parents’, but because broader society didn’t understand us, and were
scared, inexplicably, of a family without a mum and a dad and a nice,
neat family tree. We performed our successes for others because we
were afraid if we weren’t perfect, people would blame my mothers’
sexuality. But we were all just flawed little people, and stories have
conflict and drama and pain. And sometimes, resolution.
Now, 13 years later, we can all sit around a dinner table for birthdays.
My mothers come to the airport together to farewell me on my longer
trips; they go to the opera together on occasion because everyone in
our family has a passion for melodrama. No friendship or relationship
is perfect, but my parents loved us kids so hard that they weren’t
willing to leave things unresolved; they rebuilt our family in a new way
and started a new chapter. And, thanks to all the lesbian emotional
processing we did during the fall-out (some stereotypes hold kernels
of truth), my understanding of adult relationships has progressed
past what I knew at 22. Their break-up wasn’t the soapbox drama
of infidelity I saw at the time – a simplistic explanation that hides
the complexity of years, the complicated dance between two women
over monogamy, sexuality, class, gender, pregnancy, birth, raising
children, migration, intimacy with friends, family obligation, work,
money, growing up and growing older.This is an edited extract from
Queerstories, out now through
Hachette. Find it at hachette.com.au
or in all good bookshops.The year after Teresa moved out of our family home, and I moved
back from uni in regional NSW to live with Louise, was the worst of
my life. I’d held on to my family’s unity to build myself up as a person.
It was my identity and I had lost it.
Also, my mothers behaved like total dickheads. Teresa lied and
cheated, and in the midst of her heartbroken breakdown, Louise lost
sight of her boundaries as my mother, told me too much and added to
the strain on my relationship with Teresa. When I tell my story, I usually
leave this part out, ‘the divorce’. I don’t tell people how we yelled and
raged, how my mothers fought over money for two years, that I only
found out how long it took because my ex-girlfriend, then a court
reporter, saw them in court with their lawyers. I don’t tell people that
in 2006, my first year of work, fresh out of uni and ready to take on the
world, Louise would climb into my bed each morning and sob and sob
and sob, grieving not only her relationship but also her oldest brother,
John, who died that same year. I’d get into my little car to drive to work,
playing the same song on repeat over and over while I sobbed as well.
With all the crying I did in cars that year, it’s a wonder I never crashed.
I leave these stories out because they aren’t the ones my community
wants to hear. They don’t fit the Love-is-Love narrative we’ve been
selling to Australia for over a decade. People want to watch the
adorable grannies, together for 50 years, finally getting hitched; they
want the little boy desperate to be a ring bearer, or indeed flower
girl, at his dads’ wedding; they want to hear how happy our childhood
was, not how it all fell apart. My siblings and I were living in three
different cities the year my parents split, and I still see us, sitting
alone in Sydney, Bathurst and Canberra, not quite able to unite
against our parents as they self-destructed. We fell so hard and fast
from the pedestal I’d placed us on.
When I don’t tell these stories, I do us a disservice. Stories aren’t
press releases for a cause. We should have never been poster
children, a position we held through no fault of our own, or our
society
was scared
of a family
without
a mum
and a dad
real life