Nothing Wrong With Loving

Chapter 2: Lies

        June 16 of 2017 shall be remembered in our town as the day that a same-sex couple got married at our town's church.

It was the first time.

It wasn't a local couple, though. Apparently, they were from Manchester but they came a few years back and loved it so they decided to tie the knot here. I didn't understand why here but it wasn't for me to understand.

A bunch of local people went over to see what the fuss was all about, my friends included. Some said it was just a wedding, some said they wanted to see if it was true gay men had a good fashion sense and behaved the way they showed on TV. Some just wanted to see who "the woman in the relationship" was. Ceci wanted to see if she could throw confetti at the couple and wish them a happy married life even though she didn't know them at all.

Me? I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

More like I needed to see it.

To see two people showing the world that the only important thing to them was how much they loved each other, no fear, no hesitation, just their love. I wanted to see it because I wanted to know it was real, that it could happen, that it did happen.

And when I saw them walking out of the church, when people threw confetti at them, and one of them, the one with brown skin and a beautiful radiant smile, leaned in to kiss his husband, I felt something between the lines of joy and fear. I was euphoric but I was scared.

No one really had a "bad" reaction to the couple, not much of the people my age seemed to care and to see that made me feel hope for a second. I could taste something that felt a lot like freedom but then when I looked around the crowd, I found a familiar face that stood out. She was far away, watching with a frown.

I felt trapped.

My mother stood there surrounded by a bunch of middle-aged people, they all had this disgusted look on their face. I felt so embarrassed to see it. How can someone be so hateful they'd spend hours out in the street trying to get a glimpse of someone else's happiness just to whisper hateful words and spread ignorance as they go? What was it that was done to them that they couldn't stand seeing other people happy without wanting to ruin it for them?

Fair enough, Mum wasn't talking, she wasn't laughing and pointing rudely at the grooms but she was there with a nasty scowl on her face. They were all hypocrites. What was more infuriating about it was that come Sunday morning and they'd think themselves the perfect Christians. Hypocrites, all of them... my mother included.

I watched my mother, watched the air of superiority and disgust roam around her posture and I felt trapped. The worst part was that I couldn't say she doesn't know better or something that could somehow excuse my mother's behaviour because that woman was the smartest person I've ever met. She was a strong woman, she was smart, she was educated, she fought for her rights as a woman, she fought for people's rights, she fought for equality and yet there she stood. Practically erasing every single good thing she ever fought for.

Watching her right at that moment, seeing the disgust in the eyes of those around her, I wondered if she knew how she looked. If she knew what she was doing. I had many good memories of my mother, I adored that woman with every beat of my heart but loving her was like... loving two different people at the same time and it was exhausting.

One moment she could be loving, she could be soft and caring and then something would switch in her. She'd turn inside out in her skin and the result of it was something in the body of my mother but harsh and ugly, foreign yet familiar. Sometimes I wondered if she was always like that and if maybe I only began to notice recently.