Maybe this is the typical ‘gay in a small town’ story, but it took me a long time to admit, even to myself, that I was something other than straight. I loved a boy with all my heart through high school, and dated a few guys briefly in college. But I had my first physical and emotional relationship with a woman starting in the second semester of my first year of college. I’m sure some people probably figured us out but neither of us talked to anyone else about our relationship, so for all intents and purposes I was still far in the closet until well into my third year. That suited me just fine because going to college in my hometown meant even nipping down to the grocery store involved bumping into people who had known me since I was a toddler, or went to my church, or worked with my Mom, etc. They all had expectations of who I was, and I worked very hard to live up to those.
I got a taste for what it was like to create my own sense of home and self during the semester I spent on a study exchange in Australia. Not only did I walk down the street in broad daylight holding my girlfriend’s hand (okay, not some streets), but I took classes that were wholly irrelevant to my chosen major and learned that I was actually very passionate about things I’d never really considered before. It was so empowering to be in a place where I didn’t have a previous context. I have no idea where or who I would be now if I hadn’t had that experience.
So I was ready to break free of my ‘old life’ when I finished my BSc – and that included everything: friends, family, the Midwest, even the USA. None of it could offer me the life I wanted for myself because in my head it represented all the expectations and psychological boundaries I had already torn down. I was ready to continue developing the ‘me’ I had created on the other side of the world.
I was 21 when I left. I’d obviously travelled abroad before, but always on a return ticket. This time was different, though. I was LEAVING to do an entire degree in Australia, and then...well I guess I’d have that part figured out when I got to it. Sitting at the airport with my worldly possessions rolled neatly into a very large backpack I watched as I broke my Mom’s heart. I was so ecstatic to be going and she was...well, she was very quiet. We sat next to each other and she held my hand but I don’t actually remember her saying anything. At the time I didn’t know we would have so many of these goodbyes ahead of us, but in the beginning it was so easy for me to choose to walk away.
My new life was everything I wanted it to be. I was studying something that I was incredibly passionate about. I lived 15 minutes away from the beach (and would often go there instead of class), so I was fit and tanned. I was getting a lot of interest from girls and had a growing network of creative and supportive friends, most of whom were queers and hippies. I thought none of this would have been possible for the ‘me’ that existed in Normal, Illinois, but looking back now, this ‘new life’ wasn’t far off from what I had in college in Illinois. The only difference was that my Illinois life was geographically confined - I would have to live up to all those dreaded expectations whenever I ventured off campus. In Australia I could wander the whole country, and did, and only ever had to be who I wanted me to be.
In the 1.5 years it took to complete my MSc I probably called home less than 10 times, and only when prompted by a pleading email. In fact, I just looked back at some emails from 2005 (2 years after I left). One, titled ‘Where are you?’, simply says “We are worried about you. Haven't heard from you in weeks. Grandma says that she is saving her money to come and find you (she asks every day if you have emailed).”
It’s not that I didn’t want to speak to my family...it’s just that I didn’t have much to say when I did because I was witholding a significant part of my life from those conversations. Phone calls would inevitably conclude the same things: work is steady; I’m doing well in school; the weather is fantastic; I need money. I didn’t talk at all about the friendships or relationships I was developing because I couldn’t edit those experiences well enough to ensure my Mom didn’t ‘figure it out’. Even though it was my choice to withhold that information, I resented them because of it.
If I could write myself a letter and post it back to 2003 I would beg myself to regularly invest the time to keep in touch with my family. Even though I wasn’t in a place to give away much of myself to them, they always gave me everything I needed and the silence they received in return was incredibly disrespectful. It’s ironic that the whole time I was hiding from them what I thought would tear us apart, they were showing me that their love was unconditional.
I finished my MSc in 2005 and symbolically burned every page of my dissertation in a bonfire in my backyard. It was so liberating and it truly felt like an important chapter in my life was concluding. Of course, I hadn’t figured out what I was doing next but I knew I didn’t want to go back to the USA. My only option would have been to move back in with my Mom and return to the ‘old me’ and I wouldn’t consider doing that even as a temporary measure. No, I wanted to keep the momentum going so I chose the only other ‘in’ I had, which was to move to Edinburgh, where some of my Australian friends had moved a few months earlier. Of course, the fact that the woman I had been seeing was there had something to do with that decision (I mentioned it was an ill-thought-out plan).
So as my Australian student visa expired, I started another new chapter in another new place on the other side of the world. To be fair, it was a bumpy transition and I spent a lot of time wondering what the hell I was doing here – it’s cold, it’s dark, the people are generally quite grumpy and it rains a lot most of the time. By June I had resigned myself to the fact that I would have to go ‘home’, but was dragging my heels on putting those wheels in motion. I figured I had until my UK visa expired in October to figure out my next move and I wanted to have fun in the meantime.
Then I was sidelined by a love that was so big it would completely knock me off course...
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