Coming out, twice.

I sat in the passenger seat of my mom’s aging blue Aspen on my 16th birthday in the parking lot of a Baptist Church our family, or at least my mom, stepdad, and siblings started attending. I was wearing a wildly fashionable (at the time) Hollister ombre orange to a blue hoodie, which didn’t coincide with the unfortunately cold temperatures of late February. My mom and I were picking my siblings up from the church after-school care, they were sitting comfortably in the back seats. The car's momentum began on our journey back home. Except, in those fleeting moments, I turned to my mom, who was driving the car, and told her about my sexuality.

Michigan Medicine’s medical campus is wide and vast but is mostly contained to a section of land that cusps the edge of Central Campus. The Hill, which is a set of dormitories and a few buildings, is nestled near the hospital, where I had the fortunate privilege of watching the sunrise in the direction of the Children’s Hospital. Because I had no classes on Thursday, I scheduled most of my doctor’s appointments then, and with the convenience of the hospital being right in my backyard, I could enjoy a leisurely walk to my appointments if need be. This was my first in-person appointment since the beginning of the pandemic with my gastroenterologist, and as usual, I arrived early. I had brought a small black purse with me, as I did not want to be burdened with anything in my pocket. I entered the examination room. I exited by the new diagnosis. I did not have to walk up the treacherous hill back to my dorm, and my boyfriend picked me up in his car. I turned to him, who was idle in the pick-up lane and told him about my diagnosis.

My mom rarely accompanied me to my doctor appointments as I aged past 18. Therefore, telling my mom about my new diagnosis was done through a phone call, once I arrived home.

At first, there was love and support. But remember how the first of anything can be a misleading tale of the entire story, such as the first date, or the first test, this was the case with my mom, for whom I refer to in my writing as mostly mother.

Her first response in the car that day, on my birthday, was to communicate that she would always love and support me.

Her first response on the phone was, on my diagnosis day, ways to ask what she could do to help.

We often talk about the fight, flight, freeze, and dissociate, as methods of first response in high-stress situations, but what do we talk about when those high-stress situations are over and long-term stress situations settle in?

My mom’s tone for both stories changes quickly.

She noted that because of my age that my idea of sexuality would phase out to the conform to the heterosexual nature of “who I was”. I was experimenting with the deadly realm of sexuality, by which if I chose a certain path, I would be ‘dead’ to my mother. However, if irony was listening, it sure acted years later with my Crohn’s diagnosis. No, my Crohn’s disease is not killing me, but it creates a unique life-long journey of chronic illness, where your health is out of our hands. My mom denied my Crohn’s diagnosis, as a misguided tale of doctors’ greed. She could not fathom something that simply can’t ‘go’ away. She asked multiple times for a quick solution, where a pill or procedure would ease the pain of a lifetime of living with something that couldn’t be ‘cured’. In writing that previous sentence, I wonder whether it was meant for my sexuality or my Crohn’s disease.

Labeling my chronic illness as a disability almost went too far for my mother, but she listened hastily over the phone. I told her that it was not ‘going away’. Unfortunately, my sexuality outlasted my mom’s expiration date. My Crohn’s disease wasn’t the flu or a bad stomach ache.

Coming out, twice, is never easy. I learned from the first time to emphasize my humanity. There weren’t choices involved in my identities, only decisions to come out and speak my truth. Even so, my mother denied the weight I carried with me for embracing my identities.

I am extremely grateful for who I have surrounded myself with to support me in every facet of my life. However, nothing is more damaging to my lived experience than to have my own mother abandon her own child’s humanity for the convenience of believing those with ‘different’ identities are destined for dismal futures.

Yes, it is infuriating to live with these truths, but these are my truths. For my own well-being, I have chosen a path of dictating my life and allow my mom to follow at her leisure, but there is no sense in poking the lion. For if I poke the lion, what will I hear again, and then hear later on, that I have not heard before? Or perhaps, the response will change, but the other coping mechanisms don’t seem too favorable.

If that is the case, then I choose love.

If coming upon hard-lived experiences causes me to fight, flee, dissociate, or freeze, perhaps I have framed the situation all wrong. If lived experiences and identities are scary to approach coming from another perspective, then stress will ensue. However, I have done with what I have been given a monumental task of shifting my own narrative to never fear lived experiences but to love them like no other.

Tell me being who I am is scary because damn it feels good.