Craigslist Confessional

by Helena Dea Bala

  My mom, my four siblings, and I lived on the top floor of a three-story apartment building. When the NATO bombing started in 1999, the occupants of the second and third floor all moved down to the first-floor apartment—there were twenty-two of us altogether who slept there at night in order to avoid danger from possible air strikes. Actually, I don’t even know if we slept, because it would have been impossible, space-wise. We blanketed the windows of all the rooms so that there were no lights visible from the outside. We could feel the windows shaking, which is how we knew that the bombing was close by. Each morning after, we would listen to the radio to keep informed about what was happening—where the skirmishes had been, how many had died. This went on for seventy-eight days.

  School was canceled, so we kids were sometimes allowed to play outside during the day. When the sirens signaling an impending attack would go off, we’d all rush inside. The phones were disconnected, so we couldn’t communicate with family. My whole extended family was kicked out and sent to a refugee camp in Albania, and we didn’t even know about it until the war ended. I remember that the stores were closed, too, but sometimes they would open for a few hours and people would have to wait in line for necessities—bread, milk, cheese.

  Every day, we saw pictures of dead people on TV. One evening, we could see shooting—the lights from the gunfire—very close to my building. My mother was losing her mind with worry because my brother wasn’t home, and she was afraid he might get caught in the cross fire. Thankfully, he got home later that night, but we found out the next day that an Albanian journalist had been ambushed by the Serbs and killed. Until then, all the violence had been in the villages, but if you are aware that destruction is happening everywhere, you accept that it will eventually reach you, too.

  As I understand it, the problem between Kosovo and Serbia started in 1989. Kosovo was an autonomous region of Serbia, but when Milošević, the new Serbian president, took power, he rescinded autonomy. He fired Kosovars from well-paying jobs and encouraged Serbians to move to Kosovo to replace them. There were no TV channels in Albanian, and if you had to do anything official, you had to communicate in Serbian. Even though Serbians were a minority in Kosovo, they ran everything. In schools, there was a separate entrance and separate classrooms for Serbian kids. Their part of the school was much nicer.

  A few Serbian families lived in my neighborhood, but for the most part they kept to themselves. Because we didn’t intermingle and didn’t speak the same language, there were never any instances of violence between us. The only really bad interaction with a Serbian that I remember was when this Albanian kid actually threw a rock at my sister. She ducked, though, and it hit me on the forehead. There was a lot of blood, and I was crying. We went to the ER to get stitches, and of course all the doctors and nurses were Serbian. They stitched my forehead up without anesthesia, and I was shouting and crying from pain. My mother—her generation had to learn Serbian in school—understood what they had been saying and translated for me when I asked her many years later. The gist of the sentiment had been something along the lines of “See, there’s something wrong with these people. They’re animals.”

  The kid’s mom came over and apologized for what her son had done. I still have the scar on my forehead.

  Overall, I think about thirteen thousand Kosovars died during the war. During the seventy-eight days of bombing, the Serbian military would go into the buildings and check every apartment. In some places, they took adult men and killed them, presumably to keep them from joining the Kosovo Liberation Army. They checked our apartment and even though I was very afraid, the three soldiers left without hurting us.

  Another almost 900,000 people were displaced. We didn’t leave because, actually, my dad died one month before the war in Kosovo started. We were shocked and grieving his death, so there just wasn’t enough time to mobilize. My mom must have also been afraid to pick up five kids and move them on her own.

  My dad worked a lot. He was an economist. On the weekends, he cooked. For a long time, my mom kept a bag of letters that he wrote her when they were dating. I don’t really have very many other memories of him. His death was unexpected. He started to feel unwell, and I remember that he went to the hospital. They kept him overnight to monitor him and do some tests. And then I guess a neighbor knew someone who worked at the hospital, and she came over and told us that my dad had died. I remember my mom crying and being pretty devastated. I cried, too. We went from one tragedy to the next.

  One morning in June 1999, we woke up really early and we could see military vehicles from NATO in the streets of Pristina. We were so happy. It meant the war was over. All the kids went to the side of the road and started applauding the British troops. Some people even gave them flowers, and they would give us sweets. I don’t remember what they were called but they were very colorful. I liked the candy, but mostly I was excited because it was the first time I’d met people for whom English was a native language and I wanted to practice speaking with them.

  Two years later, in 2001, one of my teachers in school told me about a program that brought together people from areas of conflict and tried to engender dialogue between them. The program included a summerlong stay at a camp in the United States. To be honest, all I cared about at the time was that it was an opportunity to visit the US. I applied, and sometime later, I remember getting mail telling me that I was one of the four people accepted into the program. I couldn’t believe that it was actually happening because America was just something I saw on TV. But the next thing I knew, I had an appointment for a visa, and then a couple of days later, I was headed to the airport. We flew from Kosovo to Switzerland, then to Austria, where we had to stay overnight. I wound up having to share a bed with one of the Serbian kids. It was very awkward. The next day, we flew to Boston. And from Boston we drove to the camp.

