Last night I had a very vivid dream, or a nightmare, really. The kind of dream you wake up from and wonder if it really happened. It was about a woman that I know in real life. She is now in her late 80’s. This lady has a history of mental illness and extended psychiatric hospitalization. She is elderly now and has some dementia, but she seems to be a sweet lady, an artistic type of lady. She has always struck me as totally normal. I’ve never known her to hallucinate or to have any sort of outburst. She is still capable of a decent conversation and makes perfect sense to talk to. She was never married and has no children, so she never has any visitors that I am aware of. Her chart says that the nature of her mental illness was delusional thinking.I’ve never been able to reconcile her history with her personality.
So, back to my dream. I was at a mental hospital with this lady. I was talking to her psychiatrist, trying to get her out to take her home. He told me he could not let me take her home because I was a woman. He would only let her out with a man. Turns out her real diagnosis, in my dream, was that she was a lesbian. So her family dumped her at the mental hospital and that was the end of things for this lady.
Could my dream be the truth? Actually, yes it could. Not so very long ago, and well past the time that homosexuality was not considered a mental illness any more, there are documented cases of people being placed in mental institutions to be “cured.” Certainly in this lady’s heyday, in the 40’s and 50’s, psychiatric treatment for homosexuality was common and it is easily conceivable that a family would have stuck a daughter in a mental institution. And in those days, it wasn’t so easy to get out, so she may have spent years there. I hope that’s not what happened to this lady, but it wouldn’t be unheard of.
While not a totally enlightened society, at least we are no longer routinely sent to mental institutions. And homosexuality has not been considered a mental illness since the 70’s, thank god. Meaning that, even if the fundamentalist segment of society thinks we are not normal, at least the medical community does! We’ve come a long way, baby!
If you are gay or lesbian and are coming out in midlife, please visit my website at www.discoveringpride.com.
Filed under: Coming out, GLBT, gay, gay coaching, gay-straight marriage, gays married to women, homosexuality, lesbian, lesbian coaching, lesbians married to men, questioning sexual orientation, sexual orientation, sexuality
