Funeral

So, my grandfather died last week. It's not as sad as it sounds, at least not for me, because I hadn't spoken to him in at least ten years. He and my grandmother divorced before I was born and he was on his third wife when he died. He was diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks ago. So, it was very fast and he likely didn't suffer too greatly.

Friday was the funeral. My wife and I went and it was. . .well, my family is deeply Southern Baptist. We are deeply queer. My wife is trans, so we are in fact legally married. My family, however, has not accepted her as a woman. They insist on using masculine pronouns and referring to her as my husband.  Because of his, I had not seen my family since last Christmas, when I went down to visit them on my own. My wife hasn't seen them in over a year. Because they do not respect her identity and it causes her great pain and trauma to be misgendered.

She went with me because I didn't want to make the trip alone. I went because, despite the fact that we're semi-estranged, I knew this would be hard on my mother. And my wife, the amazing woman she is, butched up a bit....as butch as she can get with her long, long hair, breasts and hips. No one could have mistaken her for a man. It's just....she's a woman. She looks like a woman. But she put on a man's jacked and some black pants and let them use whatever pronouns they wanted. Because she knew I needed her. She's really amazing and I tell her that all the time, but I don't know if she believes me.

I'm caught between two worlds here. On the one hand, I love my family and miss them. I miss the holidays and seeing my niece. And I can't have that anymore, not if I want to have my wife there with me. And why wouldn't I want her there with me? We're a family. I love her so much, it's scary. I have a problem expressing emotion, thanks to the fucked up upbringing I had. I have a problem with vulnerability. I hide myself. I hide and protect and don't let anyone in, because I know that if anyone knew me, really knew me, they'd realize how horrible and selfish and awful I am. Except, I'm not those things. I'm not, but I can't make myself believe that because of the religious programming I got. I'm almost forty years old and I still can't shake this. I believe religion is child abuse. The Southern Baptist religion is child abuse. In order to believe it, you have to first accept that you were born broken and bad and evil. You have to believe you are so bad and so broken that you honestly deserve to go to hell and burn alive forever. How is teaching a child that not abusive? How is that not damaging and harmful? How do you expect anyone to grow up with a decent sense of self and normal coping skills? It's just horrible. Horrible.

My grandfather was not a good man. Or maybe he was, at the end of his life. I don't know. I know that he was verbally and emotionally abusive to my mother and my grandmother, as well as my aunt and uncles. I know he drank and smoked and gambled and cheated on my grandmother. I know he would disappear for weeks, taking all the money, leaving my grandmother to beg food from neighbors and churches, so their five children wouldn't starve. I know the only reason I ever got gifts from him for my birthday or Christmas was because my mother or my Aunt Vickie bought them and put his name on them. I also know that if I'd been a boy, he'd have been much more interested in me. (My brother got a lot more of his attention, when we did see them.)

And the thing is, as abusive as he was, as much damage as he did to my mother (and he did a lot of damage that she's still recovering from), I keep thinking that she put me in the same sort of situation. I know she'd never do it intentionally, or she'd never do it if she believed I was being abused, but that damned church she made me go to for 17 years did as much damage to me as her father ever did to her.

And I wonder about cycles of abuse. I don't have any children. I don't know that we'll ever have children, although my wife and I have talked about it. Maybe we'll have one, eventually. But I think...my mother did everything she knew how to keep her children from being abused like she was. My father is nothing at all like her father. She never made me feel inferior before being female and neither did he. And yet, she put me in a place where I was really, really emotionally and mentally screwed up. She didn't mean to. She still, to this day, does not realize is. She can't acknowledge that my experience in her religion was abusive and coercive and has created myriad problems for me. She just can't do it. I keep wanting her to, but I know she can't. It's too big. It's too much for her.

And I think, if I had a child, would I do something similar? Would I put her into a position where she was exposed to that kind of emotional abuse? I wouldn't want to. I sure as hell won't subject any child of mine to a religious upbringing. But what if I'm so focused on that that I miss something else? It gets in my head and I can barely shake it.