EM: Facing Death
The door slammed shut with a loud bang as a seventeen year old Kim darted across the lawn of her mother’s home. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and ran down her cheeks as she ran down the vacant street, grateful that no one was around to see her fleeing her mother’s residence.
“Don’t you even think of coming back here until you’ve prayed long and hard about this, Kimberly. If this filth continues, you will no longer have a place in this house. My daughter will not be one of those, those… faggots!” The young girl choked back sobs as her mother’s hateful words rang in her ears, over and over again.
Kim had finally worked up the courage to come out to her mother. It was something she had been struggling with for years, deciding when would be a good time to tell her. She finally realized that there was never going to be a “good” time. There was never a good time to tell someone you love something that would inevitably damage the relationship for a very long time. Possibly forever.
The young woman received several threats throughout the next year. Instead of helping her daughter dodge the many verbal lashings and hate mail she received, Lorena Legaspi handed every piece of mail and every phone call to her daughter, trying desperately to “get her through this horrible phase” as fast as she could. The priest at her mother’s church called every week, promising her “eternal damnation” if she failed to see the error of her sinful ways.
Immediately after coming out to her mother, Kim spent several weeks at the home of her uncle Robert-her father’s brother-hoping it would give her mother a chance to come to terms with her daughter’s sexuality and her own deeply-rooted Catholicism. Kim returned home to find that the outside of her house had been vandalized numerous times. The words “queer” and “slut” had been scrawled in red spray paint across the front of the house. The message on the door of the garage read, in large, menacing print, “Death to the dyke.”
Kim Legaspi
ER
354 words
“Don’t you even think of coming back here until you’ve prayed long and hard about this, Kimberly. If this filth continues, you will no longer have a place in this house. My daughter will not be one of those, those… faggots!” The young girl choked back sobs as her mother’s hateful words rang in her ears, over and over again.
Kim had finally worked up the courage to come out to her mother. It was something she had been struggling with for years, deciding when would be a good time to tell her. She finally realized that there was never going to be a “good” time. There was never a good time to tell someone you love something that would inevitably damage the relationship for a very long time. Possibly forever.
The young woman received several threats throughout the next year. Instead of helping her daughter dodge the many verbal lashings and hate mail she received, Lorena Legaspi handed every piece of mail and every phone call to her daughter, trying desperately to “get her through this horrible phase” as fast as she could. The priest at her mother’s church called every week, promising her “eternal damnation” if she failed to see the error of her sinful ways.
Immediately after coming out to her mother, Kim spent several weeks at the home of her uncle Robert-her father’s brother-hoping it would give her mother a chance to come to terms with her daughter’s sexuality and her own deeply-rooted Catholicism. Kim returned home to find that the outside of her house had been vandalized numerous times. The words “queer” and “slut” had been scrawled in red spray paint across the front of the house. The message on the door of the garage read, in large, menacing print, “Death to the dyke.”
Kim Legaspi
ER
354 words