  We arrived there at night, after curfew. All the lights were off. We entered the cabins with lamps, and to me it seemed so unpleasant. And I said to myself, Why did I come to America? I woke up the next day, and there were so many activities that I didn’t have time to breathe. At the end of the three weeks, I realized that everyone is the same—a human being taught a different version of history.

  While I was at camp, one of the staff members had arranged for an admissions counselor from Goucher College to speak to us. I remember getting the idea that it’s possible to study in the US even if you don’t have any money. If you’re lucky, you can get a scholarship. I remember looking up what I’d have to do—take the TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language] for non-native English speakers, and then the SAT. On the last day of camp, the counselors took us to a local mall. One of them, an American guy I’d really bonded with, bought me an SAT book as a present.

  He said, “So if you want to come to the US, this is what you have to study.” I think I still have that book somewhere—it’s pretty marked up.

  I went back to Kosovo and applied to a bunch of schools abroad—some in Switzerland, but most in the US. I picked where to go on the basis of which city I wanted to visit, so I ended up in New York. I was so excited about studying in the States that I didn’t think about all the details. I took two pieces of luggage in which I fit my whole life, and when I got to my dorm room, I realized I didn’t have sheets for my bed. It was late, 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., so I couldn’t even go out to buy any. I slept on the bare mattress, and I remember it was so hard. On the second day, the school organized a trip to Target for international students. I had some money, and I bought the necessities, but I couldn’t afford a computer. I actually didn’t own a laptop until the end of sophomore year. I used the library computers to do my work. The first semester was hard because I needed to have a 3.2 GPA to keep my scholarship, and I’d never had a class in English, so I studied constantly. But I finished college with a 3.99 GPA. The only A- I got was in an English writing class I took freshman year.

  During my senior year, I realized I was pretty good at math. I decided to apply to a few
math PhD programs, and once again, I picked the program on the basis of which city I wanted to visit. This time, I ended up in DC. My mom even made it to my hooding ceremony, which was really great, since she was denied a visa when she tried to come for my undergraduate graduation ceremony. I could tell she was really proud of me, but she complained a lot about the food here.

  Now I am a math professor at one of the best universities in the country. I think back on how I got here, against some crazy odds. I guess who makes it in this life depends a lot on pure luck, and I have to admit that I’ve been very lucky. But it also matters how hard you’re willing to work and persevere. Life is difficult. It’s one of those things that I didn’t take time to think about much—I just kept going. I was surviving.

  Gordon, forties

  We were in his father’s toolshed, in the backyard. The door was closed. I was probably six. He was nine or ten. We’d been doing this for a while—a few months, maybe almost a year. We were just being curious and learning about our bodies—touching, nothing more serious than that.

  My mom came in, and then his mom, and I remember a lot of commotion and shouting as they jumped on us and pulled us apart. My mom rushed me back home, and she told my dad. I don’t know how he took it, because I wasn’t in the room at the time, but I was never allowed to go back and my friendship ended. My parents also ended all contact with the young boy’s family. I had no idea that what I was doing—and whom I was doing it with—was a problem. It wasn’t until I witnessed my mother’s reaction, and then it was impressed upon me continuously by my religion—the Mormon faith—that this was a sin, an abomination, that I realized I had done something bad and that I should be ashamed of myself. My parents called it “a form of molestation.” I thought we were just being kids, doing what came naturally.

  I was so traumatized by what happened and my parents’ reaction that I didn’t do anything again until I hit puberty, so when I was about eleven or twelve. This time, it was with another childhood friend, and it brought my sexuality back to the forefront.

  My mom’s side of the family is Baptist and Lutheran. It’s my dad’s side, the Mormon side, that’s very religious. Our religion was a thread that ran through my whole childhood—everything that I did. The church made it absolutely clear that my homosexuality was a choice, and in being gay, I chose to commit a sin. And thus began my double life. Publicly, I was a good Mormon. Privately, I was just like any other teenager: I wanted to explore my sexuality. Counteracting this period of self-exploration was also a tremendous amount of guilt, shame, and remorse. I was often in tears because I couldn’t understand my feelings. Homosexuality was shunned in the church and in our community, so I felt like I was the only one going through this, even though I’m certain I wasn’t. I was too petrified to talk to anyone else, though. Interacting with peers was difficult because I was not confident and comfortable in my own skin. I didn’t know if it was okay to be myself. In fact, I was certain it was not okay to be myself.

  In my experience, the Mormon Church has a really effective way of reinforcing their core beliefs. Starting at age twelve, I had to sit in front of a church authority figure we called “the bishop,” and he would ask me a list of questions. I remember he asked me if I had impure thoughts and if I masturbated. And I had to tell him the things I’d done and the things I’d thought. I remember being so worried that he’d tell my parents or other members of the church, and so I learned to lie to his face. I couldn’t tell him what I was actually thinking, and I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t thinking anything at all—yeah, right, who would believe that from a twelve-year-old?—so I just made the most mundane things up: “I fantasize about kissing a girl.”

