Out on a Limb

The knock on my dorm room door was almost inaudible. I wasn’t expecting company. That didn’t mean anything considering I was a resident assistant. Knocks and phone calls invaded my study time regularly.

I opened the door to find the boyfriend of a campus friend. I’d met him a few times and he seemed nice. Something was different. He looked agitated and was pacing back and forth in the hallway. His girlfriend wasn’t with him. I suspected a breakup had occurred and he needed an ear. Mentally calculating the amount of time I’d need to finish my studies for the evening, I decided I had time to lend my ear to the cause and invited him in.

“I shouldn’t have come. You’re probably busy.”

Once I assured him I was too boring to be overly busy, he sat down in the dorm appointed lounge chair. Though he was relatively thin, I could almost convince myself the chair was sagging from the weight of whatever was on his shoulders. Everything about him was down: head, shoulders, clenched hands between his knees. He was dressed in all black and the picture of despair.

“I’m scared because I want to die. They hate me. I’ve disappointed them and they hate me.”

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but my breakup assumption was falling apart.

“Who hates you?”

“My parents. God. They told me I’m cut off. They told me to stay away from them. I’m an embarrassment.”

Nothing was making sense. I could see him shaking. His nose was starting to run. I handed him my Puffs box accurately predicting the looming purge of emotion. The tears came fast and hard. The agony was overwhelming. I wanted to hug him, but also didn’t want to hug him. We didn’t really know each other all that well and my intuition told me my ear was needed more than my arms.

After a bit, he collected himself and began apologizing. I remained quiet. He must have realized I was waiting for him to decide what came next. He took a deep breath and shared his truth. “I’m gay.”

I asked if my friend, his girlfriend, knew. Yes. She’d known for some time and had offered him some level of cover among their high school friends from their very conservative community. He’d fought acknowledging his truth for years, always fearing what his parents would think. When he was younger, it was easier to do. He didn’t know other gay people and it was easier to convince himself something was wrong with him — that he was unusual. Life on a college campus with a student population in the tens of thousands taught him differently. He’d had the chance to meet, know and come to care for other gay men. He’d heard horror stories in terms of coming out to parents, but he’d also heard amazing stories of grace and support. He’d talked himself into believing his parents would surprise him with grace. He took a risk with honesty and lost.

There was nothing helpful I could say about what had happened with his parents. I asked him what he planned to do. It was mid-semester in the fall. His parents abrupt dissociation, in addition to being emotionally devastating, presented a huge financial crisis. They were helping to fund his education. He didn’t know how he was going to come up with what was owed to MSU and, if he ended up disenrolled, he wasn’t sure where he’d go. At that moment, he no longer had a home. He no longer had a family.

The resident assistant in me kicked in. I didn’t know how to heal the chasm with his parents, but I did know how to get him on the path to meaningful support from campus resources. We talked through things he could do related to school. As I talked through the options, he looked so young and eager to take some sort of positive action. We were the same age and I was over 10 years away from being a mom, but I remember feeling something I can now compare to a maternal instinct. I wanted to protect and comfort him. I wanted to rage at those who had caused him pain. He was a beautiful person whose only sin was telling the truth.

Sitting next to him, I remember hearing his stomach growl loudly. “When did you last eat?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been too upset to care.”

Because it was Sunday and dorms didn’t serve dinner on Sunday’s back then, he was going to have to deal with what I had on hand. Two peanut butter sandwiches and a plastic bottle of Sunny Delight later, he was settling into his new reality.

“Do you really want to die?”

I needed to know the answer to that question. He assured me he wanted to live. It would kill him if his parents truly hated him and if they never forgave him. His heart would never recover.

After he left my dorm room, I didn’t get much studying done. I couldn’t figure out why he knocked on my door. Why had he come to me?

I remember curling up with a large stuffed rabbit I kept on my bed and sobbing. I’d spent the majority of my life being regularly rejected by my biological father. It was something I had the benefit of a sustained pattern of indifference to get used to. My visitor had experienced an abrupt and severe rejection by his parents with no practice runs and I wasn’t entirely convinced he would survive the pain.

Oddly, after that intense evening in my dorm room, I didn’t see or hear from my guest much. On occasion, I’d reach out to his former girlfriend for wellness checks. She’d report that she thought he was okay.

About two years later, I got a sign — literally and figuratively — that he was managing well. It was my senior year on campus and I held a student position in the Office of the Vice President for Finance and Operations at Michigan State University. We received word that protestors were enroute to the VP’s suite and to prepare for an interruption. Minutes later, a vocal group of students demanding safer and more inclusive conditions for lesbian and gay students (this was 1995, so LGBTQ was not fully developed) paraded through our offices. There he was, sign in hand and bringing up the tail of the parade. The weight on his shoulders was gone, as was the sadness in his eyes. He was mad, determined and having the time of his life in the safety of his family of fellow homosexuals and allies. I smiled at him and he winked at me — both of us surprised to see one another — as he marched on to the next destination.

It’s been over 25 years since I last saw him. I don’t recall enough information (last name, major, his former girlfriend’s last name) to track him down and hear how he is doing. I hope he’s well. I hope his family has accepted him. I hope I was adequate when he needed me. I wish I could tell him about the mark that Sunday evening 27 years ago left on me. I wish he could know that my children have heard from their earliest years of comprehension that I will always be their mom, always be proud of them and that the truth will always be welcome in our home.