Living My Truth
By Chris Ellen Montgomery
It has been a long and winding road. I came out in a college in the Midwest some 25 years ago. I then transferred to an Ivy League school in the Northeast. The lesbian community there was very separatist. I wore 1930s housedresses, didn't shave and was friends with men, both gay and straight. I did not fit in and felt unwelcome and judged. I didn't fit in at all - and drifted back into straight relationships.
At age 29, I got married to a good man. We had a son four years later. When my son was young, I met several lesbian couples who were parents of his nursery school friends. I realized I was looking at women and fantasizing about them. I wondered if this meant something. Then I realized I had fallen in love with one of these women, a lesbian who had a daughter one year younger than my son. She was in a 20-year relationship, though an unhappy one. And it turns out she also had fallen in love with me. But I was unwilling to have our relationship become physically intimate while I was married. It took me about two years of couples and individual counseling before I was able to leave my marriage.
I felt like I was walking into the unknown. Was I a lesbian? It was exceedingly difficult to leave my marriage, my home, my life. I was very worried about my son and his reaction. Several months later, my friend left her partner and we began our relationship as committed partners. I came out to my son.
It took us all several years to become comfortable with our blended family. Our children, who are both teen-agers now, split their time 50-50 between our house and their other parents' houses. My husband was initially very angry but he went to therapy, too, and resolved it for himself. We are now on friendly terms. I am very much identified as a lesbian and am out at work.
I am very happy in my life and in my family. It is odd. I do not feel different at all, and yet I am treated differently from when I was married and had heterosexual privilege.
I feel my son is still making peace with his life and what happened to him. I am hopeful that someday he will come to terms with it all. I think living my truth was the best example I could provide for him.