Yardwork

I don’t talk a lot about my coming out anymore because it was a crappy time in my life and because it’s complicated. The people involved are very loved by me. I have no desire to publicly thrash them, nor do I wish to defend them against the “I would never do that to my family!” indignance that invariably comes. The situation looks very different depending on who’s eyes you’re looking through. As I said, it’s complicated. The abbreviated version is that my relationship with Melissa came at the price of my entire family and the vast majority of my friends. We moved to Portland sight unseen, knowing no one. It was just us. We eventually got engaged and married. My family was invited, but no one came. Things did not begin to change until Bean was almost two, at which point Melissa and I had been together for six years. We will celebrate our 16th anniversary this fall and our relationships with friends and family look very different than those first few years.

Here’s the thing about being the only one standing in a room full of sitters – you question yourself. Am I in the wrong? Is this worth the cost? Why am I truly happy here? Am I good enough as I am, even if the people I trust most believe I’m not? These are hard questions. I was a good student, a rule follower, a teenage missionary. Nobody expected this from me – not being gay but my willingness to live in open defiance of familial expectations. It wasn’t something I’d done before and no one knew how to handle it, especially me. I put distance between myself and anyone who hadn’t spoken against me for fear that it would be coming. I wore the rejection of my brother, my aunt, my parents like a cloak. It was something I talked about in every new friendship I made. It consumed me because I allowed it to do so. But in the midst of my grief and my anger, I found the bedrock layer of my soul. Nights are long when there’s nothing to do but think and you quickly come face to face with who you really are.

Those years were awful, but they were really good for me in unexpected ways. Lots and lots of therapy, man. I got on a first name basis with my flaws and the flaws of the person I married. I figured out my core values and who I wanted to be as a human being. I decided what was and was not a hill to die on from a relational standpoint. I discovered the core of my marriage was built on honesty and empathy and decided that it didn’t matter who else saw it or what they believed. I realized that the only person who gets to approve or disapprove of my life is me. These are all really big deal lessons. I know plenty of adults who’ve not figured them out yet.

I have always likened relationships to yardwork. Pruning, weeding, grafting, new growth: there are endless metaphors. And, like yardwork, certain things are only done in specific seasons. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a huge birch tree in their back yard that I loved. I would eat lunch underneath it or peel the papery bark and write secret messages on the shavings. The tree got a disease at some point. It looked fine one year and the following spring it just… died. My Papa told me that the tree had some sort of infection inside that grew unseen until the tree wasn’t able to recover. They cut down the beautiful birch tree and planted something new where it had stood.

This is where I’m at in a couple of relationships in my life right now. Grief is a season which removes the topsoil from your garden. The ground is rocky and pitted and it’s damn near impossible for new life to flourish. Even well-established growth needs nutrients that are suddenly unavailable. I thought the tree was healthy and fine, then it suddenly wasn’t. In reality, there are probably years of infection which have been nibbling unnoticed at the heartwood. I should have noticed, but I didn’t. It should have been addressed before it ate through something beautiful, but it wasn’t. And now I’m standing here gazing at something I cherish, wondering if it can be saved or if we’re just too far gone to recover. I don’t know the answer, so all I can do is return to my own bedrock truths. I have to hold on to what I know instead of focusing on things I cannot control.

I know who I am. I know who I married. I know this relationship is true and real and foundational in my life. I know that perceptions are individualized and shaped by our own life experiences. I know that I don’t own anyone else’s perceptions any more than I can force anyone to take responsibility for their choices. I know every human alive has flaws but is still worthy of love and respect.

Yardwork is exhausting.