They Wrote it Off as School Stress. I Hid the Truth Out of Terror

I was 28 years old when I came out to my mom. When I told her I was a lesbian, she cried. Hard.

As her tears kept falling, I said: "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. And so they wouldn't me. Eventually, I couldn't do it any longer.

Fast forward to now. Last week, I was invited to a webinar hosted by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the surge in violence against the LGBTQ community.

The takeaway was this: Violence and violent threats targeting LGBTQ communities is at an all-time high. And federal threat monitoring has shown that these threats are incredibly tied to domestic violent extremists and hate crime actors.

The key driver—and the ultimate irony? Extremists think LGBTQ people like me are a threat.

Yes, we're the threat.

I can tell you that in my entire life, I have never felt like a threat. My family felt like a threat, and so did society—they could hurt me. That's why I hid all those years. And I'm not the only one.

In 2020, Harvard Medical Magazine reported that the stress of hiding and living with chronic stigma could take an average of 12 years off an LGBTQ person's life. Think about that—more than a decade of life lost because of fear and stigma.

When that article was published, I was working with assisted living communities, helping them become more inclusive of LGBTQ people. I had a grant to do my research and yet leadership was skeptical because they didn't think LGBTQ people were living in their communities.

After a series of conversations, they gave me 45 minutes to go into each of their communities and talk about LGBTQ people and why creating more welcoming and safe communities mattered.

The statistics are shocking:

• 56 percent of LGBTQ people experience discrimination from healthcare professionals;
• 48 percent of LGBTQ adults don't come out to their doctors because they're afraid their care will get worse, and
• More than 60 percent of LGBQ people attempt suicide within five years of realizing they are LGBQ.

As a researcher, I'd share these statistics and get comments like, "Why would anyone choose this life knowing they'd lose 12 years?" or "If we allow LGBTQ into our communities, will everybody get HIV?"

I'd think: "How can people not be moved by these numbers? Can't they see these are real people behind these statistics? How much do they even know about LGBTQ people?"

What I realized is that a lot of people simply don't have a personal connection with someone who's LGBTQ. And the whole idea is so foreign to them: It's scary. It's threatening. All they have are images and stories they've been told to generate fear.

And that's the problem with data and statistics about groups of people. It's so easy to look away and disconnect when you hear general numbers about people you don't know.

At least, you don't think you know them, but you do. They are your co-workers, family members, and other hidden members of your community who want to be seen and embraced.

The rhetoric surrounding the LGBTQ community right now is ineffective and dehumanizing. If this rhetoric is not stopped and the narrative changed, it will lead to more hate and senseless violence against innocent people.

This hate is fueled by fear. Yet fear is just an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, or a threat. That's the key word that must be broken open.

Fear of the unknown is real. But fear can be stopped before it leads to hate or violence.

Over the years I would go back to that initial conversation with my mom. "What did my mom lose?" I'm still here. I didn't kill myself (even though I thought it about a lot).

My mom never lost me, but she felt like she lost an image of me. I was a threat to her, and my family—they could no longer be the "traditional" family.

But she (and they) eventually realized they had to fall in love with me differently to stop their own fear.

How'd my mom do it? She let a new story about me emerge.

That mattered because stories are a way of creating community. So for people whose stories are never fully told, which is the case for a lot of LGBTQ people, they can never fully belong. Because their story will be told for them—incompletely—so that they remain as a stigmatized threat.

I could have framed this article on the need for long-overdue policies to protect LGBTQ people from ongoing discrimination and violence. I could have discussed the challenges of legislating about the way people think and feel. Or I could have written about the need to create a culture where people aren't afraid to be who they are and to love who they want.

Those topics are essential and necessary. But they're conversation stoppers until we recognize that we need to talk about more than numbers, statistics, and legislation. We need to talk about people—some we know and love, and some we don't see—and their stories.

Because these people are human and they're hurting—emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

What do I wish you knew about LGBTQ people?

Don't be afraid, don't feel threatened. We're not scary, and we're not that different. We're certainly not a threat. We want the same. We want the same things as you: We want to love, and be loved, we want careers, families, faith, friends. We want to feel safe.

What do I wish you'd do after reading this?

Ask questions. Invite us in. Let us be loved for who we are. Help us stop the fear before it leads to more threatening rhetoric and acts of violence.

Carey Candrian, PhD (she/her) is an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine. She is on the board of directors at GLMA: Health professionals advancing health equity and VP of the lesbian health fund.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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