Why does my lizard brain do this?
Pride symbols and the aftermath of your husband coming out as trans
I had a really good friend who was my matron of honor in my first wedding. She slept with my husband while we were divorcing and tried to hide their new affair from me. For years after I found out that she was sleeping with the enemy, things that reminded me of her made me feel physically sick. There is an actress who resembles her who I used to like. Suddenly I couldn't watch the show this actress was on without feeling nauseous.
Some of my ex-friend's favorite things in life, like a certain animated character, became abhorrent to me. I had nothing against that actress or that character prior to getting stabbed in the back by my close friend.
Our brains are funny in that they associate anything related to intense pain with the pain itself. Its a protective mechanism, albeit a very awkward one. A cartoon character and a sitcom actor weren't going to betray me in a disgustingly horrible public way, but my lizard brain didn't know that. No amount of rational conversations with that part of my changed anything. It took years for these associations to disappear.
(On a related note, rats have a similar protective mechanism. Because they are unable to vomit, if a rat ever eats anything and then feels sick after it, they will never eat that thing or anything else that smells like it again. That rat's brain doesn't know if that food is what made them feel sick, they could have had a virus already. But the association is made because the two things happen at the same time. It keeps the rat from potentially dying from food poisoning since they are unable to vomit.)
And so it was with anything related to Pride or Pride symbols after I confronted my ex husband about him being trans. I had never had any issues with anything lgbt related. But this revelation happened during Pride month on the biggest Pride weekend in our city.
Suddenly I had an aversion to a flag for no rational reason; a flag that represented the rights and freedom my queer friends and acquaintances and strangers deserved. It's like this for many of us unfortunately. Sometimes people who were even raised by two lesbian women and were surrounded by queer people find themselves dreading the month of June.
That month, for a lot of us, is spent with our lizard brains screaming at us that some thing very emotionally disastrous is about to occur. We question our sanity, wondering if we can ever be the (admittedly imperfect) ally we thought we were before. We cringe inwardly, hoping that our friends don't notice our silence or the look on our faces as these symbols bring back memories of the destruction of our emotional safe place, of our home, our intimate partnership, and our family.
Like the cartoon character who reminded me of my “matron of dishonor”, these symbols have nothing to do with what hurt us, with what happened to us. I believe with time our lizard brains can calm down, the associations can be broken. Eventually you can and will heal. Maybe one day you can even eventually go to Pride with a queer person who is dear to you and support them. Six years later, like I did, and felt privileged to be there.
You are not crazy. You are not hateful. And its ok.