Secrets

After my initial relief wore off that Kelly and I were “over,” I felt both raw and guarded. My admission to her had laid me out, exposed my darkest secret, my deepest vulnerability — that I was attracted to her in all the ways, emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually. I was determined to not let this happen again. I was not going to put myself in this kind of position ever again. I was not gay. 

I tabled my feelings for women. I pushed my thoughts about women, my attractions toward women, and my sexuality down deep. I was scared to make new friends with women for fear I would develop feelings for them. I became hard, even cynical. My interactions with people were guarded. I put up a wall so high and thick nothing could penetrate.

Nothing in. Nothing out.

I could not see two feet beyond my own pain and my own shame. The loneliness I felt then was suffocating. 

My secret muffled me, dampened me, tamped me down, made me less than. What I did not realize was that in the process of shutting a big part of myself off, compartmentalizing myself and hiding my sexuality, I was not only lessening myself, but I was becoming stingier with myself, more selfish, more closed off. 

I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping my secret a secret and stuffing down my feelings. I could not act on my same-sex attractions. And I felt too ashamed to talk about them. I did not want to burden my parents or anyone else with this information, because I was never going to act on these feelings so there was no point in talking about it. 

This strategy proved problematic. For one thing, I felt more and more like a fraud. People assume you are one thing. “You got a fella?” (I am from Kansas). “You dating anyone?” “How are you not married yet?” And you let them assume the thing. Lying by omission, only letting people see certain specific parts of you. Sometimes I outright lied to hide my secret. Someone would ask if I was interested in anyone, and because I was never dating anyone, I would feel embarrassed, like they were going to figure it out, so I would make up someone I was interested in. Yuck. All yuck. 

The other problem was that by forcing the secret to stay a secret, it became much more inflated than it needed to be. My secret was blown up so big in my mind that it eventually impacted every part of my life. It was like an invasive vine on a trellis…it is beautiful until it starts crawling onto the sides of your house and inching its way underneath, taking over every surface it can find and eventually causing structural damage.

My secret wrapped itself around my heart and covered every inch of it, causing damage to my foundation.

My core was cracking. Who was I? How could God do this to me? How could I be gay and a Christian? 

Funny how it works. The more I pushed down my secret, the more it embedded into the core of me. The secret overtook everything. I was a woman attracted to women. I was gay. I was a lesbian. That’s ALL I was. I could only see myself in relation to my secret. My identity became rooted in my secret shame, the fact that not only was I attracted to women but I was ashamed of it. I have never felt so insecure, so lacking in self-confidence in my entire life. 

I was the exact opposite of open-hearted. I was shriveling up…not growing, not flourishing, not thinking of anyone but myself. 

Eventually the secret far outpaced reality.

I believed it would destroy everything if it ever saw the light. There was no way I was ever telling. I mean this was epic scorched-earth shit. Nope. Not telling. Ever. No Way. No How. Just No.