The high price of Living with Closets

I spent the morning writing a blog post about closets, and in great Microsoft fashion, notepad crashed while I tried to save it… or so it appears.  So, I am going to try this again because it is important to me, and I hope in some odd fashion you may find it so as well.

I am speaking of closets, by definition, is when a person decides to put certain parts of their humanity and their personal life hidden from the world at large or possibly everyone else. 

This can come about for many reasons.   Maybe an interracial family in the 60’s who can pass for one race or another and don’t want to be stigmatized or have their children bullied or harassed as they grow up.   It could be religious reasons, Christians in the early age of the Romans not wanting to fight lions just because of their faith.  Or, Jews in the time of the Inquisition having to publicly declare their Christianity to live while worshiping as Jews behind closed curtains and hidden from society.

There can be practical closets.   A person just finds out about a health ailment, and wants to deal with it and understand the implications and doesn’t want to be stigmatized with a Scarlet Letter of sorts to define them. 

But the closet on my mind, and in my heart, comes from a different place.  It probably starts in childhood with a recognition of that child that there may be something unique about them apart from the other children around them.  This could be an excellence not just the closet of what you may be thinking.  The child who is much brighter than his or her classmates and wants to fit in probably doesn’t admit to their knowledge and really wants to play better at kickball.  Or, the kid who is growing faster and realizing an athletic prowess may feel less inclined to share, especially a girl I would presume.  Or, a young male who realized they have a penchant for drawing and painting that is beyond the finger painting of his peers.

Closets come about in our lives because society wants us to fit in.  Our parents, in many cases, want us to fit in as they know being out of the main stream can cause bullying and kids can be cruel to differences from the norm.  Many of the differences above will be celebrated later in their lives, but that girl who is more interested in sports than dresses may find it a little harder to find friends on the playground.

I think the challenge of being gay, and other people who may find there is something unique about their personality, is that we are talking a closet of hiding a key element of who we are as human beings.   I am not even sure if the creation of a closet for ourselves is a conscious one.  My Grandpa said don’t be a namby pamby you want to make sure to shake hands with a firm grip.  I knew I wasn’t what he meant by a namby pamby, but I wonder if inside that child recognized my Grandpa didn’t want me to be confused with a gay male. 

The boy who early on wants to be in the kitchen with Mom baking cookies, instead of outside playing ball with Dad, is chastised by his parents to push him into a more masculine way of life.  That kid starts to build an emotional closet to hide that desire of cookies over baseball, and over time realizes that his parents and societies perception of his differences will not be good or kind.

These emotional closets are built to protect ourselves from the world.   We develop this ability to partition what is inside our mind, our hearts, our feelings and recognize early what we share will be judged and if not the norm of the world be derided.  This isn’t as teenagers this starts, this starts as children.  I realize most children must build something akin to a closet.  We are not robots and so we are all different but when that difference is as different as sexuality or a behavior that is not the norm of society that closet grows and becomes a very selective place to store parts of our own personal identity.

The harm of the closet is not limited to how we protect our sexuality and identity of who we love.  It actually becomes a comfortable way of life in that as we find other parts of our lives misunderstood we put those emotions and pieces in their as well.   Friends of mine were joking yesterday about me having to hand in my gay card at lunch cause I like the wrong version of Mame (Lucille Ball) and later in the day around decorating homes and understanding the different wall papers available.  Thankfully I am strong enough not to build a closet inside my closet (smiles).   But, imagine even in a world one expects tolerance there are closets of different kinds to be found.

There are other implications.   We learn by rote to not share emotions and feelings that we feel may make others uncomfortable.  Even, those that have nothing to do with the reason that closet was created in the first place.  This causes us to not be “known” to some in our lives as well as we would like them to.  Whether that is a grandparent who may recognize our “gayness” but we are afraid to share.  For some this could be their own parents and family, and once share they build their own walls as our closets come down.

As I venture into the second half of my life, I want to inspect what is in that closet or fortress of my mind and make sure that I identify with what I have put in there.  It not only includes my gay identity, I will keep my gay card!  But, it contains beliefs and emotions that I have held sacred and not questioned.  As I continue to embark on this journey of truth and desire for happiness I believe it will require more inspection and honest evaluation.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, comes out of the closet and is heralded as a hero.  He being the CEO of the wealthiest corporation on the planet is a hero, and signals a new level of comfort hopefully for other leaders.  But, I must say it is the kid on the playground who refuses to conform, or the flamboyant teenager who just can’t play baseball.  Or, the softball player in high school who pushes so she can try out for the baseball team instead these are also heroes as they refuse early to not let their own closets define them.  Tim Cook should be recognized as a hero, but honestly he is in a safe place to do so, hopefully his and others coming out will make it so we all dismantle our closets much earlier in our lives.