When Gordon compared COVID grief to that of a parent learning their child is queer, I realized my recent habits weren’t different from what my parents did when I came out. But I’ve never been able to empathize with them until now.
I’ve introduced my parents to the person I’m going to marry, whom they love and with whom my dad pals around at his favorite hometown bars. Sure, I’ve worked it over in therapy like a piece of sticky clay. "What came as no surprise for me was, for them, the plot twist of a lifetime." Why was it three years before my mom admitted she’d been grappling with the fact that she’d never have a son-in-law? And when I came home to get over a breakup with my first girlfriend-my first love-why did I get the sense from my family that I wasn’t allowed to be sad? Why did it take them years to come to terms with who I was? Why did it take such mental gymnastics to accept the fact that their daughter wouldn’t be marrying her high school boyfriend? I was still me I was just sharing a little more information about myself. But there was an adjustment period I never understood. I never had to worry about financial insecurity as a result of coming out. After I told my parents I identified as queer, they continued to tell me they loved me, helped pay my rent, and kept me in food until I finished college. What she said when I finally came out to her-that she loved me but could I please keep wearing dresses like Portia de Rossi-was hardly the difficult part, though she had a textbook understanding of how society expects femme women to dress. She ducked into the laundry room to escape our conversation so many times, I thought every item of clothing in the house would disintegrate. When I got around to telling my mom, she already knew, likely thanks to my father, and interrupted every request I made to talk with a list of things she had to do. Then it seemed to hit him-maybe this wasn’t college experimentation after all. He said he “got it,” and I was “going through a phase.” We didn’t talk about it again until I called home two years later to say I was dating my first girlfriend. “When your child turns out differently than you imagined, which I think is true for parents when their kids come out sometimes, there’s a period of grief, not because you don’t want this kid to be who they are, but because you had pictured something else in your head,” she says.Īs Gordon spoke, I saw my dad seven years ago, at a folk music festival where, under the influence of a couple beers, I told him I wasn’t straight. The kind of grief the world is experiencing right now, Gordon says after reading the letter, is similar to what parents go through when when they find out their kid is queer. On episode five, “ 2Fast2Serious,” Gordon and Nanjiani read a letter from a listener who describes their “grief” in the time of COVID-19. I kept my COVID-related media rotation small: The New York Times, one local news source, and Staying In with Emily & Kumail, a podcast about quarantine hosted by married creative team Emily V.
I controlled the evenings’ movie selections with “light” romantic comedies, and took on writing assignments about Netflix reality dating shows so I’d have to watch mindless things “for work.” I avoided daily updates unless I had to write about them, and I began to pull away from Zoom calls when I knew my friends would want to talk about COVID.
I bought groceries for two weeks and focused on the lists, ticking off the things we’d need for our new life in quarantine. I helped my fiancé prep for minor surgery, called the rental car company so we could leave the city as soon as they were well enough to sit upright, and drove us all the way home to New England. It was the night after WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and though it hadn’t been a shock, the result of the news was me, here on this incomprehensibly expensive couch, trying to breathe through my sobs.Īfter ensuring the couch remained stainless post-panic session, my life became about tasks. I remember thinking if I got mascara on the couch, the cleaning service could take a significant chunk out of our wedding savings. I don’t think any one thought in particular drove me to sobs that morphed into a panic attack.
It’s a great concept but a bad movie, though that’s not what prompted my tears. My fiancé and I were watching the movie about the guy who realizes the Beatles never happened, so he pretends to be the one who wrote their songs. The first time I cried during the pandemic, I was sitting on my future in-laws’ white couch in their Manhattan apartment.