They Wrote it Off as School Stress. I Hid the Truth Out of Terror
Can you please tell me why you're crying?""Because I feel like I lost a daughter," she said.I cried, too. I had stayed quiet about being a lesbian for 12 years.
I suffered from a condition called globus throughout junior high and high school—where you feel like you literally have a globe stuck in your throat when you swallow.Doctors wrote it off as "stress" from school.Then, when I started grad school, I had severe abdominal pain.
The doctors thought it was a tumor. Eventually, a CT scan determined it was nothing.They wrote it off again as stress.But I knew what was causing this pain in my body: Stigma and the terror of being a target because I was different.I could never admit I was a lesbian.
I considered it for years but the word just kept getting stuck and harder to swallow. I kept shoving it back down. At times I felt like I was suffocating.I was hurting myself so I wouldn't hurt others.
