– Life turned out well, just not in the way I hoped
Opinions
– In Romjula it was twenty years since I realized that my plans had gone awry, writes Petter Normann Dille, priest in The Norwegian Church.
(This chronicle was first published on Midtnorsk debatt)
When I was in junior high school, I decided to come out, but only after I moved from Namsos. When I had established a life in Trondheim, or Oslo, or Copenhagen, or something. Only then could I come home, get out, and get out of there again if it was such that friends and family could not live with a gay Petter.
I myself had found that I could accept that I was queer, but I couldn’t be sure about the others in my life. I imagined that I could have a good life. A life where who I fall in love with shouldn’t matter so much.
Men in Romjula 2002 I realized that I couldn’t wait until the harvest, or next Christmas, to tell who I was. My New Year’s resolution for 2003 was; get out and take it from there.
The first attempt was during the sports gala. I was visiting my sister and saw. Ole Einar Bjørndalen won many awards and Andre Bergdølmo was the Kniksen of the year. Even I look like a coward.
Monday 20 January I broke down. I couldn’t find a way to talk myself out of the heaviness that had festered on me during the days before. In short, it went well! No one looked up to me as a son, brother, friend or colleague. Even the local church where I was a youth leader sent an SMS and said «you are cool! We’re rooting for you. Let me know if you want to talk about it!’
“Phew” I thought. Then I could bow down to everyone who mattered. In the days that followed I was taller than Galdhøpiggen with relief and joy because «everything had gone well».
Yes, those were some of the slurs in the weeks that followed. I have several experiences of being spat on, shouted at and chased after. But it doesn’t stick as a particularly traumatic experience when it happened. “I guess that’s what it’s like to be gay,” I thought, and forgot the episodes as they came and went.
Fast forward. 20 January 2013 I gather friends at home in the living room in Oslo for a party! I knocked out the back wall of an old cupboard that had to be thrown away, and put it in the doorway between the hallway and the living room. Everyone who wanted to enter the party had to come out of the closet. We clapped, laughed, toasted and celebrated my first ten years as gay.
Five years later I really wanted to repeat the success, only bigger and better! But there I was, 20 January 2018, on my first sick leave due to harassment. Why now? Surely I had never been more confident in myself and mine, stronger mentally or more in place in my own life?
maybe that’s why. Some episodes of harassing behavior in the fall of 2017 put me out of the game for a long time. At the same time that news, social media and conversations with friends overflowed with #metoo stories. Women who come forward and how unwanted sexual attention has settled as wounds and pain. Or abuse that you only realized afterwards what it really was. Retrievals that had been going back many years had made themselves felt again.
At one point I sat up on the couch and shouted at the TV “THIS IS THE SAME THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!”. It’s not entirely true because my traumas are not about unwanted sexual attention as women reported using the hashtag #metoo. The similarity lay in how old episodes became like new ones.
During this period I realized that my life will never be good in the way I hoped it would be. I hoped, all the years I was in the closet, that one day I would live a life where my sexuality and gender wouldn’t be a theme. That one day I was free from the thoughts and comments that I was prepared for when I was 18, but felt and rammed away when I was 33. That’s one of the saddest things I’ve been through in life. To let go of the hope that things would be okay one day.
It took time to get back on my feet. It was many drops that had filled a large glass over time, but now the drop that made it overflow had come. The events from when I was quite small had built up to the harvest a few years ago. I had considered bearing other people’s problems or the pain of being different a small price to pay, compared to being thrown out of home or being beaten up in town every weekend. So far I still think so. But the fact that the cost is less does not make it insignificant.
Friday the 24th June I was in Oslo and feira Pride. Around midnight I walked with a group in the direction of the London Pub to find a place to end the evening. When I saw the queues outside the places I chose to go home instead, since the next day was going to be long. A few hours later I wake up to a phone that had been buzzing all night (on silent) with messages and calls from people wondering how we were doing. I was not in the center when the shots fell, but the attack also hit those of us who or have had problems with being different. The anxiety strikes back as quickly as a bullet hits.
As an almost 40-year-old man, I regularly work to rid myself of shame and trauma others have inflicted on me, both consciously and unconsciously throughout my life. It’s sad because it’s true, but it’s a happy realization to be able to say: «It works.»
Because life was good, just not in the way I had hoped. I may just be about halfway through life, but I draw a preliminary conclusion: It is not a goal for me to live and live for all experiences that were not good. But I’ve realized that the crappy experiences don’t have to dominate, and be experienced as fresh produce every single day.
This Romjula I drove home to Otterøya with my roommate sleeping in the front seat, to celebrate the New Year with my family, and see my friends that I have had for over 20 years. Life may not have turned out the way I imagined, but I wish I could travel 20 years back in time and say to myself in Romjula 2002; “It will be alright. It will be bra. You just don’t quite know how».