Dear Sugar,
I’m a twenty-one year old guy. I’m in college right now. Though I work full-time to pay for some of my bills, I’m still dependent on my parents for room and board. I also use their car. I have no problem with living with my parents—at least I wouldn’t if I wasn’t gay.
My parents are fundamentalist Christians. They believe that being a homosexual is a “sin” that someone struggles with similar to alcoholism or drug addiction and that gays should repent and see Jesus.
My parents know I’m gay but they don’t acknowledge it. They believe I’ve repented and found Jesus. When I was seventeen, my mom threatened to kick me out of the house because she didn’t want “my diseased behavior under her roof.” In order for me to stay at my parents’ house I had to go to Christian counseling to undo my gay-ness. I went, but it did absolutely nothing for me. It only confused me more.
Though I act “straight” around my parents and sister, I am out to friends and co-workers and also to my brother (who accepts me unconditionally). It’s a huge strain to live a double life.
I don’t hate my parents, but I strongly dislike them for their treatment of me. They think I’m “straight,” but they don’t trust me. My mom constantly checks up on me, often barging into my room seemingly in hopes of catching me doing something. If I go out, I have to tell my parents exactly who I’m with or I won’t be able to use their car. They refuse to leave the internet connected if I’m at home alone and they hide the modem when they go to bed because they are afraid that I’ll look at “sinful” material and it will pull me back into the “sinful gay lifestyle.”
I’ve had two gay relationships. The first wasn’t as involved emotionally as I would have liked, but I’m very involved with the guy I’m with now. My parents know he’s gay and they treat him like he’s going to re-infect me with his gay-ness.
I would move out, but I can’t find any available rooms within my budget. One option that has arisen recently is that a good friend asked if I wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest with her—I live on the East Coast—and I’m seriously considering it. The thing is, I don’t want to run away from my problems and I really like the guy I’m with, but right now I feel like I’m stuck in a situation that is hopeless. I feel suffocated by the expectations of those on both sides of my double-life. One side would damn me to hell if they found out I was gay. The other side wants me to cut myself off from my family.
Is there any advice you could offer that could help?
Thanks.
Suffocated
Dear Suffocated,
Yes. There is something I can offer that will help. I can tell you to get yourself out of that house. You mustn’t live with people who wish to annihilate you. Even if you love them. Even if they are your mom and dad. You’re an adult now. Figure out how to pay the rent. Your psychological well-being is more important than free access to a car.
It’s miserable that your parents are hateful, ill-informed bigots. I’m sorry they’ve made you suffer so, sweet pea. There is nothing correct about their ideas regarding homosexuality (or alcoholism or drug addiction, for that matter). We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people. This is what your parents are doing to you. And by choosing to pretend you’re straight in order to placate them, you’re also doing it to yourself.
You must stop. Stopping is not running away from your problems. It’s solving them. In your question you write that you feel “suffocated by the expectations of those on both sides,” but there are not two sides. There is only one and you’re it. The real you. The authentic you. The gay you.
Be him.
Even if you aren’t ready to come out to your parents yet, I implore you to remove yourself from their company. Pack up your things and go. To the Pacific Northwest, across town, to your wacky cousin’s basement in Tuscaloosa, it doesn’t matter. Just stop living with the people who sent you to re-education camp because they equate your (normal, healthy) sexuality with a disease.
This doesn’t mean you have to break all ties with them. There is a middle path, but it goes in only one direction: toward the light. Your light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you’re doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
Your lunatic parents are going to figure out you’re gay whether you tell them or not. In fact, they know already. They aren’t banishing you from the internet so you won’t watch Scooby Doo, doll. I encourage you to leave your parents’ home not so you can make some giant I’m gay! pronouncement to them, but so you can live your life with dignity among people who accept you while you sort out your relationship with them from an emotionally safe distance. Sooner or later—whether they learn it from you or discern it on their own—your folks are going to have to grapple with the reality that you are a homo beyond (their) God’s reach. It seems that the best-case scenario when this happens is that you will lose their approval. The worst-case scenario is that they will disown you. Perhaps permanently. Which would mean that their love for you hinges entirely on:
Nothing. Because you are their beloved son and their primary obligation to you as your parents is to nurture you and foster your growth, even if you turned out to be someone they didn’t precisely imagine.
Your agreement to refrain from touching other men’s man parts.
Wow. Really? Isn’t that so sad and crazy? I know I’m being a bit glib about it, but only because if I look at it stone cold serious it smashes my heart into smithereens. More importantly, I’m trying to make a point: love based on conditions such as those set forth by your parents is ugly, skimpy, diseased love. Yes, diseased. And it’s a kind of love that will kill you if you let it, sweet pea.
So don’t. There is a world of people out here who will love you for who you are. A whole, vibrant, fucked-up, happy, conflicted, joyous and depressed mass of people who will say, You’re gay? So the fuck what? We want you to be among us. That’s the message of the It Gets Better Project that’s currently sweeping the land. Hold on, it says, and stick it out, because guess what? It gets better.
