Happy, Well Adjusted Kids

If you spend a minimum of five minutes reading threads from posts regarding homosexual parenting you are sure to find more than one comment from someone that says something along the lines of “I know a wonderful gay/lesbian couple with kids and their kids are so happy and well adjusted!”

Chances are that if you had met me as a child you probably would’ve thought to yourself I was happy, and well adjusted. I was extremely outgoing. I didn’t know what a stranger was and I loved talking to people. I still do.

As a child and adolescent I laughed. A lot. I’m pretty sure my laughter got on people’s nerves, and a teacher, whom I loved, would joke about knowing where I was in the building because she could hear my laughter.

So, I wasn’t happy, and well adjusted?

Well, no. Not exactly. All that laughter and all that chipperness was hiding a child who was emotionally distraught and very alone on the inside. I used the bubbly Brandi to hide the miserable Brandi. The Brandi who wrote in her diary in the sixth grade that she just wanted to go live with Jesus in Heaven because there she wouldn’t have to face the pain anymore.

What pain? The pain of being unable to tell anyone how I felt for fear of losing everything I had. The pain of having no idea who the other half of me was and a mother who refused to tell me. The pain of having a step mother who wanted desperately to be my other parent but whom I completely rejected because I was supposed to have a mommy and a daddy, not two mommies. The pain of felling like an outcast, and seeing my friends live a life I fantasied about every night as I fell asleep. The pain of being terrified a man would never love me the way I needed so desperately to be loved.

I’m ok with people saying I have daddy issues. They have no idea. I’m ok with people saying I’m a spoiled brat who doesn’t appreciate what I had for talking about this. I’m basically to a point where I’m ok with anything anyone spews at me, because at the end of the day, unless they lived it, they have absolutely no clue what my reality was like and anything they say is simply an opinion. And from now on the opinions of others will not stop me from speaking my truth and sharing it, because I know that my truth is shared by a plethora of other “happy, well adjusted kids” who at some point in their lives might need the help and courage to talk about their own reality.

The numbers are growing, unfortunately, and at some point in the future there won’t be a way to shut them all up. Please don’t sit there and tell me that the child/ren of a man who used to be a woman, but wanted a baby, and is married to a woman is happy and well adjusted. Or the sperm bank babies of three women who want to live together as wives are happy and well adjusted. You get the idea, and quite frankly, that’s really not for anyone else to decide.

I guess to sum it all up, never judge a book by its cover.

 

Brandi