The Rehoming of a Hermit

I am at a loss on how to begin this post. The title is here, and I don’t know where to start.

“How do you eat an elephant?” my friend used to ask with a pause, the kind that let you know there was more coming, and it really wasn’t a question but more of a lesson. She would then reveal with resounding assurance, “One bite at a time!”

Now I’ve never eaten an elephant, or even wanted to, but I believe what she was getting at was how to accomplish big things that seem overwhelming. Perhaps a more relatable analogy for me can be found in the holiday classic song, “One Foot in Front of the Other,” where Kris Kringle encourages the Winter Warlock to change his mean ways and become a nice person.

(Although this implies that I relate to being an unpleasant wizard, so I’m not sure that’s a fit either.)

The point is this: something is changing. It started rather abruptly when my voice gave out (see previous post, Sifting Through Silence), and I was forced to cease nearly all conversation. Then in the silence, I sat with some personal feelings that had surfaced unexpectedly merely days before. Feelings that I thought were conveniently shelved for a rainy day (read: on my time), or when I thought it would be best to bring them out. Back out. Coming out, part two, which is what this whole thing resembles.

“You’re hedging,” I said to someone on an outreach call this evening. “What are you afraid of saying?”

“I might be hedging,” she said. “But you don’t disclose. In theory, it’s really the same thing.”

She had me there.

I don’t disclose under the guise of being a private person. Keeping things to myself is respectful, I justify. What is so wrong with being selective? I don’t have to tell everyone everything, do I? I mean, what would be so interesting in that?

But as a writer . . . let’s be clear . . . a memoirist, I have signed on to do just that. And the whole point of me being here, in this life, is to be of maximum service. This is why, I believe, I am now sober, abstinent, and solvent. This is why, I believe, I am still here. And these past several weeks in this excruciating stint of more than usual quiet, I have realized that withholding certain truths about myself is not only dishonest, it is stopping me from being of service to you and in the world.

Tonight I’m going to change that.

There is one part of my life I have not written about in these blog stories. Partially this is because it hasn’t been that relevant. It’s taken a back seat to more pressing things like, oh, for example, a brain injury and active addiction. But partially this is because I have been afraid—as vulnerable as I would imagine a hermit crab might be when it is last in line for the shell exchange (see previous post, Shifting Shells). Anxious, nervous even, that I will be left without at home. Ostracized and kicked out of the colony that I so desperately need to stay alive. (And yes, I do know that is not a hermit crab in the photo. It was too endearing to resist.)

A few days ago I spoke of how I buried this part just to stay alive (see previous post, The Whisper of Wrongs). Old fears sure die hard, don’t they?

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers,” I heard someone say in a 12-step meeting last week.

*Cue the deep breath*

The part I haven’t spoken about?

I am a lesbian.

Now go get some rest. I’m just getting started.