A Divided Self

I feel like I'm tearing at the seams.

Those of you who have been, or are still half-closeted should know what I mean.

Currently, I'm out at school and to my friends, but no mention has been made to anyone in my immediate family. I've been out for over two years. I've been closeted for over two years. And in that time, I've become a divided self.

Half of my me is confident, uninhibited, and social, while the other is withdrawn, restrained, and lonely. At school I'm smiling, talking, getting good grades, and recently I've been making more friends too--friends that I spend time with on weekends, going to movies, eating out, and driving to random places.

The idyllic picture shatters at home though. My family and I have seemingly made a habit of not talking to each other, except for minimal exchanges dictated by necessity, and I generally stay in my room on the computer for most of the day. My parents don't really involve themselves in my life, unless my grades were to drop or something like that.

For some reason, I've tried and managed to keep these two lives separate. At first, I was really careful in disclosing information to my parents about who I was spending time with; now I've just stopped telling them anything other than "Oh, I'll be with my friends." As far as they know, my social life consists purely of innocent movies and restaurant outings. Not that they care, or if they do, they sure don't make a big deal out of it.

The same thing happens in the other direction: my family and personal life have become off-limits in conversations with friends. I just don't talk about it. They don't know my parents' names, or what they do, or what our lives are like. I don't tell them, and they don't ask. They know I'm closeted at home, but that's about all I've confirmed. The rest is speculation.

But I've been living in constant fear--fear of one life somehow making its way into the other. Fear of my family finding out about how I act when I'm not home. Fear of my friends knowing about my bleak and dismal family relationships. Every day, I battled myself, and there could never be a winner in a fight like that. Regardless, I accepted it. I believed that there was nothing I could do to make that fear go away, at least for now, and up until recently I was fine with that. I was fine with my divided life.

On Sunday, I went to see my all-time favorite band, Scissor Sisters, in concert. For those of you unfamiliar with them, they're a five-person group consisting of four men (three of them gay) and a straight woman. Their music, not surprisingly then, speaks to an amazingly diverse fan community of all sexualities, races, and ages. And seeing them in concert changed my life. (For better or worse, I still don't know.)

At the concert, I stood on the edge of the right balcony of the nightclub, between the female friend I came with and some guy. He was at least 21 because several times before the Sisters came on stage he left to get alcohol and asked me to help save his spot (like me, he was there with a female friend). Now, this guy really got into the music; his hips would move in every direction, often times ramming into my own, and he'd lean back and press himself into me a lot too (it was a little of a tight squeeze on the balcony where we were standing). The funny thing, though, is that we were only cramped on the edge because we wanted to be closer to the band; there were far fewer people in the space behind us.

After the second or third song ended, he turned around, put an arm on my shoulder and said, "So since I've been grinding up against you the entire night, I think I should at least get to know your name." So I told him mine, and he said his name was Josh. There wasn't much conversation after that, but for the rest of the night, we danced and sweated and became hoarse from singing and screaming; and neither one of us inched even a little bit apart.

I guess that concert was profound for me because even among friends, I'm not all that energetic. Something came out of me that night, and I danced like I'd never danced before. I was happy like I'd never been before. I was totally free and fearless.

But after being that high up, coming home again made me sink like a stone. There's this compulsion in me to seek higher highs, but that would only pull myself apart even further. And in doing that, it'd only be harder to put myself back. I feel like the rift in my life is becoming more and more irreparable, and that fear, I think, is the strongest of them all.

So right now I'm just confused, and afraid, and all sorts of other bad feelings. I can't seem to be able to envision a happy, unified life for myself anymore; I've lost sight of my goal.

And it hurts. This internal separation hurts. And trying to reverse it hurts too.

 

Ah, well I suppose knowing a few more details about my family and background would clear things up.

My parents are first-generation Vietnamese immigrants; they came to the U.S. in 1993. As a result, they've been learning English so that they can successfully raise their family here. My dad knows enough to get by on financial and legal matters, but it's not like he's an English scholar or anything like that. My mom knows less than he does, and she sometimes has a hard time understanding complicated word structure, but she's generally okay.

So, because of the obvious language barriers, my parents aren't as involved in our neighborhood or with my school. They tend to socialize with their old Vietnamese friends, or just our extended family.

This is why it's so easy for me to keep them out of my own social life; my parents usually don't make any effort to get to know my friends' parents/families. So if word gets around, which I'm sure it has, there's very little chance it would reach my parents.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond, Brenton.

You're right about the ups and downs; I'm really an emotional rollercoaster, but it usually doesn't show. Most of the time I'll be fine, but there'll always be the occasional days (or even week) where everything kind of collapses. I've started to call it "spontaneous depression".

I really like that analogy of holding yourself up. It makes a lot of sense, and while I agree, finding the courage to "let go" is never all that easy. Which, of course, you know about. And life always seems to be one huge case of "easier said than done". :icon_razz

I appreciate your advice, and it's true that that feeling of unparalleled joy doesn't come to people like us all too often. But I'm going to try to make it happen more frequently.

My parents' views on homosexuality are actually rather hard to pinpoint. They mainly adhere to some cultural Buddhist traditions (though not all), but Buddhism doesn't openly condemn homosexuality. There is, however, a kind of taboo or stigma associated with gay people in Vietnamese society, as with most other places. As far as I can assume, French colonial rule probably influenced the culture when it comes to gays (France being predominantly Roman Catholic). Gay couples in Vietnam would be "strange" at best and "disgusting" at the worst.

I once overhead my aunts talking about a friend of theirs who is in his late twenties and is still single (he's a hairstylist, go figure :icon_razz). They thought it was odd that he hadn't found a wife yet, and then said some things about how he might be gay. One aunt said, "Oh, what a waste of a handsome man!" Everything was said with a kind of subtle humor, though, where you can't tell if they're disapproving or merely joking.

And couple all of that in with the fact that they're immigrants, and the experience of having to start over in a new country can create a terribly confusing mess of overlapping ideologies. The culture clashing is already immense, homosexuality notwithstanding. So it's all one giant bundle of confusion and I frankly don't know where to start.

But yeah, it's late, but thanks again, Brenton. I'm Trac by the way (pronounced exactly as it appears, though some teachers never seem to quite catch on, haha), and I'm 17.

I joined a while ago, but wasn't all that active. Now I will definitely be posting more often.

(*hug*)