Halloween May Be Over, But November Haunts Me.

Every year the first week of November stops me dead in my tracks as I run headlong into a brick wall. I stagger to my feet, stunned, brush the grit off, and start the familiar shuffle down the same path I did back in November of 1991 when I was 15 years old. I can't believe it was 19 years ago. Nineteen, which is almost 20. Sounds like a lot. It is a lot. So why, then, does it still plague me? Why won't it go away? Well, because my gay dad isn't going away. He's still my dad. Our family is still our family, however atypical and foreign to some.

Nineteen years ago this week, my dad spilled his secret out onto the floor of our living room. Like a pool of blood, crawling and seeping all over clean, shiny floors. I drowned in it, choked on it. I'm back now, but I'm still changing, morphing, blurring, reaching, and becoming. I stare out my kitchen window watching the leaves drift down and listen to the trees laughing, dancing and whispering their secrets.


I'm instantly transported back to that day, like a time warp. A scratch on a record blip...blip...blip or a cd that's on repeat. Rewind, play. Rewind, play. Pause. Rewind, play again. You might be talking to me, but my brain goes somewhere else for a few minutes. I'm flooded with memories that seem so close and tangible, like bubbles I can pop; yet a part of me wishes them far away, out of reach, locked up in a box buried a million miles under the sea.

As soon as the secret was out and I'd gotten permission, I fled the scene of the gory crime--the butchering of our white picket fence family.

I'm being butchered this Friday. There's a hole in my gut (an umbilical hernia), similar to the one in my heart/psyche. The hole in my abdomen will be repaired. Yet I'm not sure if my soul will ever mend? Can mesh, stitches and Percocet be the salve to soothe my other gaping wounds?

This wound is not new, this hole in my abdominal wall. I had it last year, and it was repaired. Now it's back (cue scratched record: blip...blip...blip). What is it with this repetition in my life, patterns, things that follow me and won't go away?

I had my first hernia fixed in August 2009, and it was horrifying. I've had surgeries, but this? I woke up still intubated. And paralyzed-- I couldn't even blink my eyes open or force my lashes to flutter--all I could feel was something huge jammed down my throat. Something I was supposed to just swallow. Only it was too much. I wasn't in control, I couldn't do anything. Frozen for what seemed like forever in a stony sarcophagus.

After what felt like an eternity but was likely only a matter of minutes, someone pulled the tube out. I still couldn't move my body, but somehow tears flowed and I felt them drip down my cheeks. When a nurse came to check on me in the recovery room, I was at last able to make my lips and tongue move enough to slur, "I want my husband." I'm sure it sounded nothing like that, given the drug haze, and I had to repeat myself. Once The Father Load appeared, I lost it. Still unable to really move, but I could speak---I had a voice. I went on and on about how someone messed up and I woke up with the tube still in my throat.

I am terrified this will happen again on Friday. I am terrified I am losing my voice. There is so much I want to say. I am making a promise to myself that during this hiatus while I am healing, I am going to write. You may not see it all here, but I have to stop making excuses. I think writing will heal my wounds and without a tube stuck in my throat, I have a voice, and it needs to be heard.

Are you willing to listen? Are you silencing yourself? Are there things you wish you could say? Leave them in the comments.