Mythinningyearsegalley.Pdf
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
My Thinning Years My Thinning Years Starving the Gay Within >> << Jon Derek Croteau ® Hazelden Center City, Minnesota 55012 hazelden.org © 2014 by [copyright holder] All rights reserved. Published 2014. Printed in the United States of America No part of this publication, either print or electronic, may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher. Failure to comply with these terms may expose you to legal action and damages for copyright infringement. ISBN: 978-1-61649-509-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [add when available, and then delete the ISBN above the CIP] Editor’s note The names, details, and circumstances may have been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned in this publication. This publication is not intended as a substitute for the advice of health care professionals. 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 Cover design: Jon Valk Interior design: Terri Kinne Typesetting: BookMobile Design and Digital Publisher Services For my mother who saved me from disappearing, and for my husband who found me at the right time. Table of Contents Preface | xx Prologue | xx CHAPTER 1: Sex Change for a Preschooler? | xx CHAPTER 2: Take Me Out of the Ball Game | xx CHAPTER 3: The Greatest Love of All | xx CHAPTER 4: Life with Father | xx CHAPTER 5: And Then There Was Chad | xx CHAPTER 6: Running over the Creek | xx CHAPTER 7: Mr. Andover High School | xx CHAPTER 8: The Unearthing | xx CHAPTER 9: Suicide Is Painless | xx CHAPTER 10: To Bates and Back | xx CHAPTER 11: Soup for Lunch | xx CHAPTER 12: He’s Under the Bed | xx CHAPTER 13: The Mornings After | xx CHAPTER 14: Going Outward to Go Inward | xx CHAPTER 15: Letter from “the Castle” | xx CHAPTER 16: Laxatives, and the Moment of Truth | xx CHAPTER 17: Holidays on Ice | xx CHAPTER 18: Boystown | xx CHAPTER 19: An Ocean Away | xx CHAPTER 20: Risking It All | xx CHAPTER 21: The Guy in the Photo | xx CHAPTER 22: Finding Home | xx CHAPTER 23: Saying Good-bye | xx Epilogue | xx Acknowledgments | xx Resources | xx About the Author | xx Preface When my mother died in 2009, I finally accepted my own resilience. Just as I thought I’d never be able to survive living in my father’s house, or to move past my disordered eating, or to make it through Outward Bound, or to navigate living in Europe on my own, I was convinced I would never be able to survive my mother’s death—the death of my greatest champion and ally. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she inspired me, and gave me the skills—the gift—to endure, through any challenge. She made sure that I had the heart to not only survive, but thrive. My Thinning Years has been a story thirty-eight years in the making. For many reasons I held back on sharing my story. Perhaps it was fear of being rejected. Maybe it was the shame of being different. Or the guilt over facing some hard truths about myself. Probably all of it. In recent years, however, I’ve felt compelled, more as time goes on, to share these “thinning years.” If my honesty—about the darkness which once over- shadowed my life and which, years of hard work later, has transformed into something brighter—can save just one life, then I’ll know it will have been worth it. I seem to hear horrifying stories more than ever about people fac- ing hardships similar to mine: a young college student, taking his life because being gay felt too hard to live with; a twelve-year-old constantly being bullied at school because she’s a bit taller than the other girls; a young man starving himself to numb the pain of his home life. I was all of these people but something inside of me, something deep inside, made me, even in my worst moments of despair, in the deepest of doldrums, decide to let hope in. There were special people in my life who stood up for me and made me believe it would get better. Every time I hear of another life lost, I wish anew that my story might be an inspiration for others who need some hope in their lives. I feel as if even in death my mother has been encouraging me to tell ix x | my thinning years my story. Maybe she’s run into all the young people up in heaven who left us too soon. Maybe she wants me to try to inspire other people to keep holding on like I did. She taught me to be giving and loving, even when I stood to get nothing in return, even when it was risky. Writing My Thinning Years has been risky. But believing that I can help others helps me to broach that intimacy, to be brave enough to reveal my innermost thoughts. After everything I’ve seen, my mission is nothing less than to help others. I hope to reach teens, young adults, and adults alike who have suffered in their lives, or are still suffering, because of their sexual orientation or some other perceived difference, and show them that they can heal. A struggling young person, a suffering adult, a begrudging parent—I want to show them that they are all worth it. I should know. I suffered a long war against myself. I thought the self- hatred, the suicidal thoughts, the obsession with dieting and exercise, the internalized homophobia would never lift. But there were turning points, key moments in my life that tugged at my heart and convinced me to strive on. And it was worth it. Although nothing is perfect and every day still has its challenges, I am living proof that no matter how hopeless life can seem at times, with hard work and the support of loved ones, things really can, and do, get better. In The Stories We Live By, Northwestern University professor, Dan P. McAdams describes how we come to understand ourselves, psychologi- cally and emotionally, by talking about and writing about our personal stories. This is the story I live by. This is my introspective perspective based on the recollection of my memories and my truth as I experienced it. Certainly, others who have been intimately involved in my life may have a different perspective and interpretation of an event, a period in history, a conversation, or a moment in time. How we all remember things and interpret them is uniquely individual. Therefore, I’ve changed the names of the people and many of the places in this book to pro- tect others’ anonymity. The only exception is my husband, Justin, who insisted to share this journey with me openly. I have written this, from my heart and my mind to yours, hoping it moves you to embrace a child you have abandoned, or encourages you preface | xi to stop punishing yourself for just being who you are, or inspires you to open your heart to someone who is different from you. These are my “thinning years” that I share with you. Prologue In my mind, there was this glob of fat making its way around my diges- tive system, looking for a place on my body to deposit itself, and it had to be stopped. I was alternately speed walking and lightly jogging around Boston in the wee hours of the morning, obsessing over what I’d done. (I would have been full-out running if I weren’t still in my khakis, button-down sweater, and loafers from the evening before.) Oh my God, I thought, I can’t believe I gave in. My life is over. I’m disgusting. I hate myself. And for all I know, semen has as many grams of fat as CREAM CHEESE. I need to burn this off now! For a while I’d been limiting myself to a maximum of five grams of fat a day, but I felt more at ease, safer, when I kept it closer to zero. Consume more than that, and I wouldn’t be able to stand myself, like how I felt right then, frantically wandering around Boston in the early morning light. I vowed to run again, more heavily, when I returned home to Andover later that day. Maybe I’d keep it up for two hours this time and really sweat. Anything to keep that fat glob from finding a home on my belly. It was seven in the morning, and after rehashing the graver implica- tions of my previous evening’s transgressions for a solid hour, I’d moved on to berating myself for the dietary consequences of my actions. When I’d woken, startled, at six, with my skin literally sticking to Paul’s naked body, I could no longer escape the ugly truth: At nineteen, in the wake of my first sexual encounter ever, I was now without question what my father had most feared and strictly forbidden—a faggot. If he found out— when he found out—he was going to kick my ass. I was paralyzed, haunted by the paranoid fantasy that my father—big, imposing, a volunteer athletic coach in my hometown—was somehow there in the room with us, perhaps under the bed. Or outside in the hall- way. Maybe in the lobby. Of course I knew, in my head, that he was safely xiii xiv | my thinning years in his bed thirty minutes away, at home in Andover and obviously not anywhere near the neighborhood of the college I was visiting.