A week after my husband came out to me, I was sitting alone in the Chang Mai airport. The pink glow slowly turned to sunrise over the mountains as I sipped a cup of black Thai coffee. My brain barely registered the beauty around me as I waited in the quiet terminal for my flight home. I had never felt so alone in my life. Not only was I physically alone, I was getting my first glimpse into the loneliness of the closet.

Austin decided to stay on for an extra week of counseling but I needed to get back to the boys. The week had done nothing to bring healing to my weary soul. Instead, I was returning home alone, lost in the deepest darkest grief I had ever experienced. The worst part was needing to keep it a secret. The pain was staggering and the effort to wear a mask was like wrestling a wolf into a lambs costume. Somehow I managed to hold it together while I picked up the boys. I squeezed them tight and explained to them that their dad was coming home a week later.

Keeping it together for the kids

Each morning I put on my brave face and made breakfast for them and got them out the door and onto the school van. The minute they were gone, however, I crumpled and cried my weight in tears. The shock turned to a mix of anger and overwhelming sadness. It felt as if all the years of building a life together, of traveling the world and raising our babies was all for nothing. I was angry that I had not had a chance to know any of this before I said “yes” to spending my life with him. It felt like I had given him everything but he had held something back from me.

I sat in my quiet empty apartment and I cried. I wrote in my journal, Islept, I prayed, I researched online and I cried some more.

Afternoon would come and I would wipe away the tears. After I put on my “mommy’s okay” face, I would set out a snack and hug my boys. It took all I had to keep it together until they were out the door again the next morning. I wanted desperately to keep their lives as normal and happy as possible.

Life continued like this after Austin returned. We would talk and cry together after the boys were in bed, trying to figure out how to take the next step forward. There was one counselor in the city that we knew of at the time but I struggled to connect with him, so Austin went by himself. While it was good for him, it only deepened my feeling of being alone.

Unexpected Safety

One day a friend and I were talking at the American Club, while the boys splashed and played in the pool. It was a hot spring day and the breeze that pushed through the palm trees was warm enough to melt butter in the shade. My friend suddenly blurted out that she had been married at one time but her husband turned out to be gay. She said she didn’t know why she was telling me this. Something just unplugged inside of me and I was an instant hot mess. It was a sacred moment, the holy surprise of finding a place where I could be real and vulnerable. She pulled me in her arms as the sun glittered and bounced off the water filled with laughing children. She just held me, let me cry and told me I was not alone.

Self-care in the grief

If you are carrying the weight of grief alone in order to protect another, treat yourself with utmost kindness and gentleness.

We were not meant to bear the weight of grief on our own. When grief comes because of a story that is not ours to tell, the grief is twice as heavy. Honoring yourself and your pain can seem impossible when you feel you must protect another person. It’s like using your body as a shield to keep someone you love from being shredded by a giant fan. Yet you feel your own grip loosening and wonder if you are the one that will be shredded first.

If you are carrying the weight of grief alone in order to protect another, treat yourself with utmost kindness and gentleness. Take time daily to care for yourself. Find at least one person you can trust or an online group where you can be anonymous yet can speak. Find a therapist to make sure you are not in over your head and to keep you on a healthy track emotionally. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this. The idea that you have to do this completely on your own is bullshit. I understand if you can’t tell your story to the world just yet, but neither do you have to do it alone.

The loneliness of the closet

I just can’t end here. As hard as this time and place was, it wasn’t I who had spent my life in the closet. Just thinking about it makes the air feel heavy and hard to push through my lungs. People are in the closet because that small, dark, suffocating, lonely place is their safest place. Think about that for a minute.

People are in the closet because that small, dark, suffocating, lonely place is their safest place.

Right now I don’t care what your background is or what your beliefs are. All of that is arbitrary in the face of another human being. We have forgotten to see each other as human first. To my straight friends I ask, what kind of humans are we if other humans feel safer in a closet than sitting beside us, telling us their story? It’s as if the story books and childish nightmares had it wrong all along. The monsters were not the ones in the closet, hiding to scare us. Perhaps the monsters have been the ones outside, forcing others to remain where they are.

Being safe instead of right

I grew up in an extremely conservative home where things like being gay were seen as nonnegotiable, black and white wrong. So I had a heck of a lot of questions. Yet there was one thing I was certain of. Being a safe person was more important than being “right.” My husband’s honesty put a very real face to something I always thought was “out there”. It was now up close, in my life, every day. As the two of us walked through the daily nitty gritty and became more honest with each other regarding all the emotions we were feeling, the need for safety became nonnegotiable.

So please, as one who has had an inside view, forget about trying to figure out what is right or wrong for another person. Being safe is more important than being right.

Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.