Sunday, October 19, 2008

it's done

Part of me feels a little bad that I used email, but an even bigger part doesn't really quite care. Yes, I emailed my parents and then my brothers to come out to them.

Yes, I know. It does seem a little impersonal for this sort of thing. To them, I can only assume, this is sort of a big deal. This may be quite a blow. I've actually gotten some replies, and while none of them have yet been terribly supportive, they have at least extended their love and help.

And there's a big reason that I chose email. I have to admit that I don't know what any of them are really going to think, but having grown up in the religion most of them still believe I think I have some small reason to believe I can assume some small amount of which direction most of them might go with this.

My memory isn't quite good enough to remember exactly when it was that I first started to think there was some chance I might be gay. It wasn't too long after that before I really began to accept it. And then for whatever reasons I still can't quite figure out I began to pretend I wasn't gay and began the several years of misery that living in the closet is.

There's yet another reason I chose email, that I feel I've spent enough time, somewhere in the vicinity of twenty years, dealing with this. Even five minutes of negativity or even just simple disagreement is more than I'm willing to deal with.

I don't want to be rude to my family, regardless of their beliefs, regardless of how they now choose to view me. At the same time I'm not going to change because of anything they say. I'm not going to suddenly not be gay. I'm not going to let anyone make me feel bad about this, becaue I've already done that. I've already felt bad enough trying not to be gay, and now that I'm finally accepting it, I don't care if others do or don't, but I'm not going to let anyone add to the misery I've already inflicted on myself.

So that is what I did this weekend. It's done and out of the way. Hopefully no more emails bounce so that I don't have to resend the damn thing. I did save it as a draft just in case and because I didn't want to have to write yet another version. I've already written two different versions, one to send the parents and the second for the brothers. Just getting those two versions written was a giant pain in the ass of over editing as I'm a bit anal and am never happy with the first or even the second or third version of anything I do.

How was your weekend?