By Angela N.
Choosing to be more visible at work was, in many ways, more complicated than coming out as a widow, which is its own coming out of sorts. I work at a theatre and there are many LGBTQ+ employees on our small team. It should be easy, stepping into the full-color spotlight on the stage alongside everyone else. But it feels more vulnerable somehow. Like flipping a rock in the woods and revealing the complicated dark underbelly, squirming with life. Essential, a core part of the ecosystem, but ugly. Better to remain in the dark. A cat fully sprawled with its soft belly revealed but fully prepared to swat away the danger, claws held back but ready to pop out at any moment.
When my husband died, it wasn’t simple either. He was an alcoholic. We were in the middle of a divorce because I couldn’t continue to watch him slowly kill himself, but there was nothing that I could do to save him. He was never fully comfortable with my bisexuality, even though he was aware of it from the start of the relationship and I’ve always been a very monogamous person. I loved him—but it was difficult. I couldn’t feel fully visible without him feeling sensitive that it’d mean I wanted someone else. We both knew that if the relationship ended, I might never date another man again. But that wasn’t a commentary on the love I had for him. I like to think that underneath the alcohol, the self-hate, and deep insecurity, he knew that.
I didn’t date until almost a year after his passing, while I went through the full range of self-doubt around my widowhood: When was too early? How would it change how people saw my relationships, both past and present? Here was this brand-new layer of invisibility. “Her husband died and she turned gay,” I imagined his family thinking. “Maybe that’s why he was an alcoholic; she probably never actually loved him the whole time.” I never fully hid who I was, and most people I was friends with on social media had probably already come to the conclusion that I wasn’t entirely straight, but there’s still something different about tagging a picture of you kissing your girlfriend on the same Facebook where you’re still connected as “in a relationship” and marked both as a widow to your almost ex-husband. But you can’t be marked as a widow and in another relationship on Facebook. I’ll never not be a widow. It’s a separate kind of erasure.
To bare it all at work felt terrifying. To be truly seen, after so long being invisible, is indescribable. Our annual gala was coming up, and as a fundraiser it’s our biggest event of the year. It’d gotten too exhausting hiding who I am. I brought my girlfriend. I introduced her as such to board members and donors. I let go. I wore a long bright red dress; she wore a similar one in a deep burgundy. The spotlight was on us, but it felt warm and beautiful and free, instead of the cold isolating glare that I’d come to expect and fear. I was all on display. Wife, widow, girlfriend. All of me. And I’ve never felt more grateful to be visible.
Originally from Buffalo, New York and currently living in Connecticut in the U.S., Angela N. (she/they) is a full-time fundraiser by day and a part-time Escape Room Operator and creative by night.