And true as that is and moved as I’ve been by many of the videos made by gay, lesbian, bi and trans people telling their stories, I think there’s an important piece missing in that message. All those people in the wonderful videos? It didn’t just get better for them. They made it better. Each and every one of those people rose at a moment in their lives—one that is very much like this moment in your life, Suffocated—and at that moment they chose to tell the truth about themselves instead of staying “safe” inside the lie. They realized that, in fact, the lie wasn’t safe. That it threatened their existence more profoundly then the truth did.
That’s when it started to get better for those folks. When they had the courage to say, This is who I am even if you’ll crucify me for it.
Some of those people lost jobs because they said that. Some lost family and friends. Some even lost their lives. But in saying that, they gained themselves. It’s a sentence that lives in each one of us, I believe—the one in which we assert that we will be who it is we are, regardless—but sadly it has to live especially strong in you, Suffocated. I hope you’ll find it within you. Not just the sentence, but also all the beauty and nerve that has gotten you this far, so that when you say it, you’ll say it loud and true.
Have you ever been to a LGBT Pride parade? Every year I take my kids to the one in our city and every year I cry while watching it. There are the drag queens riding in Corvettes. There are the queer cops and firefighters all spiffed out in their uniforms. There are the lesbians on bicycles pulling their kids on tag-alongs and trailers. There are the gay samba dancers in thongs and feathers. There are the drummers and politicians and the odd people who are really into retro automobiles. There are choirs and brass bands and battalions of people riding horses. There are real estate agents and clowns, schoolteachers and Republicans. And they all go marching by us while my kids laugh and I weep.
My kids never understand why I’m crying. The parade seems like a party to them and when I try to explain that the party is an explosion of love that has its roots in hate, I only confuse them more, so together we just stand on the sidelines, laughing and crying, watching that ecstatic parade.
I think I cry because it always strikes me as sacred, all those people going by. People who decided simply to live their truth, even when doing so wasn’t simple. Each and every one of them had the courage to say, This is who I am even if you’ll crucify me for it.
Just like Jesus did.
Yours,
Sugar
44 responses
Sugar, this may be my favorite yet. Incredibly moving, tender and compassionate, real. Amazing, as ever.
this is so beautiful–my favorite, i think, of your columns.
This kind of writing saves lives. Thank you.
This is so beauitful
I want to push “like” on your post, Sugar. And “like” on Thelmadonna’s comment: your writing saves lives.
This is awesome….
My sister is a lesbian, her mentor was a cathloic deacon at first he wasn’t to keen on her being gay, but wanted to help her none the less… Well, after years of him helping her he told her he went to work with a new church and the deacon there believed that homosexuality was a sin and that they would all go to hell, and he told him he was wrong and left the church. He told my sister Samantha that there was no way she would go to hell. He couldn’t believe that a person as good as my sister could be kept out of heaven for being gay. He still doesn’t understand homosexuality but he doesn’t hold it against her, or her soul.
I got tears reading this. Beautiful.
I hope everything works out for you Suffocated.
I love you, Sugar. What a wonderful idea, to take your kids to a Pride Parade. I’ll have to steal that for myself and my daughter. Thank you for your wonderful and inspiring images. And, for the joy that comes through in your writing.
You make my heart swell Sugar. Thank you!
This is wonderfully touching and wonderfully written, as usual, Sugar. I hope Suffocated can gather his strength and go.
It’s great advice for anyone who is struggling with not being who they are, not just in the realm of sexuality. And yes, like comments above, I think this one of my favorite columns.
Wow. Sugar, your kindness comes through in every single word. You made me cry.
Me, too, Sugar. I cry, every time, at that ecstatic parade.
Suffocated, breathe deeply, and listen to Sugar. You deserve every kind of love.
You make the world better, Sugar. Thank you.
Let’s talk practical for a moment too (b/c I hope Suffocated is reading the comments): I’m not gay, but I AM someone who dropped everything, packed up my stuff and my dog, and moved from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest with no apartment or job lined up. I can’t speak for other cities, but in Portland, that kinda thing is TOTALLY DOABLE. I had a room in an awesome house–even though I had a dog–within a week, and built my life from there. My family didn’t get it–why I would move here–but it was one of the best, most life-affirming things that i EVER did.
And the gay community here is awesome, from what I hear. I know folks who moved from San Francisco TO Portland because the dating scene is supposedly better! There are still walls to break down, and still idiots around, but really, one of the toughest adjustments for me, if i ever leave here, will be the open and accepting attitude that the west coast brings that the Midwest just DIDN’T.
So: it’s possible! You can do it!
The 10 Commandments – those values by which the Jewish Jesus was raised –
says to honor your parents it does not say you have to love them.
Dear Suffocated, you have honored your parents and will most likely continue to do so. But you need to love the ineffable divine within yourself and that will mean loving what you are becoming. Let’s not make crucifixtion into a brid’s eye view. Let’s focus instead on all the moments of forgiveness that occur throughout that brutal narrative.
Listen to Sugar ….
Godspeed
Beautiful, Sugar. So moving.
