Epiphany by Gillian

I have been fortunate enough to have several epiphanies in my life. None has taught me anything new, but simply emblazoned on my consciousness what my sub-conscious already knew.  For that reason they have a certain comic aspect. In retrospect I always envision myself at these moments as a comic strip character, slapping my forehead while a starburst leaps from my head containing those immortal words:  “Well, duh!”

The time and place of these revelations is burned in my brain the way those of our generation all remember where we were when Kennedy was shot.

I don’t think I could say I have ever had a huge epiphanic (can it be an adjective?) moment, but rather several little epiphanettes.

I was nine years old when I had my first “well, duh!” moment.

I was in church on Christmas Eve, surrounded by friends, neighbors and family lustily belting out the traditional tried-and-true carols. Even at nine I could sing them all with little attention and meanwhile was surveying the obligatory stable and manger set piece reposing on a rickety table before the old stone font. The nativity scene had been hand carved sometime doubtless during Queen Victoria’s reign and was dutifully dusted off for a few days every Christmas season. Eyeing the Baby Jesus’ tarnished wire hallow it came upon me.

Now, given the time and place one might well expect a Visitation from Christ, but I fear it was more from the Antichrist.

“This is just a load of codswallop,”  came to me in a blinding flash.  “I don’t need any of it. I will find my own way to God in my own time and my own space and the last thing I need is interference from this mumbling, bumbling old bishop.”

And here endeth my participation in organized religion.

I loved my college years. They were probably the happiest days of my life, until now that is; now is the best ever, but that’s another story. Those happy days were marred by only one thing; this man/woman business. I had no interest in any of it.  But I played my part and went on dates and petted in dark corners and hated it all.

Then suddenly, hiking beside a trickling stream on a purple hillside one weekend, it hit me  I didn’t have to  play the game. Nobody was forcing me. I could simply say “no” to the dates and the dances and the mixers, enjoy my ever widening circle of friends and revel in my new learning. That was what I was there for after all.

“Well, duh!”

I had just let the letter slip through the slot of one of those very British bright red mailboxes. The rain poured down its shiny red sides as my wet hair dripped into my eyes and I wriggled cold toes in soggy shoes.

Why had I mailed that application? I didn’t even want the job. But in a Britain still suffering from post war austerity there were not many jobs to chose from. I had graduated from college and left that particular bubble of unreality, so with wet feet now firmly on wet ground, I had to do something.

Standing staring at that dripping mailbox, all was suddenly illuminated.  I didn’t have to stay here, in this place where the future looked as gray and bleak as the weather. I was young and fit and fairly intelligent, with my shiny new degree in my back pocket I could go anywhere, do anything.   I was free.

“Well, duh!”

I loved my new job at IBM, but I had taken it for the sole purpose of saving enough money for the airfare back to Britain. After all, I had only left home for a year or so, just to see something of the world before settling down to a career and, I supposed, a family. I hadn’t emigrated. That rang too much of finality, of no return; of stinking ships’ holds and Ellis Island.

After only three months with IBM I had enough money for the fare. But if I stayed just a little longer ….

And then it was summer, and the sun shone and the mountains were beautiful, so why rush home to the cold rain of an English summer?  And then it was Fall, and the aspen trees glowed …..And I was driving down North Wadsworth one day, through the peaceful farming country that still existed in those days, and it came just like a flash of dazzling light. (Apparently epiphanies come the road to Denver as well as the road to Damascus!)  I didn’t have to leave Colorado. Ever. There was no rule, no law. I could stay here in this beautiful place where the sun shone 300 days of the year; where I had a job I loved and many wonderful friends.  Forever.

“Well, duh!”

I never should have married. At some level of consciousness I knew that before I married and for every minute that I remained married. But I took those vows seriously, had chosen my path of my own free will, and made it work.  I was happy.

Sitting in the departure lounge of Raleigh-Durham airport, waiting for a delayed flight home from a business trip, I realized with sudden blinding clarity that I didn’t want that plane to turn up. I didn’t want to go home.

When sitting for interminable hours in an airport is preferable to something else, you know there’s a whole lot wrong with the something else.  I was not happy.   Not, at least with the married part of my life.  My stepchildren, whom I would never have abandoned, were essentially grown up.  It was just my husband and I, and I didn’t want to go home.  But I didn’t have to struggle on, making it work. I would not be the first woman to get divorced, and certainly not the last.

“Well, duh!”

Once I had settled comfortably into my divorced skin, I had one last revelation to go. I was sitting on my deck with the cat on my lap and morning coffee in my hand, listening to Anne Murray tapes. Now you may not know this, but many a lesbian of my age was at one time madly in love with old Annie.  I was slowly realizing that the feelings in my groin, not entirely appropriate for six o’clock on a Sunday morning were, even less appropriately, entirely engendered by Ms. Murray.

The lightning struck.

“Oh my God! I’m gay! I’m queer! I’m a lesbian!”

Far from being scary, it was thrilling and uplifting, powerful with promise.

“Oh … my … God!”

Half the people in the world are women and a certain percentage of them feel like I do. And there is nothing in this world to stop me getting out and finding them.

“Oh … my … God!”

“Well, duh!”

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.