pointednorth:

If you’ve followed me for a while then you know that my blog isn’t made up entirely of drivel, but that I like to pause every once in a while to tell you a little bit about what it’s been like being me. I was born on a dairy farm in Paris, Tennessee in 1987 with an insurance agent, soon to be Southern Baptist Pastor, as a father and a 19 year old mother who worked as a part time Avon saleswoman and Sunday School teacher in the same town they both grew up in. My mother and father worked during my entire childhood and I was usually pawned off on one of my grandmothers for a week at a time. I became extremely close to my mom’s mother, Mommo, and would have rather spent time with her than with anyone else in the world. I’ve watched her kill a chicken with her bare hands, birth a calf the size of a grown dog, race four-wheelers and chop logs for the fireplace so we wouldn’t get cold in the winter. There was nothing my Mommo couldn’t do. I would later be told by my mother in father that there happened to be one thing that would be impossible for my grandmother to do, and that was to love her gay grandson. They told me that it would kill her and that telling her would be the most selfish thing in the world on my part. I kept being raped from her. I kept the real reasons for breaking up with girlfriends during high school and college concealed from her. I kept my relationship with my now fiance hidden from her - and all to protect her. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I was the one to off my grandmother with the words ”I’m gay.” I went home to the United States for the first time in a year and a half to spend Christmas and New Years with my family and friends and I spent ample time with Mommo. One day, when we were watching a western in her home and eating peanuts, I leaned over to her and took her hand. She finished her Diet Coke, paused the western and looked at me with confusion in her eyes. ”There’s something I want to tell you, Mommo. Do you love me? Will you always love me?” ”Well yes, honey. There ain’t nothing you could ever do to make me not love ya.” ”I’m gay, Mommo.” She started crying. ”But that’s wrong, honey. You know the bible says so. It’s such a dangerous life to choose’ ”I know Mommo, but I want to ask you a question: When did you choose to like men?” She wiped her eyes and you could see the gears turning. ”Well, I don’t guess I ever did.” ”It’s the same with me, Mommo. It wasn’t any more a choice for me to be gay than it was for you to fall in love with Grandpa. Being this way, for me, is as natural and normal as being straight is for you.” ”…I guess I never thought about it that way.” ”I wanted to tell you myself, Mommo. I didn’t want you to find out from someone else. I wanted to be myself around you. I wanted you to know who your grandson is. I wanted you to know that I’m happy, healthy and a good person. I wanted to tell you sooner, but Mom and Dad said it would kill you.” ”I think I’m stronger than that, Scott. I gave birth to four kids on this farm - I think I can handle almost anything.” ”Do you love me?” ”More than ever. I don’t understand this, but I know one thing. I wasn’t put on this earth to judge you - I was put here to love you, and that’s what i’m going to do.” We both started crying and holding each other and then she pressed play on that old western, and we didn’t talk about it again the entire time I was home. I’m not saying that you have to tell everyone in your life that you’re gay before you can be healthy and happy - God knows there are people in my life that aren’t ready to hear it yet. What I am saying is that you never know how someone will react upon hearing ”I’m gay” come from your mouth. If a backwoods, country, high-school graduate, often barefoot, not-so-politically-correct grandma from Tennessee can hold her queer grandson and say ”I love you” - then anyone can.