Ever have a set of little emotional storms arrived on the beach of your placid summer life forming into a perfect storm? A perfect emotional storm that the inner child maybe isn’t so willing to let go of though adult you could logically explain away? That happened to me this weekend, and being a sort of self-help ninja, I knew I had a few options.
- Reason it away.
- Distract it away
- Process it
I knew the right answer was to process it. However, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. I was really feeling what the storms were bringing. A negative side of my life status: The single, gay uncle.. Yours may be different. I hope by sharing my story it may help you. Let me explain.
Whether you are gay or straight, some of us grow up around a heavy script that we internalize growing up:
You grow up.
You get married.
You have kids.
You’re the “grown-up” everyone should look up to because you are successful in life.
Everyone around me lived that life, and if they didn’t, they hid it well for fear of the shame it would be bring upon them. Families just wouldn’t speak about children that didn’t hit those benchmarks or spoke about them in a lower, hushed tone. Those oddities were the mentally disturbed, the disabled, the gays, and the single uncles who never married and lived under a questionable shadow for not following the traditional path (this was back in the 70’s and 80’s so I’m not sure how different it may be today!). I was not innocent on judging any of the last two. In my neighborhood, it was easier to be black than to be gay. The worst thing you could be was gay. And, with all the traditional role models around me, I found single, stray uncles as strange warnings of something I didn’t want to become–people who family whispered about their comings and goings behind their backs.
I didn’t just think single uncles were unlucky. I thought they had failed at something fundamental that adults are supposed to do. As children when we learn these scripts, we often think in very absolute terms.
- Adults get married.
- Adults have families.
- Adults have their own homes.
- If they don’t…something must have gone wrong.
That isn’t because children are cruel. It’s because they don’t yet understand how varied adult lives become.
Now fast-forward to today.
My mind isn’t just saying, “I’ve never had a relationship.”
It’s saying:
“I became evidence for the very rule I believed as a child.”
The very absolute judgement I laid on them has now fallen on me. Back then, a first family question after not seeing someone for a long time wasn’t “How are you?”, it was, “Do you have a girlfriend yet?” or “Do you have a job yet?” if you weren’t lined up in something. So, when I was young, I too saw these things as being out of the pocket if you weren’t up to par. I didn’t want that to be my future.
Here’s the rub: It then became part of my future. Facing an undiagnosed medical issue that triggered depression and anxiety issues well into my late 40’s, I could never resolve the symptoms with just the normal therapy and meds alone. I suffered needlessly for years with confidence issues and in and out of college and jobs. Meanwhile, I faced these questions from extended family that was also ingrained in thier script throughout my life, and it was all I could do but crawl into my skin and hide. I had no answers for them. Friends and family were a quicker success than me and I blamed myself. I still struggle not to blame myself at times. I remember when my father gave me one of his cars as my first car and a group of cousins came to visit us in Florida. The one cousin, younger than me, railed on me all weekend for not having a car of my own. It hurt after not seeing him since he was just a little tyke though in hinesight it had more to do about him than me. Nevertheless, back then, it came heavy on me because I wasn’t expecting it and this was family. Being in and out of work due to the economy there but also feeling unable to be selected for a job, sometimes for almost a year stretch, took a toll. It was like this on and off while I lived in Florida until I got into my career life path much later in back in my homestate of Michigan.
I am also the single, out gay uncle. Guncle for short. Cute term. For a long time, it sure has its perks with innocent nephews and nieces looking up to me as some guardian angel. The freedom to come and go without the ties. But those days are over and now I’m just the middle aged story of the past (I don’t care what anyone says, I’m calling 50 middle age lol). Single, gay uncle is the status little me never wanted to be. The judgement and verdict that I had laid on others was now something I couldn’t escape from myself.
Boy, did I have to do some comforting and consoling this weekend to this young self because I didn’t realize just how much that traditional role is still valued. If you are a mom and dad, you are loved as a given by your children because you are the parents (generally speaking). If you are the grandparents, even more so. If you are an aunt, that even carries more weight. Or even an aunt and uncle pair. But there is rarely the same amount of fanfare or love for the single “uncle”. He lives in an apartment on the other side of town. He brings the laughs. He brings the beverages to the family party. The emotional weight is often pity or sympathy of some sort. He is cherished but left to his own. There are no children or spouses that he goes home to and everyone knows it. He lives a freer life as far responsibility goes but less companionship, and it’s a sadness that kind of taints joy. He isn’t always celebrated as the other primary members of a family are at a wedding, for example.
