The Intern

In May 1994, I was hospitalized for depression and suicidal ideation. While in the hospital, no one asked me anything about my sexuality. The doctors and the nurses didn’t ask me anything about it in private. They didn’t ask me if I was seeing anyone or how long it had been sense I had gone on a date or had another human being touch me in an intimate way. The doctor and therapist I saw as an outpatient asked me about such things regularly, but going into the hospital was like going into the closet.

I was assigned to the unit for survivors of childhood trauma, and we spent much of the day in group therapy. The other straight members were encouraged to go into detail about their private lives and their past traumatic experiences. But no one asked me about my private life, and I wasn’t asked to describe what it was like growing up in a homophobic environment, even though that was a significant part of the trauma I had survived. Everybody carefully avoided the topic…except one intern.

One day this intern was interviewing me alone in my room, and he declared that I had become a homosexual after failing at being a heterosexual. I quickly informed him that I had never been a heterosexual, and that being gay had nothing to do with striking out with the girls.

I was a desperate young man, and I had turned to these so-called professionals for help, but I quickly realized that they were not ready to face my reality. It reminded me of having to work around my mother’s psychosis when I was growing up…the other significant part of the trauma that I had survived. My mother at least had an excuse. She had a serious mental illness that caused her break with reality.

A couple of years ago, I shared this story on Facebook, and someone who obviously wanted to express sympathy said that my encounter with the intern illustrated why we should be careful about what we say because those who hear us might remember what we tell them for years.

Well, yes, but that was hardly the point. I didn’t share the story because a stupid comment still hurt years later. The intern wasn’t an indelicate, rude stranger that I had come across by chance. The intern was a paid professional who was supposed to be helping me stay alive. Instead, he was just one more person who didn’t understand. Having to face this level of ignorance and lack of compassion was one of the reasons I was so uncomfortable around others.