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10:10:00 AM EDT
Breakthrough...
I had an extraordinary conversation yesterday with a first cousin of mine who has been very active in the Mormon Church. He is 90 now, but alert as can be, still working selling real estate.
When I first started surfacing my observations about my dad with the belief that he was homosexual I called and talked to H who initially had a very bad reaction. This was some years ago. But this time when I brought up the subject again, he was not thrown. I feel he had given my last call some thought and was prepared to discuss it some without flying off the handle.
Since we are both pretty old this is preparation for the next world as well as trying to get more understanding in this one. I was able to tell him my remarkable dream about our grandmother coming to me in a dream to tell me that she had to go to something like a hospital there for several years. When I asked her why she said simply, "Because I did not understand what had happened to my sons." All her sons suffered tragic deaths before they were fifty except for my dad. I feel he survived because of his more liberal thinking daughters. They accepted him and his problems better.
I told H I thought my dad more than any of the other brothers may have had what is generally called the gay gene, that is he was the most predisposed to homosexuality. I think there is a difference between people who are molested by the same sex but do not have this predisposition. These are the ones most likely to repeat the pattern and become molesters themselves because of what has been done to them. In some case, as with my dad, he may have been molested as a child also to the point that it helped altered his ability to leave the underaged strictly alone. Although I do not think that he focused on the underaged as a pedofile does. I have known many who I think were capable of crossing the line to involve the underaged, but did not become full blown dangerous pedofiles.
But you can't imagine what this talk did for me to have my cousin who is obviously a very bright man start treating me with more respect, actually listening to me and taking in some of what happened. I lived with his mother two years while he was in the service. I was on the verge of a crack-up at the time and was in bad shape. My dad had about killed himself by drinking a bottle of rubbing alcohol. My mother wouldn't take him to the doctor even though he was deathly sick, so murderous thoughts seemed to be going on with her. He lay on the couch as I kept running in and checking him to see if he was still alive. He had turned grey and beads of clammy sweat broke out on his forehead. He looked so bad I feared he might die any moment.
After he started to recover in about five days more happened of a very painful nature between my parents, and what I did in response was reported to another of my dad's sisters. She decided I must be taken out of that home as soon as possible and contacted H's mother who agreed to take me in even though I was not yet old enough to go to high school. I think my aunt also took care of that by suggesting to the teacher that he give me a double promotion. He not only gave me one but the other two girls in my class one, too, which we were able to handle just fine. So I went directly into high school that fall in the high school where my aunt was teaching home economics.
H had heard something of all that through his wife who was at home while he was fighting the war in Europe. I talked to her yesterday, too, and she thanked me for becoming her sister's main baby sitter who was dying of heart failure. Her kids were easy to tend so I really did not do anything out of the ordinary except make myself available for baby sitting to earn extra money.
H and I talked for quite a long time. He lives in a big city far from here. We got caught up on what everyone in his family and my family were doing. I did think that something had happened to soften his attitude, for whatever it was he had undergone a marked change. He was ready to listen, too, instead of just preaching as he did the last time. I was able to tell him that my dad was not religious and I had developed doubts early on. I said I did not think the church handled such people as my dad well.
I do think that if you have felt you were gay all your life it is hurtful to be treated as though you were just addicted to these thoughts and will not be straight with the Lord until you have repented and changed. I don't even think it is possible to change sexual orientation that easy. H remarked that his mother and my grandmother were very religious. I agreed, but I did not think that religion could affect my dad. So then what? Suicide? He certainly tried often enough to commit suicide. I can't tell you how many times he drank poisonous substances that could very well have killed him if he had not had an iron constitution. This could be anything with alcohol in it. Poison moonshine killed his brother's best friend and nearly did the brother in, too. My dad was just a lot more reckless with his life than most drinkers, I think because he did not value it a whole lot.
