I can count on one hand how many women role models I've had in my early childhood. Each influenced me in ways that I don't believe they had ever intended. From two matriarch's; a gentle, witty woman of the WWII wives club and farming community and a soft hearted, hard nosed, self sufficient independent business woman, I learned the importance of standing on your own two feet, taking responsibility for your actions and of course that all important fishing tactic of "waiting till the bobber is totally under water before you jerk your fishing pole to reel in the fish". I know now that this metaphor speaks volumes to the many trials and tribulations I faced in my pubescent years and beyond. Additionally, I've learned more from the next generation's struggles and accomplishments as society's influence pushed forth. The following matrilineal descendants range from the honorable educated homemaker to the free willing, three times married, businesswoman. As the various liberal women's movements occurred, theses women seemed to struggle and accepted to stay within the female roles' that preceded them.
When I finally realized that I had these "tingly feelings" for my female friends I also had a debilitating, horrific, occurrence in my physical body. I was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata in 1981, which the medical profession was just learning about and researching the cause and hopefully a cure. I was told it was an "autoimmune disorder", which I would come to know later as "a genetically determined autoimmune disease in which the body's T cells identify hair-follicle cells as foreign invaders and try to destroy them."
I couldn't grasp the medical jargon and the medical doctors really couldn't give me answers to what would happen to me. I felt very alone, as if I was the only one in the world that had this condition. So, here I was at age eleven trying hard to figure out both these internal feelings and emotions towards the same sex and trying to identify who I was physically. In both cases I felt dysfunctional, a freak of nature, and punished. Right away I had immediate support, with regard to my hair loss, from family and friends. I would have to stomach an occasional derogatory remark from immature, ill-informed, by-standers. I also had the sympathy from strangers who thought I must have been going through chemotherapy or something like it and felt sorry that I must be dieing so they were sure not to make a comment. My mother took it as hard as I did, if not harder. She felt like she had done something wrong. I would find out much later that she questioned herself day after day. She wished it had happened to her instead of me. She saw comfort in telling me this at the time but I don't know that she ever found comfort, at least I can guess at this because I never have found total comfort in knowing my body is rejecting itself.
Almost twenty-five years later the roles were reversed when my Mother began treatment for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. As she started wearing a hairpiece, mine came off. For the past few years I've had a "re-growth", different than times past, and as of today I no longer wear a hairpiece. I have spots here and there that stay slick and I can cover but overall it feels like a full head of hair. I've contributed this "re-growth" due in part to the reduction of living a closeted, stressful life (which "stress" was listed at the top of the list as the leading cause of my condition at the time) and finally living my life "openly"...not to my family of course, what kind of Queer would I be if I actually came out to my homophobic family? Don't answer that!. Overall, the closet door has been cracked and open for the past 10 years and I love every minute of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment