These days, when I listen to NPR on my commute to and from work, I’m not usually crying. In fact, I’m barely listening. Some days I’m trying to listen but I’ve got a kid or two hounding me for snacks, or trying to get me to listen to an endless monologue on Minecraft. Other days when I’m particularly preoccupied, I catch myself not listening at all. I realize I’ve had no idea what anyone has been saying for at least five minutes, and I push the button on my console and note the relief that silence brings.
But on my Friday morning commute last week, this interview with Billy Bean cut through all of the static in my brain. Billy Bean was a Major League Baseball player in the nineties who came out as gay four years after retiring. In the interview, he tells the story of losing his partner to AIDS, and then opening the baseball season the next day. Because he was closeted, no one on his team knew anything about his loss.
Bean has recently been hired as Major League Baseball’s LGBT ambassador. Can we pause for a moment and let that sink in, because still, four days later, I’m still experiencing cognitive dissonance. Major League Baseball has hired an LGBT ambassador. What world am I living in?
I choked up at several moments in the interview, and was reminded that during the years when the push for same-sex marriage was gathering momentum, I was often listening to NPR and crying in my car. The tears seemed to bubble spontaneously from a mysterious underground source. One moment I’d be vaguely happy while listening to a report about the Marriage Equality Act in New York State, and the next moment there’d be an interview with some lesbian couple in their seventies and I’d be pulling into the parking lot, having to take a few minutes to sit there and wipe the snot from my nose. I’m not sure it would be accurate to say I was crying for joy, though I certainly wasn’t crying out of sadness.
I remember leaving work one afternoon and starting my car while Melissa Block was mid-interview with Dan Savage discussing the It Gets Better Project. I listened along, happy and dry-eyed until the interview was over and Melissa Block read his bio. “Columnist Dan Savage along with his husband Terry Miller created the It Gets Better Project.” It was the word husband than got me. I cried so hard I shuddered. Dan Savage lives about 65 miles away from me and at the time of the interview gay marriage was still illegal in our state. So it startled me to hear a major news outlet refer to Terry Miller as his “husband” as if it were a normal, legitimate, everyday thing.
Sometimes, I guess, we don’t know how much something aches until we attend to it. When I was a child I noticed that when I had an accident—if I fell hard on my butt, or bonked my head—I wouldn’t cry at first. “Are you okay?” another kid might ask me. I’d nod that I was fine as the tears gathered in my eyes. It was like the pain didn’t happen until it was noticed.
In the nineties and early aughts as I was coming of age, gay marriage struck me as a hypothetical goal at the end of a long road. Having my partnerships go unrecognized was an inequality that I expected to live with for the rest of my life. But apparently I had more feelings about it than I ever knew. Each instance of crying in my car—and there were dozens—was a letting go of an ache I never realized I carried.
At the end of his NPR interview, Billy Bean talks about walking through the Major League Clubhouse for the first time as his “whole self,” a self where he can be known as Major League player and a gay man. The phrase whole self makes me think about how we fragment our identities, and how at first, perhaps, that fragmentation creates a sense of numbness more than pain. When we are finally whole or at least engaged in the act of healing, of fusing the selves we’ve separated, that’s when all the pain comes rushing to the wound. Sometimes the healing hurts more than the rupture.
Jennifer Berney 
And now I’m crying.
This was great. I related to every word.
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Thank you–glad I’m not alone.
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I loved this, Jen. You expressed so well something I’ve been thinking on a lot lately.
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Thank you, Jenn, for reminding all of us of the struggle to live mindfully in a society that is backwards, prejudicial, and sometimes unforgivingly slow to acknowledge anything that doesn’t fit the norm. Just yesterday I saw a happy couple walking down the street, hand in hand, with huge smiles on their faces. He was African American and she was Caucasian. I had a momentary bell go off in my head that rang out ‘things have shifted since my father-in-law dismissed his daughter for dating men of color 20 years ago’ . Thank Goddess for the progress that has been hard fought by those who are courageous, quietly determined, loudly advocating while they dedicate themselves to living their lives truthfully. Thank you for your voice, your words and your contributions to my life.
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Thanks for visiting!
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So true! We oftentimes don’t realize the burden and tensions we have carried until they are no longer there. And tears of relief form spontaneously. It really is amazing to think about the progress that has been made in the past 20 years! Sometimes we focus so much in the setbacks, it’s good to be reminded of our success. Great post!
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Yes, it’s amazing to me how far we’ve come. I have to pinch myself sometimes.
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The way you described that moment when you have yourself together until someone asks, “Are you okay?” was perfect.
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Thanks–I’m a klutz, so I’ve had plenty of those moments. 😉
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Loved this… “Sometimes, I guess, we don’t know how much something aches until we attend to it” and the idea that sometimes its the healing that hurts more. Makes me think of times when I’ve been hurt but it took me awhile to even know what had happened. My brain may not have registered it but my body sure did and its in the healing that the poison gets seeped out… that the hurt gets to be felt and finally leave the body. Beautiful, poignant post, Jenn. I love that the world has changed enough so that your relationships get to be recognized by all too.
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“It’s in the healing that the poison gets seeped out”–such a neat way to think about it. My feelings and how they interact with my body are still such a mystery to me.
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PS. Congrats on the new contributing blogger gig!! They’re a lucky publication to have you.
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Thanks–I’m excited to have a home-away-from-home (er, blog-away-from-blog?)!
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I remember my sister falling down the stairs. I saw her sit up without a peep, look to the left, look to the right, and as soon as she heard my mother’s voice, burst into tears.
Beautiful, heartfelt post.
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Such a great little story. Reminds me of the silent scream which my younger son is an expert in. He will start crying with his entire face, but I can count to ten before any sound comes out. It’s the worst.
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I know the feeling. My in-laws have had temporary custody of my children for about a year. I was numbed by hard work, just trying to get13th through to the end. It was when I was on the witness stand that I was asked about the sacrifices made and the camping trips missed, and I started to cry.
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Wow, I can picture it. Often it all comes rushing in at the most inopportune moments.
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I’m an avid NPR listener and I missed this one, thanks for sharing. There’s nothing like being your “whole self”.
http://windycitywardrobe.com
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Yes–it would be so great if we could feel that wholeness everywhere. The world seems to want to fragment us in so many ways.
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You were never alone.
When my first grandbaby was really little, she would lose her footing and fall on her butt, very startled. (I think she was almost as startled to have been standing upright in the first place. Everything was new! Everything!) Her face would do that soundless Thing and then one of her parents would say, kind of musically, “Up again!” and she would get up again and everybody would celebrate for a few seconds.
Pre-grief momengs. Circumvented. Saved for later, when she’ll be driving her car and hear something on the radio.
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Oh, there’s nothing I hate more than a soundless cry. Stump is the king of those!
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