From time to time Kicked Out contributors will be blogging about their experiences related to being forced to leave home as a result of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. The following was written by Nat Roslin
Introspection occurs for me when things completely go wrong and I am forced to realise that I am once again sabotaging my happiness and that of those I love on a subconscious level. I never set out to do it and I never mean for it to happen, but it does. I find something happy and stable and wonderful and there is a part of me that thinks I don’t deserve it. Without it being on a conscious level I purposefully start to destroy everything I hold dear and that is an issue that I need to face. Today I’m being forced to realise that I’ve been on that path of sabotage more recently than I would ordinarily like to admit to myself. Looking inwards, I can see where it stems from and how I now need to step up to the plate, take a deep breath and push through it all if I want that happiness that I’ve always longed for.
Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday (21st Feb). That is the thought running through my head right now. I used to be so angry with her for dying. I felt that if she had lived, if she had been there when I came out, I wouldn’t have been kicked out of my home. She wouldn’t have let it happen. She wouldn’t have dared to let him treat me like that. No matter how he treated her. And yet the mere fact she’s no longer here has had me on more than one occasion questioning if she ‘left’ because of me. Then I remember something, something so easily forgotten when you’re bogged down with a myriad of conflicting emotions, despite all our differences and despite all the fights, one thing I always knew and to this day know unequivocally is that my mother loved me.
I look at the way things turned out and the way I lost a large part of my life and security the day she died and I cry. But most of all I cry for the fact I never got to share one of the biggest parts of my identity with her. It’s a gut wrenching, stomach churning, head spinning reality that to this day and probably for the rest of my life will feel like I’m being stabbed in the heart. I don’t blame her any more for being kicked out. I don’t blame her for leaving me without a real family connection. For the longest period of time I did. For the longest period of time I wanted to scream at her and tell her it was all her fault that her daughter has no connection other than biological with the man that raised her. But I can’t keep blaming a dead woman who didn’t have a choice in leaving behind her eldest child. That rage and blame is now placed at my father’s door. That’s where it should be placed. I’ve tried over the years to reconnect and the reality is he doesn’t want to. That’s not her fault and it isn’t mine.
Eight years on, which is what it almost is now, I’ve learned to accept the fact my mother is not coming back, as much as it hurts. And nearly five years after I was kicked out I can shake the feeling that it was because of her. I may not be as strong as I would like, I may not be the person I want to be and I may have made some huge mistakes along the way which have damaged my relationships with those I hold dearest because I feel like it will all come to an end one day and I can’t grasp the fact I have something so good in my life, but those were my mistakes to make. And now even if I want to lay the blame for them at the way I was screwed up by my past, today I have learned that the truth is that it is up to me to change.
Today is the day I start the journey to becoming a better me. To becoming the person I want to be. Today is the day I decide to take accountability and stop laying the blame elsewhere. Today I stop running and hiding. For so many of us that have been kicked out it feels emotionally safer to run and hide at times. We run and hide from the good and the bad, when things get too tough for us to handle we want to bury our heads in the sand because we can’t face that hurt again. Being disowned by those that we are meant to gain unconditional love from leaves a gaping wound that never truly heals and so we push away those that mean the most to us in a crazy perverse form of self-preservation. I have finally reached the stage where I will not run, even when it means facing the hardest and most difficult truths about myself. There comes a point when that pain, like that of a new tattoo being inked onto virgin flesh stings to the point you want to black out. But if I allow myself to black out I will never be able to move forward and heal the hurts I have created and show that I can rebuild even the most damaged relationship. I will learn to separate the past from the present and the way reality has shaped who I am and who I can become. But I will no longer let it be the be all and end all to the way things happen.
It’s time to say goodbye to my parents. To let my mother rest in peace and to accept that my dad too has been dead for a long time, even if my father still exists. If I can allow myself to mourn my loss, I can truly move forward and face the new day with a shining hope that may very well allow me to give the stability to my loved ones that I so crave myself.
- Nat Roslin