved me my entire life. And yet I had no idea how it was going to go. My family never talked about that kind of thing. About being gay. My extended family would ask me every holiday if I had a girlfriend, and I would say no – but I would say that I was trying (which I had absolutely no intention of doing). Then they would respond with some kind of quip and that would be that for an entire year. And to my knowledge, both then and now, there has never been another member of my family, alive or dead in any direction, who is gay. I am alone in this regard, but that is nothing terribly new to me. I have always been different. I’m the rainbow sheep of my family.

The day arrived sooner that it seemed possible; it had been over a year ago when had I set the date. I had already come out to other people, but no one like my parents. All of them were my friends and peers in college; they were people I had come to trust implicitly. They had all quickly accepted me, even though I surprised more than a few of them.

July the twenty-third was a very hot day, bright and clear without a cloud in the sky. The sun was just making its way past the tree line on the west side of the house, casting long shadows across the yard outside. Inside, I stood in the kitchen washing the dishes in the sink after dinner. Mom was sitting in a chair by the family dining table on the other side of the stove from me watching the hummingbirds zip down and around a feeder full of sugar water that hung above the deck.

When I had finished with the dishes, I walked over and stood by my mom in front of the glass door to the deck. It was very quiet in the room – it had been quiet in the entire house all day. It was as if there was a great silence that was just waiting to be breached. It was the disturbing noiselessness that fills a room just before a plate shifts out of place and falls, shattering on the floor. My mom turned and looked at me with her hands clasped in her lap.

“Is there something on your mind?” she asked.

           

I looked at her, and for a second I considered saying nothing at all, but I knew that I couldn’t. My mind was set; there would be no turning back.

           

“Mom, I’m gay.”

           

I had said the three words that I had been waiting my entire life to say. I had released my greatest secret into the world. I had no idea how my family would react or what would happen, but I could not take the burden of lying to myself and to the people around me anymore. I knew that in all likelihood there wasn’t going to be a fairy tale ending to my story, and I had at least tried to prepare for that – the possibility of being put out on my own. But there are things that no one can prepare for.

           

“What? Are you sure?” she said.

           

“Yeah, pretty much.”

           

There was a long pause between us as we looked at each other – all the color and emotion had drained from her face. She looked away first, taking in one shaking breath and letting it out. She shifted in her seat, turning towards the table a little more, and laid her arms across the surface holding her elbows. My mom slowly lowered her head into the crook of her arm. I could not see her face; I could only hear her hard, shallow breathing. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just put one hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. I don’t know how long we stood there like that, but eventually she lifted her head and looked at me.

           

“This is like someone calling me and telling me that my son is dead.”

           

There are a lot of things that I had prepared for, but that struck me like a stone. It cut through everything and smashed into my gut. Those words took the air right out of my lungs. If there was anything I could have responded to that with, there would have been no way for me to even verbalize it. But I didn’t even have time to recover.

           

“This – this, is like you decided to wake up and become a serial killer,” and after that she just cradled her head in her arms again and shook.

I fell into the seat next to her. I felt like everything had just been wiped out of me. Two short sentences. That was all she had to say to reduce me to a borderline catatonic state. I managed to recover a bit, and I tried to talk to her. I told her that I loved her, and I tried to comfort her. She told me I should become a monk and be celibate for the rest of my life. She told me that I was better off loving no one than falling in love with a man. She said that college had done this to me, and I should quit and come home. She said she was not crying for me, but the grandchildren she would never have.

           

I just told her that I loved her, that I always would, but I couldn’t change who I am.