The first tipoff was the time when Holt was 15 and her dad checked her out of school early one day. He hadn’t said one word to her the whole drive over to his church that afternoon. Once she saw the piece of folded notebook paper crammed inside his truck’s cup holder, she’d immediately known why her father seemed so angry. Her mother had apparently found the love note she’d written to her former BFF-turned-girlfriend. What happened next, she says, is mostly a blur.
“My mom didn’t want to see me for a while,” recalls Holt. “All I remember was my dad saying, ‘I can deal with this when it’s other people’s kids, but not when it’s my own child.’”
She does distinctly recall her mother alternating between bawling and yelling at her, interspersed with an occasional supportive statement like, “we’ll get through this.”
“At one point she told me you’re not going to Kennesaw [State University], you’re not going anywhere until we get this straightened out,” Holt remembered her mother saying. “I found that to be an interesting choice of words.”
Holt was grounded indefinitely from, well, just about everything – no cell phone, no MySpace, no extracurricular activities, no social outings with friends; nothing but school and church was allowed. Then came the “Christian counseling” sessions and mandates to read books written by self-described “ex-gays” who, with the help of Jesus, had been “cured” of homosexuality.
“They gave me Bible verses, books to read by ‘ex-gays’ who came out of that lifestyle,” Holt says. “It was all just a bunch of crap. It was a confusing time. For a while I was brainwashed into thinking that I could actually change this about myself. Then I eventually came to the realization that I cannot.”
Holt spent most of her sophomore year of high school holed up in her room, depressed and writing dark poetry and tearful journal entries. She sincerely tried to change many times, she says, but somehow her attraction for females always resurfaced.
“They pretty much kept me under house arrest for a while,” she recalls. “I had nobody to turn to in high school. I wasn’t allowed to be friends with anyone. They even changed my class schedule at one point because they heard I was in a class with some lesbians. I was miserable.”
Her last ditch effort at “turning straight” came during her junior year of high school when she’d dated a sweet, mannerable guy who was head over heels for her.
“He was the nicest guy ever; he was thoughtful and sensitive and I knew he was trustworthy,” remembers Holt. “He was absolutely crazy about me and his personality was absolutely perfect for me. I kept telling myself that I was attracted to his personality and the physical attraction would come.”
It never did. After nine months she broke up with him, but dating a guy had its perks. During that time her parents, believing that her “lesbian phase” had finally passed, had begun letting up a bit on the tight restrictions. She was able to get out more often. She used the freedom to sneak off with her latest female love interest.
“I never made up any fake boyfriends, but I did go out on a fake date once with a gay friend of mine,” quips Holt, chuckling at the memory. “He picked me up and we met up with my girlfriend at the time and we all went out to dinner. It was a lot of fun.”
Holt got in trouble once again when her parents discovered her latest lesbian liaison.
Exasperated, Holt spent her senior year convincing her parents that the counseling and books worked. She managed to throw them off her trail long enough to enroll in KSU. Once there she knew she’d get to become her real self. She joined KPA within the first few weeks of school.
Ferreira says Holt’s ordeal is “heartbreaking.”
“I have very understanding and supportive parents so it’s not something I’d ever experienced personally,” says Ferreira. “I’d heard about terrible reactions like this but I never knew anyone who this happened to personally. It saddens me to know that she can’t be who she really is at home, but her experience is a great reminder that these things still really happen. I admire her courage.”
Holt’s mom and dad rarely take the drive out to campus, but when they do she has a bit more cleaning up to do than the average co-ed preparing for a parental visit.
“I always have to ‘de-dyke’ my room,” she says, with a giggle. “I hide all of my pictures, my rainbows and all traces of my lesbian self. One time I thought I had cleared everything out and I noticed a picture on my corkboard just before they walked in. I hurried up and took it down at the last second.”
She takes the hour-long drive to her parents’ home nearly every weekend to work and spend time with her brother. When her parents ask about how her week went, she keeps her answers brief and generic. She wishes she could share with them the details of her life, but she’s convinced they can’t handle the truth. So for now, she’s resolved to alternating between her real life and her second life.
“Who I am on campus is who I really am,” she says, with conviction. “The person that they see every weekend is not the real me. I will come out to my parents eventually, but not right now. I need to wait until my brother turns 18.”
She’s bracing for the worse, she says, when she does tell them.
“I know they’ll love me regardless, but I want them to love me for who I am, not despite of who I am,” she says. “That would be my dream come true as far as my family goes.”
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[NEXT: Part 3 of 3 a part series on LGBT issues, "From She to He: A Transgender Journey of Self-Discovery." Bookmark this page for updates.]
Photography** by Clay Duda, JJIE.org.
*Amber Holt is a pseudonym. Her name has been witheld to protect her identity.
**Photographs are not of Amber Holt. Original stock photos were used to protect her identity.