Three little words. Three little words have the power to change lives.
Almost thirty years ago, three little words changed two lives as “I love you” was spoken and a life together was born. Fast forward fifteen years and three children later and three different words changed five lives forever.
It’s the leadup to the annual Pride Parade in Toronto, and just like past years, I approach this time with a real mix of feelings. During this time each year, we read stories from around the world in the papers and heard others on TV about men (and women) who come out of the closet after marriage and children. Some countries and cultures are more accepting of this. We read about the successes some men have achieved – how they’ve remained close to their children and former spouses while developing a same sex relationship.
Stories like that make me happy for the families involved Everyone should be free to be explore sexuality and be with the people they want to be with. But not every story ends in a happy place. And mine is one of them.
I will never forget the day in 2005 when I heard those three little words: “Kath, I’m gay.” Once the searing pain of the knife through my heart dissipated, I began to understand the last few years of our marriage differently. With great clarity, the reasons for depression, work anxiety, drinking and a general dissatisfaction with life I was witnessing became blindingly obvious now that I had all the information.
Clearly, although he initially suggested otherwise, this meant the end of our marriage and I tried to be a big enough person to do so graciously as he moved on – and in — with his “soul mate”. All that remained was how to tell the children. At 5, 6, and 8, they didn’t need huge amounts of information, but they did need to know that Daddy was moving out, that he loved them, that he loved his soul mate (a man they already knew) in a different way from Mum, and that Mum was OK with all of this. In my stronger (naïve?) moments, I had visions of my kids having two intelligent men in their lives and of the three adults eventually getting to a point where we were more than just civil with each other.
So far it sounds like the stories we’ve read about. Unfortunately, that’s where the similarities end.
The drinking, which had become significant, but not incapacitating (I later learned the term “functioning alcoholic”) while we were married continued. The separation and divorce which should have given him the freedom to be who he really was, led to increased consumption. It was as if the guilt of leaving made him incapacitated and incapable of grabbing hold of a new life. At some point, I’m led to believe, alcohol was not the only drug of choice to dull his senses He began spitting vitriol at me regularly, flailing and lashing out at everyone in his life.
His instability led to embarrassing visits with the kids, less than safe ones and flat out missed visits. And all this because society was sufficiently closed to the idea of being gay, that their father couldn’t even admit it to himself.
Eventually, the man who once worked on Bay Street became a resident of the street. A series of detox and rehab stints didn’t help much, but it did at least get him into community housing.
Of course, through all of this, his relationship with the kids deteriorated. The eldest, who already had the first-child responsibility gene had to call me on more than one occasion for me to get them when their father was incapacitated. He was old enough to understand a little of what he was seeing and he’s still angry about it. My middle one, who has less tolerance than most for many things, seems to have put the relationship behind him and moved on. My youngest understood the least, but on one particular occasion was old enough to understand that the behaviour she was seeing her father exhibit in a public place was not just embarrassing, but inappropriate, is the most likely to pick up the phone one day, I think, and reestablish contact.
Why I persisted in allowing the visits as long as I did still haunts me. I thought I was doing the right thing in trying to ensure a relationship, but in retrospect I’m not sure. I soothe myself by saying that I was doing the best I knew how to, but we inevitably eventually reached a stage where they children wanted nothing to do with him. And it’s difficult to fault them for it, given what they experienced.
While I’ve done my best to remind them that they may want a relationship with their Dad one day and that they need to be open to that, in my heart, I know that day, if it comes, may be a very long time in the future.
I still hope, for my children’s sake – and for their father’s – that there may one day be a happy ending to their story and that they will join the ranks of good outcomes in some future Pride Week celebration. Plenty of people beat addictions and come back to live healthy and productive lives. Relationships can be mended, but it takes will on both sides.
But back to Pride Week. I do hope that as we celebrate the successes, as a society, and as communities within it, that we look hard at the places and the people for whom it isn’t a success, at least not yet, and do our best to support them. I hope that that teens and young adults struggling with their feelings find open adults and mentors to guide them through this so that they can become who they are meant to be and don’t waste years of their lives — or those of others.
But for me? Life goes on, and with a little good luck, a lot of hard work and perhaps a sprinkling of divine intervention, it’s been a good life these past almost 15 years. I have no complaints.
