regrets
20 Feb 2010
I tried to post some forest pictures for Ashley, but couldn’t figure out how, yet!
I was thinking, this very day, about regrets. Most of my life has been repressive, and I’ve made life altering decisions based on circumstance. Some of my youthful selfishness left my boys in the wake. I regret ever making decisions that hurt people. Especially my boys. I really like the way things turned out, in spite of my many mistakes, so those are regrets that are hard to pinpoint.
There are specific regrets that I think about often and I would like to share one. I lived with, and took care of my grandmother for a year and a few months before she died. This is the only person in my life that I stayed in the closet for. She had a son that died in a car accident when he was very young and I became his replacement. She was not equiped to handle the truth. We had one of those relationships where you do things for each other that show you care, rather than talking to each other about your feelings. Anyway, while I was taking care of her, an ex partner died of AIDS. I don’t know why I even shared that with her. Of course, I just told her it was just a friend and she said, “well don’t you think he probably deserved it.” I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was loud and included the F word. From that piont our relationship changed. She asked her nurse if she thought that I was gay and the nurse said, “of course”. We hardly talked from that point until she died, soon after. I think about this often.
It feels good to share. Any regrets?
17 Responses
2010 Feb 24
Dear Sweet Paul, this breaks my heart, it also makes me very angry! I really believe that more people would be less homophobic and less racist if they were not involved in a religion. Christianity has a lot to answer for.
2010 Feb 24
I can’t believe I missed this when you first posted it – I need to sign up for the rss feed. And please, call me and I’ll talk you through posting pictures
Paul, I’m so sorry to hear about this. It’s just so heartbreaking – and angering. Yes, Grandma was from another generation but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear those kinds of things.
I try not to live in regret – instead choosing to look at each situation as a learning experience, recognizing I did the best I could at the time with the information and support I had. I find myself most content when I can stay in that space.
But there are still regrets and wondering how events or relationships may have played out differently if I’d made different choices. Some are kind of silly – like Jr. High graduation.
I had told Brett Packard I’d go to graduation with him… I had expected a sort of newish boyfriend to ask, but he hadn’t yet – so I didn’t know how to say no. Well, when I got the expected invitation, I said yes – and told Brett I couldn’t go with him. Even though I attended with the school president and went to the country club party with the ‘in’ crowd, I have always regretted that and wished I’d gone with Brett.
I have a lot of parenting regrets… things I wish I’d said or done differently.
One of my biggest regrets is not leaving Mormonism LONG before I did – but I guess it took me til I was 40 to figure it all out and have the strength to face the fears that came with it.
Love you, Paul.
2010 Feb 24
Kathy, you hit it on the head for me. I’m reminded of an evening in the mid 90′s when my siblings and cousins and some parents were staying up late having spirited discussions about liberal and conservative views of women’s rights, racism, and homophobia. I have one cousin that though very active Mormon is very progressive in her thinking and even told her stake president that she thought women should have the priesthood even though she knew she was risking being exed. I brought up that Spencer Kimball said he had a revelation in the 70′s from God telling him that he could extend the priesthood to “our black brethren”. I asked the group…”Do you really think God changed his mind!!!! That yesterday it was a no and today it’s a yes for blacks to have the priesthood???
My dad, who was always very soft-spoken and hardly ever offered an opinion inexplicably spoke up and said…”Well, the negroes were just out of the jungle. They were not ready for the priesthood.”
There was stunned silence from all for a bit and then I got up and said I can’t believe you just said that Dad and left.
Like you said Kathy – Christianity has a lot to answer for…my dad’s parents and religion taught him to be a racist, a sexist, and eletist, and a homophobe. AND HE WAS A VERY GOOD MAN! It makes me crazy.
