Giving up the Old

The Wedding Dress April 6 2010


It’s yellowed satin shows the years;

My mother made it – her masterpiece –

The dress for her oldest daughter’s wedding.

I felt attached, thinking of her love, her hand, her sweat and knowledge

Embodied in a swath of fabric, zipper, lace.

In fact, it also spoke her hope, her happiness

That her lesbian daughter finally saw the light --

Was getting married, would live a “normal” life.



I’ve kept this dress for all those years – 45!

I left the marriage, disillusioned, tired, feeling sick, ten years before.

Why did I keep the dress, all through a second marriage, into widowhood?

Interesting question!

I suppose I kept it for its affirmation that I, the misfit, also had my ray of sun,

My moment of recognition, my badge of womanly success.

I was not so totally a failure,

I who’d never dated, never had a boyfriend, saw myself a despised “Old Maid.”

The dress bespoke success, but also failure.


If a lesbian marries and pretends that she is straight, that doesn’t make it so.

She’s still a square peg trying to fit, and doesn’t.

The dress remained, yellowing reminder of unfilled hopes of change.

Now that I have learned to be glad who I am, to know God loved me when he made me thus,

To live fully in the life I’m given, I can now, an old woman, open up my hand and mind --

Let go the dress, let it find the next young bride.



Reflection

I’m happily a lesbian now. I feel I’ve come home, that I belong, that there are others like me in the world – I’m not alone, not a misfit. It was a long time before I could finally let go, open up, see and accept what was so obvious. I was age 58 when this happened! I’d been married, unhappily, for 33 years – years spent wondering what was wrong with me. Why did I not share interests with other wives? Why did I feel like such an alien when I was with them? I had raised my daughter, carried out a successful professional career. But I was sad, depressed, and lonely. I really thought that I was destined to feel like an eternal outsider.

My partner asked me the other day why I still had my wedding dress from so long ago. I had no answer. I had to think about the reason for a couple of days before I could see its meaning. It had nothing to do with the marriage itself, but with my sense of success on the day I married, not for love, but for acceptance in this world. I wept all the way up the aisle and during the ceremony. I so didn’t want to get married, so knew it wasn’t right for me. But I knew no viable alternative, and thus resigned myself to a life of weddedness.

People tell me often how lucky I am to have only discovered late that I am a lesbian. I missed the overt persecution of gays, and the repeated tragedies of the AIDS epidemic. This is true. What no one realizes however, is that especially when closeted, being a gay person is difficult and alienating. One can’t totally live a lie, can’t successfully pretend all one’s life to be something one is not, no matter how demanding society becomes.

I packed the wedding dress today to be given to a consignment shop to be sold for charity. I feel I have liberated myself. I am very happy now in a lesbian life and lesbian relationship. I no longer need to hang on to the symbol of my earlier success in appearing to be something I was not, and never will be. I feel lighter in this life.