On Albatrosses and Dancing Under Spider Webs

I am a believer in full disclosure.  I believe in telling the truth, even when it hurts—especially when it hurts. 

However, I’ve been hiding something about myself from people I don’t see on a regular basis.  It’s really an omission, in that I don’t tell you the whole story, even when I attempt to tell the truth.  Hiding is comforting, it’s a place of refuge and relative anonymity, it can offer a sense of safety in a world in which exposure is dangerous, damaging, and death-dealing.

But hiding becomes a web of intricate lies and delicate stories—a spider’s web of the thinnest of filaments, easy to bend and even easier to break if you don’t watch yourself at every moment.  Even lying by omission becomes hiding after a while, and you stick with it because it’s easier and more comforting than the vulnerability of truth telling—even when it is burdensome to hide.

That burden weighs down, like an albatross, even though you might feel free in a significant portion of your life.  The albatross causes you to duck out of sight, yoked with the burden of hiding, avoiding the spider’s web like your life depended on it.  Because it does.  It becomes an issue of life and death, weaving and ducking to protect yourself as you carry your albatross, showing just enough of your personal truth that you can get by.

Because of that burden, I have become a poorer ally for myself in situations where I would normally have the courage and strength to speak up on my own behalf.  That burden prevents me from speaking up when I am/people I love are microaggressed or discriminated against in interpersonal situations.  That burden silences me, keeps me in the dark, avoiding interactions that risk my exposure.  Disclosing the truth is such a daunting obstacle that I file it in the furthest recesses of my mind, hidden behind boxes of History of Religion and Constructive Theology and Pharmacology for Nursing notes, exams, and research papers.  I forget that my truth is even back there, gathering dust even as I live it out each day. 

Here is what I have realized: I live my truth in some respects and not in others.  I thought I would be okay with this, content with a modicum of truth-telling while concealing pieces of myself from people, from institutions, from myself.  It will be better this way, I thought.  Less risk, less vulnerability, less painful disclosure, less anticipation—and, frankly, dread—of others’ reactions.

As I have continued to think about the burden of not telling the truth—that is, my whole truth—the ways in which people may or may not react is what paralyzes me, keeps me carrying my albatross as I continue to duck the spider’s web.  What will they think? What will they think of me? Will I lose relationships? Friends? Family members? Community? Connection? 

My professional training as a healthcare provider and as a pastoral caregiver tells me that the ways in which other people react are a direct reflection on what they think, feel, and believe.  This is easy to learn in theory, and even easier to tell other people.  But when it’s you, it’s different. And hard.

Other people’s reactions are not about me—until they are.  Until they jeopardize personal and professional relationships, opportunities, and support networks.  Then other people’s reactions directly impact how I work in the world.

My pastoral training would like me simply to dismiss these people and their reactions.  But I’m here to tell you it isn’t that easy—to dismiss relationships you and your family have had for years, decades, generations, that have stood the test of time.  Well, the test of time until you elect to tell your truth, your whole truth, out loud and without apology.

So what is this truth?  Why haven’t I told everyone everything from the beginning?  Why is it both an albatross and a spider’s web?

The truth of it all is that I am Caroline.  It has taken me a long time to get to learning who I am, but I am not apologetic about that.  Every single piece of my lived experience plays in to who I am and how I work in the world. 

Being Caroline involves my years of graduate study in Nashville, to learn better how I can be of help to others as I have been the recipient of so much assistance and love.

Being Caroline involves my spiritual life as an Episcopalian, a person of faith, continuously exploring, asking questions, and growing as a child of God, loved and beloved from before it all began.

Being Caroline means that I have been on an amazing journey of learning more about my sexuality.  I thought for a long time that I was meant to date and be in romantic relationships with male-identifying people, but as it turns out, that is not true.  I believed for a long time that this meant I was broken, somehow defective.  No one told me this explicitly, but they didn’t have to: it’s something I learned from society at large.  So I convinced myself that I would remain the “fun aunt,” help raise my nieces and nephews and godchildren, and live a happy life.  While I would have enjoyed being the fun aunt as a single person, I still felt like I was not called to a life of intentional singleness. 

Through several beautiful, crazy, life-changing years, I have come to know myself as a woman who loves women.  Terms for this include same-gender-loving, lesbian, gay, and queer.  I use queer to describe myself to other people for several reasons:

First, I do not meet social norms in my romantic life—that is, I am female-identified, and society tells me that as a female-identifying person, I am to be in relationship with male-identifying people.

Second, I believe it to be part of my vocation to work for the liberation, rights, and equality of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender identity, and/or gender expression.  I derive this meaning from the work of theologian Carter Heyward, who uses the term to denote “all people, whatever their own sexual identity, who stand in public solidarity with gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered/transgendering sisters and brothers.  To be queer is to struggle enthusiastically without apology against heterosexism (not heterosexuality) and homophobia.”* I acknowledge that this term has a storied history and is still used as derogatory slang; however, it is also the term that most fully describes how I operate in the world as a human being.

But how I identify myself to the outside world matters substantially less to me than how I feel inside myself.  Labels are external and artificial, and create boundaries that I view as destructive and hurtful.  But that’s an entirely different conversation.

This process has been full of love.  I have fallen more in love with God, with others, and with myself.  I increasingly understand that human beings cannot look into the face of God and live: I am struck, daily, by the love of God, self, and neighbor that grows and develops within me as I become more of myself.

I haven’t changed, but I have.  I’m still Caroline, and I am more fully Caroline than I ever thought possible.  My world has expanded, I have become freer, and I am so much happier than I ever let myself believe.  I am madly in love with an incredibly beautiful and brilliant woman and we are committed to love and to each other. 

I am Caroline.  This is my truth, my albatross that I have carried because I have feared the loss of relationship.  I am because we are—you and me, together—and I believe in full disclosure.  I am willing to be vulnerable, to take risks, to expose my whole truth in the interest of true relationship, community, and love. 

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*Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus From Those Who Are Right: Rethinking What It Means to Be Christian (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 224n3.