Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (15 page)

And so, my dear Limbo Women, my heart does go out to you. I feel as if you are walking in the valley of No Zone. Not quite here, not quite there. But the good news is that you can move into another time zone. You can join the freedom trail and look at life as a new adventure, just waiting for you. You can make a decision that you’ve had enough of Limbo Land and want to spend whatever remaining years you have finding yourself and a new sense of enjoyment. You can learn that life can be like a romantic comedy. You can laugh and love again no matter how old you are. Romance is never an age—it’s a state of mind. And even though living with your Limbo man has dulled yours, you can still take your life back and live it the way you want to. You may not win the battle, but you can definitely win the war.

DECEMBER 2003

ACT 2: SCENE 3

Quite frequently, women write to me about their lack of viable skills when it comes to securing a job so they can gain financial independence. I always look for transferable skills that would be a good match such as caretaker, nurse, detective, etc. How did I miss the most obvious one, namely—ACTRESS?

Every holiday season, wives of gay men have to play their Oscar award-winning role of “Happy Wife” in front of crowds of hundreds. Of course, there is no golden statue at the end of the season like their movie counterparts, but no doubt, the performances are just as extraordinary. And the holiday season is not the yearly birthday, anniversary, or Easter. The HOLIDAY SEASON is a long stretch that starts at Thanksgiving and continues until Valentine’s Day. Between those two points, we begin the family and love ordeal. Thanksgiving is the beginning, followed by Christmas, New Year’s, and finally ending on Valentine’s Day in February. We are so relieved to have the President’s Birthday as a holiday in February because by then, all of our emotional horror of the holiday season is over. Imagine thinking that Washington and Lincoln can actually neutralize and balance out life because after three months of families celebrating family unity and love, we no longer have to cringe when we hear the word, “holiday.” The touchy-feely ones are over, and once again, we have not been touched or felt, and in fact, most of us have been living with a Novocain kind of numbness so that we can protect ourselves from crying at any given moment because we are HURTING.

The Holiday Season is such a difficult time for straight wives because it is an upfront in your face reminder of what life was supposed to be like but never became. Or if it was, it’s over after years because homosexuality has joined into your previously happy union or what you were hoping would be your happy union. It’s almost like having Scrooge find his way into your husband’s body and head. When you want a display of affection and emotion, he’s saying, “Bah, Humbug.” To this I say, “Ho, ho, no, no more.”

You see, even though you may be feeling the pain of this holiday season, it could be your last year to suffer this way. Believe it or not, you can make it your New Year’s resolution to be FREE by next year. Free of the pressures and strain of living a lie. Free of the constant questioning of what can you do to make life better with a man who wants a man to make his life better. Free of the mental torture from the mind games your husband plays so well with you, trying to make you start believing that you are losing your mind and it’s just your imagination running away with you while he’s running around with men. Free of earning your professional detective license while snooping around in a relationship that is supposed to be based on honesty and truth. Free to go to bed at night and feel good about waking up in the morning. Why? Because waking up alone and having peace of mind is always better than waking up next to someone who really doesn’t want to be with you and is making you miserable because he feels that you are “trapping” him.

You see, way beyond this being a holiday season of family and love, it is a holiday season of hope. A time to make resolutions that will help you become healthy and happy. Now I know people hate clichés, but this one really catches the essence of the holiday— namely, “HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.” This little ditty kind of coincides with my own personal philosophy; namely, each new day offers the opportunity of waking up and changing your life. I believe it. I actually did it, and I never look back and regret it. My marriage was doomed. I could have spent 10, 15, or 25 more years of wasting my life with a man who could only make me miserable. But a little bird in my head that became a choir of canaries singing to me, “Don’t Do It.” Don’t give up one more year of precious time to a debilitating situation.”

