When I Came Out...

Looking back, I knew I was gay for a long time. I didn’t really come to terms with it and accept it on my own until Sophomore year of high school. I never told anyone, family or friends, because I was deathly afraid of being rejected or something worse. I came out to my best friend, and she was totally indifferent yet supportive, and while that was a positive experience I was still far to afraid to come out to anyone else. After my first year at college, I was dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety as a result of that and not knowing how to deal with it.

I passed all my finals and winter break started. My mom noticed that I had been upset for a while and she would always try and talk to me, and ask me what was wrong. I would try to build up the confidence to tell her but I would always either say, “nothing’s wrong!” or come up with some excuse. I finally got enough courage to tell her… but because I’m still a shy introvert, I couldn’t outright tell her. And because the entire prospect of telling her was making me tear up. So I wrote a text saying “Mom, I’m gay”, and handed her my cellphone.

I expected the worse. But she accepted me. She said she still loved me and would no matter what. I don’t know what was more hilarious about the whole situation… that she told me she didn’t care what my sexuality was as long as I did good in school, or that I came out to her on Christmas 2010. 

She wasn’t immediately accepting despite her claims. I got my ears pierced and start stretching them, and I got tattoos (and will continue to get more). She vented to me once that all this change was too much for her, that it was like she didn’t even know her own son. When I started seeing a guy (who later ditched me), she gave me that stupid line about how she was raised to believe “a man and a woman”, and that it wasn’t natural.

I told her how it was natural. I told her she did know me. We never talked about it, and I assumed she must have just begrudingly accepted me. But I came to find out that she had gone online and done research, that she had looked into PFLAG information and was genuinely trying to come to terms with her religious beliefs and accepting me. And she’s done phenominally. I have learned to listen to her input when it comes to boys… she didn’t like my first boyfriend. He was emotionally distant and neglectful. She didn’t like my second boyfriend, and he ended up completely breaking me when he cheated on and broke up with me just to get with the other guy he was seeing.

Throughout the craptastic year that was most of 2011, my mom and I have grown closer. We were driving back home after hanging out with some friends during this last christmas break, and my mom voiced her concern about me dating while attending this second year of college because she didn’t want me to have a breakdown again.  I assured her that with my luck with boys, I was unlikely to meet a boy and I promised her that in the event something did happen I wouldn’t have a breakdown or let it affect my school work.

How’d she respond? ‎”The next boy who breaks your heart, I’m going to cut his dick off.”

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