Inviting You in
Last month I wrote a pilot review of Pose, a show about Black & Latine LGBTQ+ members in the 1980s. The show is a personal favorite of mine because it represents people finding love and community in chosen family after being rejected by their biological family members. Growing up in the 2000s there weren’t many shows about LGBTQ+ characters, but Grey’s Anatomy had one LGBTQ+ storyline that I identified with. Dr. Callie Torres was the first bisexual woman I recall seeing on TV and her journey to self acceptance was crucial for my own development. Another aspect of her story that I identified with was her Christian family’s struggle to accept her for who she was. I always saw her mother’s inability to accept her as a blueprint for what my own story would be.
The journey of coming out is not an easy one, and because of the media’s focus on the stories where families disown their LGBTQ+ family members, I feared this process for years. Being in the closet made it so that I could not be honest about my wants for the future and kept me at a distance from my family. It is extremely difficult to be honest and loving to people you think would judge you for who you love. Because I was raised Christian and attended the church of Pastor Donnie McLurkin, I assumed I knew how my family would react. Pastor Donnie McLurkin has his own struggles accepting his sexuality, and has sadly spread his thinking to countless others.
Because of my religious upbringing, I denied who I was for a long time. I went through my early 20s forcing myself to be successful in areas I was not interested in out of fear of being houseless from lack of familial support. I graduated NYU’s Stern School of Business and became a Certified Public Accountant determined to be able to support myself because I “knew” I would come out as bisexual one day, and I couldn’t depend on anyone in my family to support me.
This level of pressure and fear that I felt because of my bisexuality was extremely unhealthy and caused me monumental anxiety. The ways I worked through my anxiety were with therapy, peer support groups, and volunteering with members of the LGBTQ+ community. By volunteering with the LGBTQ+ community I saw that a good life was possible, but I needed to be honest with myself and the people I loved.
A few months after helping organize the first Queer Liberation March in 2019 to honor the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, I came out as bisexual to my mother. I will never forget the four words she said to me in this conversation, “God made you perfect.” I think about those words quite often because they relieved me of so much suffering. When I came out to my mother, I was inviting her in to my life in a new way and choosing to let her know me better. Since coming out to my mom we have developed an even stronger relationship and I am eternally grateful for her.
When LGBTQ+ people share who we are with others, we are choosing to let people in despite the threat of ostracization and violence. Luckily, my story was very different from Dr. Callie on Grey’s Anatomy, and I learned a valuable lesson: never let anyone else’s story dictate what my story will be. Not every person in my life has responded as well as my mother did, but I want to be the type of person that gives people a chance to learn and grow.
I hope that sharing this story can help another person that is struggling with their sexuality realize who they are is perfect, while allowing cisgender and heterosexual people to understand what it means for us to share our truth. I understand the importance of telling full stories and I write in anticipation of the day when we can invite people into our lives without fearing their reaction. As a writer, I will always share my story and give people hope for a better world.