  At age fourteen, I lost my virginity. It was not traumatic for me at all. It was a very good experience, and it happened at the right time because I was maturing quickly. It was with a close friend of mine from school. He brought up the idea of maybe going all the way. We were both nervous about it, so we kept it 100 percent between us. I was in a steady sexual relationship with him for two years. We would go to his house after school—his parents and brother were working, so we spent time alone almost every day. All these experiences, all together, were positive reinforcements that I was gay.

  At age nineteen, I went on a two-year church mission in Europe. I was in constant fear of acting out my feelings and the consequences that would follow, so I stayed completely celibate. I thought that because I was “good,” that I would be “normal” when I got back. When I finished my mission, I thought to myself that things were resolved. But I went to college for a short time, and I found that I still had tendencies. I felt like a failure because I was hoping that I was healed and I could live my life the way I was taught I should. Being in college just made it clear that I couldn’t fight the temptation. So college didn’t pan out. I picked a vocation and finished school in that field, and then I got really lucky and was offered an opportunity to go back to Europe and work there for a while.

  That was the turning point for me. Even though I was only there for two months, I got really close to the staff and I told them that I was gay. There were other gay people there (also Mormons), and they took me out and showed me around. I got to experience the nightlife. Things are a lot more liberal in Europe than they are in the States. Nobody looked or judged. I could be who I wanted to be, and that gave me the distance I needed for perspective. Europe, the second time around, gave me the chance to detach from the church and learn about myself. Those two months saved my life.

  When I came back, I decided to see a therapist. I guess I rationalized it as one last attempt to cure myself, to get healed, to overcome the gay—I had read online that there were people who could do this. A bigger part of me, though, hoped that he would offer some guidance in learning to accept myself. Thankfully, he was a totally no-BS kind of guy and he very kindly said, “Look, this is who you are. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m going to help you see that.”

  I started to see that regardless of what I had been taught my whole life, I needed to stop treating myself like a problem. I needed to stop hiding from myself. It was a long road to acceptance, and I encountered a lot of challenges, a lot of people who at times made me hate who I was. But I also had a lot of blessings—a lot of other people who drowned out the hatred with their kindness, who held my hand and gave me the space that I needed to become confident in myself.

  When I felt ready to tell my family, my father tragically and unexpectedly passed away. As the oldest of the kids, I was suddenly thrust into this position of having to be the “man of the house.” It just didn’t feel like a good time to tell everyone. Three years after his death, I came out to my sister. She’s five years younger, and I had a feeling that she would be the most sympathetic. She was very kind and accepting, and she helped me tell the rest of the family. My mother cried, but I think she always knew, so she accepted it. I have close to one hundred cousins on my dad’s side of the family alone. None of them talk to me anymore. All my dad’s family turned their backs on me. I think they probably would feel like traitors to the family and the church if they accepted me.

  But I have a lot of family who cares for me and whose opinion of me hasn’t changed. I think my father would have been one of them—he would have accepted me. So I feel a lot of sadness that I never got to tell him before he died. People think, Oh, that won’t happen to me—no one is ever prepared to lose a parent—but you never know what could happen. It took a long time for it to hit me that he died, for my brain to catch up with the reality. It wasn’t until four months later that I broke down and cried because something reminded me of him.

  When my father passed away, most of my close family also broke away from the Mormon Church. I am not so much Mormon anymore. I don’t really hold any hard feelings against the church for the way that I was treated. I think people do what they know, and many of them never question what they’re taught. They live their whole lives never moving too far away from the home in which th
ey were raised, never having occasion to question the truths that someone else hands them, fearing that they’ll end up on the outside of this very tight-knit circle of people. I feared the outside, too. There’s so much comfort in being one with others. In the church, people bring you food when you’re sick, they pick up the slack when you need help, they really look out for one another. It’s one big, extended family. And when your family and identity and everything you’ve ever known depend on being accepted by the church, the outside of that circle is a scary place to be. So choosing to honor this part of myself meant accepting that I might lose another part of my identity. Maybe not lose—maybe it’s more accurate to say that I might be kicked out of another part of my identity. That was very difficult. But my choice caused me to question everything, to really expand my horizons—to find things out for myself. Life is so much fuller, so much truer, so much more beautiful because of it.

  If there’s an aspect of my Mormon religion that has stuck with me, it’s the importance of family—and the idea that the family unit stays together forever. This past November, I married a wonderful man. I look forward to building a family with him. I am lucky in many ways because I made it through the hard times, but I know there are a lot of kids out there who are struggling and who think they are alone. I remember being in their shoes, and I remember how much I needed someone to tell me that there was nothing wrong with me—that I was not a sin, or an abomination, or a shameful person—and so I guess I just want them to know that it will be okay.