Sickos

I’ve never celebrated Pride. As I type this, I know that I never will.

There’s a bravery to proclaiming your identity in any way, whether it’s as big as announcing to the world that you’re a member of the queer community, or daring to wear that neon orange trench coat that mocks you with snickers of ”traffic cone” each time you try it on. That coat never makes it past the bedroom door, living in the back of the closet month after month.

If I were ever going to claim that hidden piece of me, it would have been when I was living in San Francisco. The move wasn’t motivated by pride, or lack of it, but by work. I’d always envisioned a life in California, but when I finally had one, I faultered. Fresh out of a pandemic and lacking strong social motivation to begin with, I lived a mostly quiet existence centered around my job. It’s easy to get lost in a city, even when you make an effort to carve out your place. I was as lonely and voiceless there as I’d ever been.

”What’s with all the rainbows?” I hear my dad ask from behind. At this point, they know the way back to my hospital room, yet I walk ahead as the leader. Maybe it’s more to do with winding through the small crowd in the lobby or my dad’s bad knees.

My mom answers, “It’s for pride.”

”Sickos.”

It comes out as a sneer, one that didn’t need to be said, just like so many of the comments my parents habitually don’t filter. Earlier, it was that I don’t get up before 8 in the morning, that the shirts in my closet are ugly, that they have no issues keeping up with the litter that my cats track. I try to let their age be an excuse, yet can’t remember them having ever been different.

I hope no one heard that. A pang hits my chest, burns hot through my body. Maybe fear, maybe guilt. I say nothing, just walk a little faster.

Back in my room, they’re packing to leave, and I think over the afternoon to how many times I wanted to snap, to cut the visit short. I didn’t, of course, because surviving in this dynamic means taking the jabs and quietly tending my wounds behind closed doors. At 32, I hate that I still rely on them, but in my present state, I have no choice. It’s not that I haven’t tried to break the cycle before now, by distance or deception or flat out pleading. Somehow, we always end up back here.

”Okay, Grandpa will be here on Monday or Tuesday. I’m not sure what day we’ll be back.”

”Are we taking this bag?”

”Yes. Do you want any of the salad? We can leave the noodles. Is that too much?”

”I won’t eat the salad. There isn’t enough room for it in the fridge, and I don’t think I’ll eat it before it goes bad.”

”But it’s so good for you! You eat salads here. I’ll make some room.”

The three of us talk in a round as things are gathered and pleasantries are exchanged from across the room. They call “love you” as the door closes and I whisper back, ”love you, too.”

I’m left unsettled.

I sit on my bed and run through all the exchanges, wonder how my cats are really doing under their care. Rupert’s been sick for such a long time now, weeks before I was admitted, and it’s not easy to care for him under the best of circumstances. My parents aren’t patient people. I stare at the picture hanging across the room of Rupert napping on my stomach. He’d been in so much pain that day and needed my comfort, which I gave long after my legs had fallen asleep from holding position. I wonder if he knew there was a baby growing in there.

He had been planned, the baby, back when his dad and I were in a better place. I have a picture of the moment we made the decision, the only two left on the dance floor at the end of my cousin’s wedding. Then, it had felt so right, we were so in love. I’d always wanted to be a mother, and this was my chance.

He wasn’t a bad guy, my ex. We got hit with a perfect storm of stressors when we found out we were expecting- money troubles, an endless home renovation project, poor communication, pregnancy complications from day one. I’d been living back with my parents when my water broke at 22 weeks gestation, the first emergency room visit that he had met me at. In those first 5 months, I’d been 6 times.

As scary as it’s been, this time in the hospital has forced us back together for the sake of our son. We’ve been back tracking our relationship to see where we went wrong, but the farther back we go, the less I’m sure we were ever right. He often brings up differences from our first months of dating, differences I was sure were in the past for good. The way I moved in too soon when I came home from California- he insists I manipulated my way in, but I remember asking repeatedly, “Are you sure?” He brings up how often I would talk about my past relationships when he had asked me to stop. It wasn’t for lack of trying to change, I tell him. It just took time to make that adjustment. By comparison, he says, he stopped saying “fag” relatively quickly, though not before I got visibly upset during a game night.

”You know, I like girls,” I had told him. I’m not sure I’d really voiced that to anyone before. “It’s not even that the word is offensive, it’s that… are you that closed minded? What about my friends who are gay? How can you be so hateful?”

“I’m not hateful. I don’t have any hate in my body. I‘ve had friends who are gay, too. Just because I don’t agree with their lifestyle doesn’t mean I’m going to treat them any differently.”

I’d brushed it off sooner than I should have. What was one red flag when there were so many that were green or only yellow? This was Maine, after all, Maine in a post-Trump, and I suppose pre-Trump, climate. In a post-covid, post-radicalized world where people like my parents had been isolated and fallen down a rabbit hole of research and religion online. Only a few months ago, my mom had commented that a family friend had posted about getting a promotion at work; my dad, with the same venom as always, had replied, “Good for that faggot.”

At the time, it had shocked me, but looking back over the trail I’d ignored for years… should it have? Pride has been so overshadowed by rainbows and leather and barely-there ensembles, nothing that appeals to my identity, sexually or otherwise, but have I not claimed that side of myself from fear of rejection by what could be my community, or fear of rejection from my current community? Isn’t the point that it’s not what’s on the outside, but the inside, and speaking that bravely to the world not without fear, but in spite of it? In some ways, could it even be fear of acceptance that has held me back from taking that neon coat out of the closet?

Now, as I prepare to become a mother, these questions have started to change for me as I see the world and people around me shift in a direction that I never would have anticipated, yet if I take the time to backtrack, the trail is right there. I stayed quiet, and while one voice might not make change on its own, how many others sat in silence with me? Sat in inaction? I may not have attended Pride for myself, but I know if my son asks me to, I would.