This was not what I wanted to be. I was in a funkle over being a gunkle. I had to turn this around but I didn’t know how beside comforting myself. I thought I had already dealt with this. And I had logically, intellectually. Just not apparently emotionally enough that the inner child’s belief about myself had fully changed. So I decided to talk to a wise friend. We will call him “Charlie”. Out of this conversation, I came away with some insights not neccessarily from him but what I picked up from what he said that brought out more from me. That’s an important distinction to make, so I can own my journey.
What I picked up was this: I’m not just an uncle. I am not just gay. I am a man, a person. I show up in people’s lives with consistency for those I deem safe and worth the time to do so. I take a genunine interest not only in nephews and neices but all sorts of people inside and outside my family, I am a mentor to all sorts of children, I encourage and make a lot of people happier in different ways, one being through my humor. I have many gifts that I share and help others with. I am also not just in a job like most people. I love my job and it gives me a sense of great reward and purpose to life. This was and is a life goal. I don’t dread my job like most people do. I have great reward in it from the kids lives I change every year. That’s worth it’s weight in gold or diamonds. The family and friends around me are a small lot but an invested, loving lot that I wouldn’t trade for any large throng of people on an Instagram reel.
The lesson isn’t that anyone has failed by not meeting some societal expectations but that life often takes a different path than expected. The popular phrase: Life Happens. You may need to remember this too and take inventory of your life of how you got here rather than continually rolling over a check list of status failures that society has built for you. That interntalized script.
At the same time, I cannot deny the losses. The losses are real. I didn’t get a partner at age 25 like I dreamed to have, children, nor the successful writing career I wanted. But the losses don’t define me. That’s the probably the biggest lesson for me. That is what the child in me is learning this weekend. The losses aren’t failures and they don’t define my worth as a son, uncle, friend, or person. It is just one part of my story and little Larry needed to learn that.
Yet, there is another layer to this too.
I didn’t choose to be gay. That wasn’t something I “got wrong.” It wasn’t something I dropped the ball on or sinned against God on. Yet, I grew up expecting a heterosexual life—marriage, kids, the standard family path. I spent years struggling to keep myself on-script and it was impossible. Then taking longer to become independent and not having had a relationship became additional evidence, in my mind, that I was falling further behind.
These experiences can start to emerge into an identity.
Take On Me–A Ha
“I’m the person who didn’t become the adult I was supposed to become.”
That’s a painful identity to carry. Yet I never gave up. I kept hope alive. I care about making memories. I reflect deeply on life. I still want companionship. Those are not the attittudes of someone who has given up.
I wondered that if I saw any of these people that I had judged back then, would I ask them the same question today as I would back then?
Would I ask him:
“Why didn’t you get your life together?”
No, I would you probably ask:
“What happened? What was your life actually like?”
So, I wonder whether I deserve the same curiosity? Instead of asking myself (you too, by the way!):
“What’s wrong with me?”
What if the question became:
“How did my life unfold this way?”
Those are very different questions.
The first assumes there’s a defect.
The second assumes there’s a story.
I don’t have a story that exposes someone who is careless or indifferent. It is someone who struggled with identity, took longer than he wanted to establish independence, and has carried a lot of loneliness. That doesn’t erase disappointment. But it paints a much richer picture than the childhood verdict of “I must be doing something wrong.”
The very real part of a gay man’s experience who comes out especially later in life is while others are going through their normal puberty mumbo jumbo of body stuff, learning the birds and bees, exploring romance and sexuality, all that for us is choaked out with fear and shame that society and religion gives us. I was just struggling to survive and suppress. Then another half of my life was spent trying to try to step into a hetrosexual identity that wasn’t there because I was told the real problen was that I was stuck behind everyone elses growth spurt.
Add to this, that when you do come out, after the honeymoon period, the gay community is not rainbows, unicorns, parties and unity like it appears in social media reels to feed the captalist machine. It’s cliquey, catty and divisive inside. There was a lot of rejection and now I’m no longer as connected to protect my own heart.
I realize I am more monagomous than some other gays but I’m okay with holding onto that value. I get that from my mom and dad who deeply loved each other and I cherish that about myself. However, in some deep ironic twist, I have to let go of the deep belief I laid on others that in turn I laid against myself from society. It’s a process I happy to do now that I see the belief is still there.
Is there a long held belief you need to let go of
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