Look, I know that there are women who are now free who are reading my newsletter. You write to me all the time. I’d appreciate it if you could write to share your new life with my other readers who are still trapped to give them hope. Hope for the New Year. Hope for a new life. Hope for happiness. Hope for sanity. I will publish some of your letters in my upcoming newsletters with your permission. Please write to me!

MARCH 2004

G
AY
M
ARRIAGES

In the news as of late, there has been much talk about gay marriages. No, not marriages of gay men to straight wives, but gay marriages to other gay people. Lots of organizations, government agencies, and individuals have taken stands pro and con. Just for the record, I choose PRO.

Yes, I have my own agenda here. It’s the agenda that represents over 4 million women in this country when they learn they have gay husbands. And let me be clear—it’s not that I believe that if gays can marry gays they will stop marrying straights. I don’t think that the two are intertwined issues.

What I do think is that when gay people are treated equally to straight people, they will stop going to desperate extremes of trying to be straight and ultimately marry straight women to prove that they aren’t gay when they are. Gay people will stop trying to prove that they can be straight when they can’t. They will be allowed to love themselves for who they are rather than run away as fast as they can, shadowed by guilt and public condemnation, which leads to selfhatred and desperation not to be who they are. Upon acceptance, which would mean equality, gay people will start feeling that it’s okay to be gay and not feel so compelled to marry straight women.

Laws are a key to change. I’m the first to say that a change in legislation does not immediately change people’s hearts. However, without legislation forcing change, there is no chance for change to happen. For instance, during the days of civil rights, Black Americans fought for equality, and as a result, legislation was enacted and put into practice. It didn’t change the hearts of many old-school people who were determined to keep living their lives with hatred, but it did set a new stage for future generations who would grow up side by side with people of color and have the opportunity to interact as friends and classmates in school. Now, 40 years later, our younger generation is often seen with friends of all nationalities and cultures, something that was rare when I was growing up. Yes, there are still many people on all sides who have some degree of prejudice, but the younger generation is our hope that this will change in future generations.

The same is true of laws that recognize gay people as equals giving them equal rights and protections. This doesn’t mean that in the immediate future people will change, but hopefully in future generations they will become as understanding and accepting of gay people as our children are today of people who look different than they are or who have customs that are different than theirs. Once gay people can feel accepted without fear of retribution, then they won’t have to run away and live in a world of denial and deceit.

As wives and ex-wives of gay men, we, of all people, should want this to happen. We see the end result of discrimination of homosexuality all too clearly right in our own homes and marriages. We also know that our chance of having a child who is gay is higher than others because our children have a gay parent. We don’t want our children living in a world where they are shunned and rejected because they were born “different.”

So, when you hear about “gay marriages,” think about the pain that future generations may be able to avoid if they become legal. It’s too bad it didn’t happen generations ago. Maybe you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter.

APRIL 2004

A
BOUT THE
C
HILDREN

This is going to be a painful story. So, if you are weak of heart or not in a good state of mind, please read it at a different time and move on to the next story.

By the time you read this, I will have commemorated my daughter Jennifer’s second anniversary of her death from her drug addiction, which is this week in April 2002. I remember the night the call came in so vividly. It was 2:00 a. m. on a Sunday morning. Every time the phone rang at that hour, I cringed knowing it was Jennifer crying to me about how horrible her life was. During her last three months of life, she was so strung out on heroin that this was the only time she called me. She would call me to tell me how someone held a gun to her head while robbing her or raping her. I would cry and beg her to let me take her to a rehab, but she would make promises of calling me the next day after thinking about it. Of course, the calls promised on the next day never came. Somehow, drug addicts lose sense of time along with other sensibilities.

Now, as many mourners tend to do in the early days of a loss, I blamed myself for not being able to save my daughter. It’s quite normal to do this when you lose someone who is dear to you, but especially a child. There are thousands of woulda’s coulda’s, and shoulda’s that go through your mind in the days, weeks, and months ahead. It’s like playing the “What If” game when you have a gay husband, but 100 times worse. When you lose a child, it’s a lot easier to buy into that game than when you have a gay husband. Eventually most women realize they didn’t turn their husbands gay, but most mothers always second-guess themselves when losing a child, especially to drugs.