2010 Feb 24
That must have been so discouraging and disheartening, to have someone you’ve loved and shared a special relationship with hurt you with an unjustified and callous attitude. My husband Craig had a similar experience with his mother a few years back – different topic, but similar attitude. It was almost shocking. Sometimes people are just clueless. I like to assume they are just misinformed, naive, or following the crowd, rather than malicious, but still, such callous attitudes can be hard to take, I think. I hope I am not unwittingly demonstrating a similar behavior, somehow, somewhere with someone.
Regrets? A ton. But many of the things I wish I had done differently I realize now I just wasn’t in a position to do so. Not equipped with the necessary tools and skills (or education/upbringing/options) to have made a different choice. Sometimes I look back and think “what in the WORLD were you THINKING?” but the truth is, most of us just do the best we can with what we have to work with at the time. So I try to forgive myself for my stupidity and let it go.
2010 Feb 24
Paul, thank you for sharing such a personal story about your grandmother and your relationship with her.
I like Allison have many regrets on things I said or didn’t say to my children during their formative years. I have rationalized the fact that I was a single mother for 10 years for a lot of my mistakes, but really I just plain messed up.
I regret not finishing college.
I regret getting married at 22.
I regret not leaving the Mormon cult sooner.
Some of my biggest regrets are those moments when I didn’t speak up for something I believed in for the sake of not upsetting someone. I’m working on that one.
2010 Feb 25
Hi Paul,
Like the others I have tons of regrets. Everyone does. The story of your grandmother brings back memories of things said to me. I am positive my mother knew I was gay. And because she had been taught by the church people that made up our subculture (not to mention the larger culture in the US), that being gay is a choice, well… she would make comments like, “I can overlook and forgive anything any of my sons do, but if one of them ever said he was gay I couldn’t accept that.” Years later, after I came out and mentioned to others how devastating that was to me, they would say that she only made the comment to ‘encourage me to make the right choice,’ because she knew how much I loved her and wanted to please her.
Still it caused a vulnerability in me that has never quite left me.
The lady I cared for until she died at 102 was very progressive for the timeframe she lived in. She never married because she said she’d ‘be damned to be the property of a man, which is what a wife was in those days.’ She accepted my being gay without question and said the country ‘was coming around’ on it. Well, one day I playfully asked her if she wasn’t really a lesbian, and she said, ‘No, I’m normal.’ Now she did not mean to hurt me, but if being normal equates to heterosexual in her mind, then what is abnormal? I soon learned she wasn’t as progressive as I thought when one day she saw a woman driving a truck and had a fit. Women were to drive cars, and trucks were for men. “She’s just showing off,” said said disdainfully.
When I first moved back to Idaho, I had a job in a nursing home as a nurses aid. And my brother asked me if I had to clean the old ladies ‘down there.’ I told him yes I did, why? And he said, ‘No offense Rob, but maybe it will do you some good.’
Like so many who are gay, I endured these comments without speaking up or saying anything. But they also made me angry. And I’ve always blamed religion for it.
2010 Feb 26
“Maybe it will do you some good”? What the heck does that mean? What a bizarre comment… Why are people so clueless?
2010 Feb 27
LOL… I think he felt if I was exposed to the female anatomy I would suddenly find a desire for it… It’s amazing what dumb statements otherwise intelligent people will come up with when they are trying to accomodate a religious prejudice….
2010 Feb 27
BTW, for far too long that was the idea most Mormon leaders had, and so they counseled most gay men (me included) to ‘just get married.’ My stake president said that sex with a woman was so great that after experiencing it I’d never desire a male again.
A lot of broken homes on account of the Mormons and others who used this counsel.
2010 Feb 27
One very broken and hurt X wife and two boys later…. less than ten years ago I know they were still giving that advice. I had a client come to me and ask if i could share my experience with her nephew who was just home from a mission. He knew he was gay but was being told by his bishop that he would get over it if he got married. I spent hours with him, counceling him and shareing. It was difficult and exhausting. He ended up getting married to another poor unsuspecting woman whos dreams would eventually be crushed.