I regarded my dad's drinking as suicidal and I knew the reason why he was suicidal. He had to lie and hide what he did. It was a terrible dilemma for him. He needed to stay married to help take care of his 5 children, but his wife practically hated him and wished him dead. He was not able to stay at home with his wife and be a normal heterosexual father. That seemed beyond him.
Being a good husband had been no problem for H. He was normal. Nor is it for a lot of other good husbands, but for a man like my dad it was impossible. He was 26 years old when he married. His patterns were deeply established. I considered his dad to have followed along the same patterns, probably remaining sexually active with men until fairly old. I did not tell H I thought this, thinking it would be more than he could handle. I think his dad, my granddad, also had the gay gene that my dad inherited. He did not marry until he was 30 and he arranged things so that he stopped living with his wife full time fairly soon. He established her in a home 30 miles away, ostensibly so the children could go to school, but I think given his nature he found it more comfortable that way.
I am sure my dad suspected that his dad was the same which gave more reinforcement to the idea of marriage for him. Besides it was expected of him. My mother, however, did not react as my grandmother did. She got very angry at him going off to party with men all the time, giving her the slip. My grandfather was a very forceful man who did not drink, so was able to pretty much have his way. Drinking got the blame for what my dad did, but I knew his reasons for partying away from my mother went deeper than that.
H and I made progress talking about some mighty difficult issues. I am satisfied that eventually he will be a powerful force in handling these problems in the next world. There is another reason he needs to understand the problem. From my observations of her I believed that his mother had inherited the gay gene. Only she covered it up with extreme religiosity but what a price she must have paid in guilt. For she was essentially living more of a lie keeping up a religious facade. I did tell H that she did not speak to me hardly ever again after I left her home after two years. One of the reasons I left was I felt I could not handle an aunt with the problem as well as a dad. It was too upsetting to me to witness the convoluted lying that had to be done to remain 'respectable.' She was a single mom. She had to keep her teaching job, so it must have seemed absolutely necessary for her to be a regular church goer. Otherwise she could easily lose her job in such a religious state.
I said something to her about the lesbian acting woman who lived with her and she got very angry. All I said was that she talked too much, but my aunt got mad all out of porportion. I felt she took out on me her anger at having to live the way she did, hiding everything. Her friend was not religious. She was a lot bolder woman than my aunt, a less tortured woman. Of course, there were a lot more reasons that I thought my aunt had feelings for women. For one she was an absolute man hater and about frothed at the mouth at the thought any man might show interest in her. She seemed to be blaming her sons' father for turning her against men, but their divorce had come about many years before. I was given to understand she had never looked at a man since!
I thought from the sounds of it my aunt was slowly going insane. Her sons moved far away. I knew that neither one of them remotely perceived she may have had a problem in this direction. But now H will soon go to the other world as will his brother who has also been a very religious man. I believe the truth will have to come out about their mother or she will not be able to get better and make progress any more than my dad will get better. Lying here is understandable, but not in another world, too! She shouldn't have to lie there.
If the gay gene is recognized better there then she doesn't have to shoulder such a terrible burden of being totally responsible for her own fall into deepest darkest sin. She was every bit as defensive as my dad, as prone to attack if she felt anybody got close to the truth. I must have caused her to think I was getting uncomfortably close, so she lashed out at me for the rest of her life. I became the bad one. Weird. But that is how it came down. Everything I did she thought was bad made her more right and me more wrong. But I knew the torture she must have suffered, knowing my dad. He didn't act quite sane either.
I feel I know his mother better than H does at this point. He married and moved away. I am sure he did not think deeply about her and her need for love hardly ever again. Both of her sons and their wives and kids lived their lives hundreds of miles away from her. She lived and died so alone. She had only them, the women who loved her and understood.
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At least you talk to your relatives! Maybe some day I will talk to mine, then again maybe not! LOL
kelli
http://journals.aol.com/kamdghwmw/noonmom -
I hope you're having a good day.
Missie
7/23/08 4:08 PM
Lori
http://journals.aol.com/helms