It has taken me two years to come to terms with Jennifer’s death. I accept the fact that nothing I would have done beyond what I did could have saved her from the destruction of heroin. I am no longer angry with her or the terrible things she did when she was on heroin. I have come to terms with this by looking at heroin as cancer. Once it is in your system, it is almost impossible to get it out. My daughter tried over and over again, but didn’t win the battle. Twelve efforts of recovery in three years and three months were all for naught. She didn’t want to be a drug addict. She wasn’t weak. Her body was just overtaken by a killer agent like cancer when it takes over a body. That’s how I mentally cope after losing my child.

I am not telling you this story because I am looking for sympathy. So many of you, my kind readers and friends, make a point to help me feel better. I am telling you this because a thought came to me two weeks ago that really saddened me.

I think about how so many of you are struggling through life trying to make sense out of something that makes no sense. I think about all of the hours you spend crying because you feel so bad about yourselves and your marriages. I talk to many of you who lead your lives in a dismal abyss or feel like you exist in a deadened state of mind popping anti-depressants to cope with your unhappiness. And then it finally came to me—it’s not only we who are suffering from having gay husbands, but our children are losing out as well. Yes, our children.

I remember that I had an epiphany several years ago when I realized that we could have been totally different people if we had supportive, nurturing husbands who encouraged us to maximize our potential rather than stifle it. Now I wonder how different the lives of our children would be if we had straight husbands. If we weren’t so busy wondering why we were failures, maybe we would have been better mothers to our children. Ouch. That hurts. It pains me to think about it. But it is a reality that I have to live with—and worse than that—deal with. You see, I can’t make up those days with Jennifer because she is gone.

I work with thousands of women each year who are trying to cope when learning about their husbands’ homosexuality. Some of them are doing just that—coping. They don’t wake up feeling good about life on any particular day because they are living in a haze. They spend numerous hours tracking down the movements of their husbands, only to be thrown off track or sidetracked by their husbands who are doing their best to escape detection. Think about all of the unhealthy hours you have put into your marriages trying to figure out the truth, and even when you do, think of all the wasted time you spend trying to make something work that isn’t workable. These are wasted hours that could have been happy, productive ones if you didn’t have this deceit to live with.

Do I sound angry? Yes, I am angry. I’m angry because I’m tired of women being told by their gay husbands that they love them, but they don’t love them enough to tell them the truth for fear of the consequences of how it will upset their—the gay husbands’—lives. I think of the days when I used to cry and cry because I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong because my husband didn’t love me the way I needed to be loved. Those were days when my daughter didn’t see the side of me that made her happy. I took care of her, I didn’t neglect her, but she sensed my unhappiness.

Think about it. How many times do we feel frustrated so we take it out on whoever is closest to us—including our children? Worse yet, how many times do we feel trapped in our unhappy marriages because we are afraid to break up a family, and so we subconsciously place that blame on the children we love? Not consciously mind you— but unconsciously, yes.

After two years of mourning my daughter, I can say without hesitation that I don’t blame myself for my daughter’s loss. But I do regret the lost time with my daughter. I lost many happy days with her because I was sad. These were days when I was confused and frustrated. I didn’t know what was wrong, so I had to assume that it was my problem. My husband wasn’t unhappy. On the contrary—I was the one with the problem as he kept telling me. He was happy in the marriage. And if he wasn’t happy, it wasn’t his fault—it was mine. I was too controlling; I was too demanding; I wasn’t a good housekeeper; I was too fat; the list kept going on. And not having the knowledge of what was wrong in my marriage, as most of you don’t have for years, I believed that I was the problem. Certainly, that took a toll on my ability to be my best as a mother because I secondguessed everything I was doing as many of you do.