“I hate my disgusting d*ke daughter”

It was a summer evening like any other, well, to me. Growing up in the environment I’ve been outspoken about, yet still gaslit into thinking it was all my fault, anything could be normal.

My mom finally uttered the words

I’ve waited my entire life to hear: that she hated me and she never wanted me to be born.

It was comforting, in a way. I knew that was how she felt from the time I was five years old, and she stopped showing up to pick me up from school, to my orchestra concerts, and my cheer games. I could feel it in my bones- although I was a miracle baby, I wasn’t her miracle. I was the bane of her existence after I grew out of diapers and the cute baby phase, specifically where I couldn’t talk.

I begged her to admit it when I was a teenager- that she had a drinking problem and that she hated me. My dad denied both forever, attempting to save his marriage, but I knew the truth. I wasn’t liked by her, I’d never really been loved by her, and someone like her is genuinely only capable of loving herself.

I had my line of reasoning perfectly organized and curated for years. If she loved me, she wouldn’t have pinned me against the wall when I was eight. She would’ve went to my events, and she would’ve gotten me flowers when every other child got them. She wouldn’t have isolated me from my family on both sides. She wouldn’t have locked me in closets because I “exhausted her”.

She would’ve stopped drinking and smoking and doing pills because I wanted her to. Not just because I wanted her to, but because I was bullied in elementary school for always smelling like cigarettes. The moms on my cheer team were worried about me, but nothing quite happened. There were five CPS cases filed against her because other people were worried about me, but nothing quite happened. I got migraines from the stress and smoke, but nothing quite happened.

I remember uttering that I’d have to drop dead for anything to change. For her to want to be better. I couldn’t just say my feelings, I’d have to be in a white monotone hospital room, but specifically one where I wouldn’t wake up. That was the only state she could’ve loved me in, silent and helpless, because it made her feel like a savior.

So when my mom told me she hated me yesterday, I laughed. I cried a little, but out of relief. My dad didn’t know what to say, but when I told him it made me feel better, he just hugged me.

When she said she regretted having a lesbian daughter, my whole body froze.

She’d never said anything about me being gay before, because I thought she didn’t care. She said she didn’t care. She’d mess up and say that I’ll have a husband and children, but I didn’t mind. She said she didn’t care and loved me regardless, but somehow I believed that knowing she never really loved me.

It just continued. She’d found a new way to hurt me, after a few years of believing I’d heard every insult she could throw at me. She’d come up with a few more, citing breakups and friends I’ve lost, taking their sides because “no one could ever love me” but I never cared because I knew she didn’t know what she was talking about. It was incoherent and drunk, and an obvious attempt to hurt me when she didn’t know the full story, or any of it for that matter.

“I hate my disgusting d*ke daughter. I regret having her.”

The words sent me to the floor. Somehow, the first time I was called a slur, and not as a joke from fellow gay friends, was from my mother.

I thought of every weird incident of homophobia I’ve experienced in the last year. The dirty looks, the “Sam’s gay?” whispers from people I barely knew, the friends who drifted out of my life and wouldn’t hug me or hang out with me alone anymore. But this was different, it confirmed something I theorized, but didn’t quite know. My Christian mother never wanted me, which was fine, but she specifically didn’t want a gay daughter.

It was a new feeling for me, a new kind of hurt. My heart aches a little every time I think about it, but not because it was her. It reminds me how different my life is because I decided to come to terms with my sexuality. It was my biggest fear when coming out, I didn’t want my entire life to change. I was a cheer captain, I’m in a sorority, I didn’t fit the stereotype of someone who would be gay, but I was.

It changed the way my southern family viewed me. I could tell by the way they asked if I had a girlfriend, and looked slightly nauseous every time, mortified I couldn’t carry on the family name, as if a man would’ve.  It changed how my friends viewed me, either as an experiment or with fear I’d be attracted to them, as if attraction is predatory and they’d be prey, or as if they hadn’t been my friends for years. I was the “gay” girl in my sorority, the “gay” friend, and that was my biggest fear, but I tried to ignore it.

The only person who genuinely didn’t react was my dad. Other than the fact that he kind of knew, he was one of the only people who loved me enough to just want me happy.

My best friend was amazing about it as well. She still let me sleep over, she treated me the exact same. I have a handful of other friends who reacted the same way Vaida did, and in violent defense of the little homophobic microaggressions I’d experience in my first year out. People who had the same reaction when my mom called me her disgusting d*ke daughter.

Although I like to end these with some kind of silver lining, resource booklet, or any kind of closure, I don’t know how.

Your lesbian (apparently derogatory) blog author,

Sam