THE TURNING POINT
by Lorinda Boyer
I put the baby down and tell my husband I’m going for a walk. He doesn’t look up from the screen. His thumbs fly rapidly from button to button, lost in a world of video games. The glow from the television lights his face, and for a moment, I wonder if he even hears me.
I step out the back door into the star-filled night. The warm air envelops me like a hug, and I inhale deeply. The farther from the house I get, the quicker I walk—down the street, around the corner, over the bridge. I know the way by heart. My feet could take me there blind.
The apartment building is old, sagging, littered with broken furniture and trash left by careless tenants. I pick my way across cracked pavement and tangled roots until I see the sliding glass door left open just a crack, a quiet signal that I’m expected. I push it open and slip inside.
A box fan roars in the corner. A cat rolls lazily on the carpet, oblivious to the noise. Candy wrappers, socks, and paperbacks clutter the floor—a chaos so unlike my own ordered life of casseroles and folded laundry. I step carefully until I reach her bed. Robin is waiting for me, wrapped in a tangle of blankets and pillows. When I fall into her arms, burying my face in her neck, the air finally returns to my lungs. Here, I can fully breathe.
The clock above the bed relentlessly counts down the minutes, reminding us of every borrowed second. At last, reluctantly, I know I must go. I pull on my shirt; her arms wrap around my waist from behind. “Don’t go,” Robin whispers. Her voice cracks on the plea. The tears are never far behind.
“I have to,” I reply, though it feels like a lie. I don’t want to go. I never want to go. But I move quickly, untangling myself from her arms, slipping out the door into the night.
By the time I return home, I’m breathless, trembling. I ease the back door shut and cross the kitchen floor. Music blares from the living room; my husband is still engrossed in his game. His world has not changed, but mine has. And before I reach our bed, I’m staggering under the weight of my shame.
Each week I begin afresh. I take my place among a conversion therapy group I’ve willingly joined. Listening to testimonies of “former homosexuals,” clutching my notebook filled with confessions, I cling feverishly to the promises of revision. And every night, I lay in bed begging God to take away my desires. Make me pure. Make me whole. Make me straight. But the prayers never last. The shame never loosens. Always, inevitably, I find myself back in Robin’s arms.
After nearly three years of meeting weekly in the dark basement of the church, the leader of my group pulls me aside. “Lorinda, you must sign a contract promising you will abstain from this relationship. If you will not, you must leave the group.”
My eyes fill with tears as I read it. Abstain. That is the best they can offer. A lifetime of denial. A lifetime of no. I cannot breathe. The air thickens around me, and I want to scream.
My turning point was not a single leap but a series of small cracks in the wall I had built around myself. The walk under the stars. The contract I refused to sign. The fury that rose in my chest when I realized abstinence was my only option. Piece by piece, the wall crumbled. And when it finally fell, I stepped out into a new life. I came out. I left behind the weight of shame, and I rose.
I tell you this now, years later, as a woman who no longer begs to be changed. I no longer stretch my arms toward the ceiling, begging for proof that God hears me. I no longer believe that love is something to repent for. I believed I was living two lives. But really, I was standing on the edge of one life ending and another beginning. The turning point was already underway.
LORINDA BOYER writes books and poetry in the rainy Pacific Northwest. Fueled by coffee and chaos, she runs for fun and still forgets her grocery lists.
