A family is meant to love you unconditionally, but what happens when they don’t?

When my mother walked in on me and my friend, her reaction was exactly as I had feared for so many years. I can still hear her screams, her prayers to god – a response typical of a Filipina matriarch – and then the dreaded words: “Get out of my house.” Frightened and ashamed, I grabbed my car keys and left. Everything had changed in an instant, yet in other ways, it was a typical day. I went to my mundane job at an outlet clothing store and folded jeans. With each pair, carefully creased and placed neatly on the pile, the enormity of what had happened sank in. My own mother, whom I loved with every bit of my soul, had thrown me out. Thoughts flooded my mind: Where do I go? I don’t have any clothes. She’s going to tell all the aunties and everyone is going to know. I can’t go back to school.

After my shift, I went home to grab the things I’d need to start my new life. To my utter surprise, she had entered a stage of complete denial – another trait typical of a Filipina mother. It was as if what had transpired that morning was a distant nightmare. She was somehow a heightened version of herself. She shouted in her thick Filipina accent to grab the rice for dinner and from that moment on the events that had transpired that morning were erased from our history. I felt simultaneously lucky and broken, but all I could do was go with it. It was then that I understood that the people I had perceived as my family were not my family after all. There were limitations to their love and understanding. A chasm formed between us and as I gazed down into its abyss, I grew sadder every day. My stepfather was a bitter, homophobic, racist and violent man. In the neighbourhood where I grew up, there was a fair amount of gang violence. I didn’t feel safe in my house or outside of it.

My best friend at the time, Dinah, lived about two hours away. We had been in and out of each other’s lives, but whenever we reunited it was as if no time had passed at all. I called her to meet up. Sitting across from her at a table at Chuck E. Cheese, I told her I was gay and she said, “Duh, bitch,” and gave me a hug. It was the kind of hug you’d expect from your mother when you scrape your knee or experience your first heartbreak. The sort of hug that said, “I got you.” She had no requisite responsibility for me, like that of a parent or a biological sister – no mandatory promise of unconditional love, yet she gave it freely. She would later become a staple in my chosen family.

RuPaul famously says, “As gay people, we get to choose our family.” For so many in the LGBTQIA+ community, our biological family – those who swore to love and protect us from the moment they brought us into this world – fail to fulfil that promise when they find out who we are. Being cast out from one’s home is a trauma that stays with you, and irrevocably changes who you are. For many of us, this trauma also sparks a search for a new, chosen family.

After my meeting with Dinah, I got a job at Urban Outfitters. In the late 1990s, the retail chain was filled with eccentric people –people from different backgrounds and ethnicities, representing a multitude of genders. These people, by and large, had one thing in common: they were queer. I was so nervous to enter a space where I could finally be myself. One of my colleagues, Pedro, soon introduced me to his group of friends, a community who lifted me up in ways I never thought possible while fully seeing and accepting me. We fought, we cried, we were there for each other through achievements and failures.

For many queer youths, after being disowned and cast out, we run to a place where we’ll find our people. Sometimes its a “Gaybourhood”, an area of town that’s a safe haven for queer people. For some it’s ballrooms – underground events pioneered by trans women of colour where you can express yourself through performance in ways you never dared to dream. For others, it’s the drag community, where queens can find their power and their truth. Drag families – in which “mothers” pass down their art to their children – offer strength and support. So often these families have a particular style or aesthetic; a family resemblance. For many queer youth, finding a chosen family is a matter of life and death.

Still, sometimes our blood family surprises us. Years after that horrific day, when I finally did “officially” come out to my mother, I was met with love and support. In the years before she passed away, I felt closer to her than ever before. Perhaps if I would have let her in sooner, we would have had more years together in this new, open relationship. Seeing her relationship with my husband flourish filled my heart with more love than I thought possible . My mother, while always my family, also became a part of my chosen family. I would choose her over and over again.