On a Life of Shame during Pride Month

I grew up in a household so closed off to the outside world that I didn't even realize I was in a closet until I was 25.

Before that, I don’t remember making quiet choices. When I was 7 or 8 years old, my favorite pair of jeans had velvet cheetah print inserts in the flare. It was the early 2000's, sure... but that is quite a fashion statement. I was a gymnast, a softball player, an artist. Those were the years before I was afraid and ashamed.

But at 9 years old, I was diagnosed with severe childhood idiopathic scoliosis. Not even my spine was straight. And it only took a few years for the daily pain to set in and I have lived with it every day since.

9-year-old me was dealing with a lot. Quitting gymnastics—which I loved so much, but had become co-opted by competition and winning. The scoliosis diagnosis. And the first subtle explorations of sexuality and desire. There are memories coming up from the deep recesses of my mind today that I have buried with dark shame attached to them—things that I am not prepared to discuss publicly still because of that shame. They were my earliest experiences with the concept of sexuality and desire. And they were decisively not straight.

I remember my younger self was angry, so incredibly angry, for a while. I had no ability to regulate it or understand it. So I took it out on my sister. And when the guilt of my raised fists and slaps towards my sister became too much, I started taking it out on myself.

I was hallucinating. Seeing large spiders crawl under porch steps, and shadowy men at the end of hallways. Always at the corner of my vision. Taunting me. I had nightmares of wolves chasing me and car chases ending in fiery crashes. The thoughts in my head would get so loud sometimes that I could barely breathe. The only solution I found was to sit on the floor in complete darkness until it passed or I numbed out enough that I couldn't hear them. Only for my family to find me some time later and call me a vampire.

It was 8 and 9-year-old me who learned to suppress her true self in the name of keeping the peace, status quo, stability, and safety. It was then that I learned that girlhood was a performance.

It would only be a few years later, at 13 and 14 years old, that my mother would be strapping me into my Boston brace to try and force my spine straight while I was having active panic attacks. But I had been having them for so long by that point that I knew how to keep the tears at bay. To control my ragged breaths.

By my teenage years, everything was buried, all suppressed. Covered up by my obsessive crushes over a handful of boys that dominated my teenage years. A desperate plea with the external world to be something close to normal. It’s hard to hold compassion for my teenage self. I was so confused and desperate to escape the pain and the pressure. There was a foundation laid there, amidst all the restrictions and suffocation of my family and community life, that led directly to the choices of my 20s.

If one were to read an external account of my 20’s, you’d likely think I had lost my mind. The choices I have made in the last decade are stories for another day. But they all culminated in a conversation with my parents in the back section of a Panera Bread. My partner at the time sitting next to me. And I came out to them as bisexual. A lie even then, as I wasn’t quite sure or comfortable enough in my identity as lesbian at that point.

I remember seeing the veiled shock on my mothers face. In the time since I have wondered if they have asked themselves “how could I not see it?”. I wonder how much my truth blindsided them.

It is only now that I consider that perhaps so much went unknown about me, not only because I was good at hiding, but also because no one is looking.

And here at Pride—my first ever—it seems silly, but I finally get why it's called Pride. My entire life has been buried under a pantomime of a person. A false self designed for my survival. I am proud of my survival and transformation in the past year. Even as I grieve the years and relationships lost to falsehoods and lies necessary for my survival.

Happy Pride, everyone.

With love,
Cayla