My family has been estranged from me for most of my life. That word—estranged—sounds tidy, like it was a clean break. It wasn’t. It was a thousand little cuts, quiet exiles, and whispered reminders that I was never going to belong. I never really fit there. Maybe it was who I was. Maybe it was me being gay. Maybe it was a multitude of things. Whatever the cause, I was always the black sheep in a pasture that insisted on being beige.
I’ve written about pieces of it before, about how a family can feel less like a home and more like a museum you’re not allowed to touch. But the experience comes back into focus when you watch someone else’s life unfold next to yours. I saw my fiancé share our news—that we’re getting married—with his family. I saw genuine joy: the hugs, the tears, the laughter that doesn’t need explanation. They were happy for him, not in spite of him. It felt like watching sunlight enter a house where the curtains had always been nailed shut.
Then I told my family. Radio silence. A thumbs-up emoji. A clipped “ok.” You would think I had delivered the worst news imaginable. When I told a few of them I had cancer, at least they faked sympathy. How hard is it to say congratulations—even if you don’t mean it? Apparently harder than burying me politely.
It’s a crazy thing, being gay in America. You live in a country where rainbow flags fly in store windows during Pride month, but step into the wrong church or the wrong family reunion and suddenly you’re an existential crisis in human form. Religion’s hold on people doesn’t just warp their politics; it disfigures their ability to love. It teaches them to withhold the simplest words—“I’m happy for you”—because blessing my joy might mean betraying their doctrine.
The hypocrisy isn’t subtle. I have cousins who’ve been married four times. Four. Each time, the family threw the whole shebang: showers, registries, receptions, vows rewritten like drafts of a bad novel. No one hesitated. No one offered a thumbs-up instead of a toast. But when I say I’m marrying a man—a great man, to the person who makes me feel safe and seen—I can’t even get a congratulations. My love is judged more harshly than their divorces. My commitment is treated like contagion.
It’s tempting to keep asking why. Why is love harder to accept than illness? Why is queerness harder to process than addiction, betrayal, or abandonment—all of which have been forgiven many times over in my family tree? But the answer is written into their silence: because this is the one thing they can’t rewrite, can’t “pray away,” can’t narrate as a temporary flaw. My marriage is permanent. My happiness is public. And nothing terrifies a religious family more than a joy they cannot deny.
The absurdity is that marriage, for them, is a badge of legitimacy. For me, it’s treated like vandalism. That’s the math of growing up queer in a family like mine: you learn that your survival was barely tolerable, but your happiness is unacceptable.
Luckily, it’s not for them. It’s not about them. I don’t need their applause, their casseroles, their speeches. What I need is already here: a partner who doesn’t flinch, a chosen family who shows up, and a life built without permission slips.
And maybe that’s the quiet victory in all of this. They don’t have to say “congratulations.” I already know the word. I’ve built a life that deserves it. And I’ll say it to myself if I have to.