Rejection

Life lesson: Sometimes there is no refuge for those who are different.

There is a commotion on the lake. Language from the geese I haven’t heard before.

The geese are gathered at the shore. Some are picking their way up the rocky bank. The goose that’s verbal keeps on honking and making semi-honking noises. What message is this?

An obvious family climbs up the bank. They are going to a grassy area on top.

Another family starts up the bank.

What? There is Alone Goose on the outskirts of this group. It is obvious who it is. It doesn’t try to join either family. It stays to the side. It flies to a different location. Wow, it can fly!

The second family traverses the bank. I can see them all on top picking at the grass.

Alone Goose has not been permitted to use the trail the others have taken. It has had to pick out its own trail, through brush and tall grass. I can spot it on top. It is smaller than any of the others.

Both families waddle away, intent on another location where the grass is greener.

Alone Goose follows at a distance.

It tears me up, this rejection. It is too close to home. It is how it was back then, before. By the “other universe.” Until I found my true love.

I have elaborated in my article Crisis in Loneliness: Aging Lesbians Are Us, how we LGBTQIIA+ have, out of necessity, created a separate universe for ourselves.

In recent years, we have been accepted as commonplace by some, however, we are still separate in a mixed group, a matter of curiosity to some. Different.

Some of us are still being openly rejected, as with the Trans Library Story groups. And some are being more than rejected, some are actually hunted down with guns.

For sure we are dangerous. We are stealing wives and husbands away from their marriages and corrupting children. Right.

What we do present now that we are no longer hiding is a target for bullies. We are a unique group, different enough to garner attention. A group that can be utilized and be perceived as dangerous to society, and to children. A group to be used to stir up hate, a group that presents an excuse to send a message. You are not WASP, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You are not pure. You need to be eliminated.

This is dangerous thinking, creating violent actions. My spouse would not have permitted any of that around her. She would have commanded it to stop by taking necessary reversal actions.

The geese have their own methods. They have no guns. Their manner of dealing with Alone Goose is to shun it. Leave it to its loneliness, its desperate need to belong, to be accepted.

Unfortunately, there are no other rejected geese in this location. Alone Goose cannot join a “separate universe,” as we can.

So far Alone Goose has survived. Will we?

Let me know how you are doing. I care.

Sincerely,

Lynn Brooke

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Photo Credit: © 2023 Rachel Gareau