What it means to be “othered”
by Randi Romo
Author, Poet
I began writing years ago to survive the multiplicity of horrors I was experiencing as a child. I was raised in a home filled with verbal and physical violence, rape by a family member that no one would believe when I tried to tell, and the burgeoning realization that I was a lesbian.
My mother suspected I was different, and she did her best to cram me into the mold of femininity. I became very depressed.
Unable to cope, with no safe space, I fell into drug use and inadvertently overdosed at school when I was 13. As a result, I was remanded to a state mental institution where I would spend two years, and from there, I was sent to the Rebekah Christian School for Girls in Corpus Christi, TX.
In both places the violence was horrific. There were times in each of them that I was certain that I was going to die. I begin activism/organizing while at Rebekah where myself and 15 other girls formulated a plan to expose what was happening to us. Our organizing led to an investigation by the Texas Attorney General.
As a result of what we did, the Texas Legislature established the Texas Child Care Licensing Act. The preacher in charge of the home went to jail for a bit, and the school closed for a time.
Upon leaving Rebekah, I was still unable to reconcile with my mother, who continued to refuse to accept me as a lesbian. After being in these places, I came out incredibly broken and mentally unstable. To please my mom, I became engaged but got pregnant before the wedding. He left.
In my unwell and unfit state, I elected to keep the child. And she suffered through the very worst of my brokenness that was only slightly soothed in full-blown addiction.
By the time I embraced life, got sober and as mentally healthy as one can after such prolonged PTSD, my daughter became pregnant. She was also mentally ill, and yes, a great deal of it was environmentally induced from having me as a parent. I raised her child, due to her alcoholism and drug addiction, I raised her child, but I was never able to reconcile with nor help my daughter in any meaningful way. She was incredibly angry with me, and that overshadowed the love I know that she also had for me.
Writing helped me keep from going completely over the side through these life crises. I penned a book of poems titled, Othered. Finally, my story is out of the underwear drawer where it stayed for years!
Over the years I've thought a lot about what it means to be "othered" for one's orientation, race, ethnic origin, gender identity, class, etc. How it can be a barrier to equitable access to a quality of life, and how it can be fatal.
I also believe in the power of our stories to build bridges between opposite shores, to illustrate that power. After all, in the end, we all want the same things: to be safe, living wage jobs, affordable housing, enough to eat, a good education, access to quality medical care, etc.
My daughter, Jennifer, died of a drug overdose earlier this year. I have been beside myself. Devastated. It's a terrible place to be, a mother without a child. And it is the price of my having been "othered" and almost destroyed.
Jennifer was 34 when she died. This will be is the first holiday season without her; another of the firsts. We’ve made it through Mother’s Day and her birthday to date. On her birthday, her daughter and I went to see art, had a wonderful lunch and then watched CoCo. As Mexican-American, it has tremendous cultural significance and made us laugh and cry remembering our loved one.
After my violent start in the world, that broke me into a million pieces, the rest of my life would be enduring the bigotry that came in the form of actual violence, laws and policies and even rape, because "all I needed was a real man."
How I was raised was a big part of why I co-founded CAR, the Center for Artistic Revolution in Little Rock [Arkansas]. I focused on investing a great deal of time in the care and well-being of LGBTQ+ youth.
To purchase your copy of Othered, visit www.bit.ly/RRomo.
Copyright The Gayly – December 27, 2018 @ 7:20 a.m. CST.