2010 Feb 27
While I was on my mission in 1979 in Italy I faced the fact that God was not going to make me straight no matter how much prayer or tracting. So I told my mission president that I was gay and did not know what to do. Like your experience Robert, his sage advice was similiar – word for word he said…”You need to go home and find a woman that will turn you on for eternity”
I couldn’t find one.
Luckily, Paul has stepped up to the plate – not sure if it’s for eternity, but who’s counting.
2010 Mar 02
I’m curious, Paul, is your regret that you never told your grandmother you were gay? Or that you reacted the way that you did to her appalling comment?
Thank you for sharing. It has made me realize how glad I am that I came out to my own grandmother several years ago, when I was still a teenager. Even though it changed our relationship forever–we are not close like we were when I was a kid, and she still treats me like I’m afflicted with some mental disease–it was worth it.
I often wonder what it would be like had I been able to know my other grandmother, Craig’s mom. I think it would have been a very different situation.
2010 Mar 02
Hi Josh, What a good question. My grandmother was a frail woman who had been kicked to the curb by life over and over. Everybody in the family tried to protect her. In actuality, she was probably a lot stronger than anyone thought, but I was her golden boy. To answer your question, I most regret that I raised my voice and swore. I think in time, she could have gotten used to me being gay. There was just no time.
2010 Mar 02
Hiya Josh, wow – what a great thought! I never realized what a fantastic grandma my mom would have been to a gay grandson. As your mother can attest – my mother treated my partner at the time, Scott, 100% equal to all other spouses of her children. In fact, in some ways they were closer. While I would be downstairs watching a BYU ball game with Dad and my siblings, Scott was upstairs helping my mom with her flash cards/crib notes as she studied for her return to nursing. At your parents wedding in your other grandparents backyard Wanza (mom) was ordering Scott around like he was one of her own.
She was one of a kind and way ahead of her time for her Mormon upbringing when it came to acceptance. She would have LOVED to know you.
2010 Mar 18
This makes me really sad. Thank you for sharing. (You and everyone else who has commented.) I honestly can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be gay and grow up fully immersed in the mormon culture. I’m so glad I was raised by my mother (btw, Mom- you shouldn’t have any regrets with parenting. I think you did a perfect job), who taught me that it wasn’t a choice to be gay, it’s not something that can or needs to be “cured”, and it wasn’t wrong like the church (and much of society) says it is.
Justin didn’t grow up with a liberal mother, unfortunately (lol), so he has always had a bit of a different view on this topic. But we now have a very sweet lesbian couple living next door to us, and they have had a big impact on how he views homosexuality. Thank God for neighborhoods like Sugarhouse.
As far as regrets… I don’t really have anything MAJOR that I can pinpoint and say that I wish I had done it differently. Although I think that getting married at 19 was just asinine, but I can’t say I regret it, because I have a great husband and a beautiful daughter. Of course I have minor regrets, or “what if’s”, but I try to live more in the moment, and it tends to keep me happy.
2010 Mar 18
Sugarhouse is awesome. The last place we lived in Utah was Sugarhouse, sort of. We very much enjoyed the neighborhood, because the people who weren’t gay were old and unaware. We sometimes miss it.
2010 Mar 22
I have to post in agreement about Sugarhouse. It was the last place I lived while I was in SLC, and it was by far my favorite. It helped me greatly to walk around and see the rainbow flag every 3rd house or so, and to have the Utah AIDS foundation one block away – where I volunteered so I would feel like I was contributing to my community. I also liked the college town atmosphere there. Westminster college was only 2 blocks away, and I loved the time I took classes there. Little shops and restaurants… it was a part of SLC that would surprise many. I very much enjoyed that part of town. The house I lived in was very old and big… I had one of the basement apartments. And everyone in that house was quite open minded and down to earth. We planted a garden in the yard, and hung out together alot. The people upstairs were young Germans who brewed their own beer I remember..and ended up becoming our landlords when they bought the place.
The gal I worked with who lived on the main floor read tarot cards as well, and they were all into that.