There have been a heartbreaking series of posts over on DailyKos about a young man who was outed by a school prankster, expelled by the school and thrown out by his parents last Wednesday (update 1, update 2, update 3). He has found refuge with his aunt, who visited her sister today to return the family car and pick up her nephew’s things. When she arrived the majority of the nephew’s things were gone.
In the bag for my nephew was a Bible, a couple of Christian CD’s, his birth certificate, passport, and a Christian devotional book. I had to act shocked that she would give his possessions away. She assured me that her son could not be “awarded” for his behavior by being allowed to simply pick up his possessions.
She goes on to describe the rest of the visit, including a lecture from the counselor that was there.
After just a few moments of listening to the counselor talk, I felt like I was watching the T.V. show Intervention. (It’s a show about addicts and interventions to save them from their addictions.) The family was told that they had to let my oldest nephew know what he was losing by being homosexual. The consensus was that he loses all contact with his family, financial support, and emotional support. Things would remain that way until he sought help and overcame this “sin”.
It is to her credit that she is there for her nephew. He has somewhere safe to go, a place that will take him in, love him and accept him for who he is. He has a place to live and help finishing high school and going to college. He is one of the lucky ones. Not all teens in strict religious households have someplace to go when they don’t fit.
The family dynamic is all too familiar. Love is conditional. If you step out of line you will be punished. Deviation is not acceptable. Not while you live under this roof!
A lot of my early 20s was spent growing beyond that and learning to rely on only myself. Family would only help you if they approved of you and what you were doing. I am much happier and, curiously, my parents seem to still love me. I am not the daughter they wanted and I get very little flack for it. Some of that is boundary setting, though. I once didn’t speak to them for months while I was in grad school because they wanted something from me I wasn’t prepared to offer. I tried to compromise (how about we do this? does this solution work?). They wouldn’t accept any of the solutions that were acceptable to me so I broke off the relationship for a while.
I … am sure there is something profound to write about how Cam came into my life and I learned that love wasn’t conditional. It’s been a journey, but I do believe that, finally.