I also want to commend Suffocated for what strikes me as clear-headedness even in the confusion, even as you live in this really oppressive situation. You may be unsure what to do, but seem to have a true sense of yourself, even as people around you try to define and erase you. I think this is a feat, and something to feel proud of. I also agree that moving out is the right move.
Dearest Suffocated, every child is born perfect and deserves perfect parents. Not one child has every gotten them. We all struggle with the families we were born into but some people have the misfortune to be born into truly toxic situations. I am so sorry you got those parents.
You need to be able to be out, not for anyone else, but for yourself. You need to be able to stand up and say this is who I am. People may legitimately love you or hate you for a lot of things, but who you love shouldn’t be one of those reasons.
Two of my kids came to me because their own parents tossed them out for being gay. It sucks to have the people who are supposed to love and protect you be the ones causing you the most pain. I once sat with Judy Shepherd (Matthew’s mom) and we cried together because there are amazing kids who are tossed out of their families when she would give everything she ever had for five minutes more with her son. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
If you didn’t get the family you deserve (and you didn’t) move on and put together your own. Surround yourself with people who will love you and challenge you to be your most fabulous self.
Sugar alluded to what Andy Warhol said, “They always say time changes things, but you have to change them yourself.” It’s time to change your life for the better. I am sending you a big old basket of mom love. You deserve it.
Wait a minute, folks. If Life was ideal, then we could all safely urge him to move out. No question he needs to leave the house where his parents are squelching him psychologically and emotionally. However, he is in a period of crisis and must prioritize his needs. That means fundamentals like food and shelter and Completing his degree so he will be independent–those are the first priorities. Then he can look to moving out on his own. Gay or straight– gotta prioritize and address basics first. No one said the path to independence would be easy or comfortable. Keep your nose to the grindstone– you’ll get there. Just don’t entertain a Pity Party on the way…
“…live your life with dignity among people who accept you…” Once again, Sugar, you hit the nail on the head. It’s so crucial to seek out those people who accept you for who you are.
Also, Pacific Northwest? Absolutely the place to live.
And Pride parade? As a straight middle aged man, I’ve walked proudly with my lesbian and gay friends down the middle of our main street at high noon on a Sunday, smiling and waving because they asked me to join them.
You get to choose who you spend your life with.
I hate to tell anyone I don’t know (and who seems like a good person) that she’s wrong, but Dawna, no, you’re wrong. It’s all good and fine to say this boy should keep his food and shelter and work on his degree, and then move out eventually when… what?
Suppose he finishes his degree and can’t find a job in his field right away. He’ll right back where he is now, except having endured a year or two more of this kind of abuse. And it IS abuse – it’s emotional and psychological abuse, and he needs to get the hell out now.
His parents disconnect the internet when they’re not home and when they go to bed – that’s a real help with his studies, I’m sure!
I don’t know whether he is already getting student loans to pay for college, but if not (or if he’s not maxed out), that’s one avenue towards paying for room and board. There are roommate situations, there are sometimes programs for low-cost on-campus housing for people willing to help in the dorms – hell, there’s slum housing, if it comes to that. Anything’s better than living in a poisonous atmosphere like his parents’ house.
And if his parents disown him – well, that’s THEIR decision, not his, and it’s THEIR choice, not his fault. Any parent who conditions his “love” on adhering to some artificial image of what he thinks his child “should” be, is not “loving” that child at all. Someday, this boy will learn what REAL love is, and it’ll be a revelation to him.
Sugar’s right. He needs to get out, get out as soon as he can, make a plan, figure out a way, but get out. Because life in that cesspool is already warping his thinking – imagine, he thinks that being himself is “taking sides” – and who knows how much more of that garbage he can stand before it’s too late?
Dear Sugar,
Lady, you are amazing. Even when your posts aren’t directly related to issues in my life, I can always get some crystals to apply to my own situations. I usually end up in tears, as well.
You’re fantastic and I’m sorry that dear Suffocated has parents (who sound a lot like mine) that try to make their child repress something so fundamental in his life. But he has the power, and I hope he makes the most of it.
Love you!
Suffocated: Do you remember the scene in ET when Elliott liberates the frogs in Biology class. “Run for the river! Run for the woods!”
Leave the bell jar behind you and go. Sugar’s right. You can just move across town. But, hmmm, the Pacific Northwest? You might be surprised how wonderful the river and woods are there.
Sugar: I wait impatiently for your post each week, but this time you absolutely gave me chills! So sensitive, so intentional and so full of loving practicality…thank you for sharing your wisdom with us
Suffocated: Take a deep breath, and JUMP! Life is beautiful, but not from inside someone else’s closet.
Dear Sugar, all your accolades are entirely deserved. Dear Suffocated, there are all sorts of parents, and you ended up with quite a controlling pair. When you leave them — and you must — you may feel guilty. Just want you to know that you’re not required to stop loving them, only to be who you are. And sometimes it’s impossible to do the latter in close proximity. By close proximity, I mean living in the same town. I love my formerly abusive parents (they’re human, and all of us deserve love),and I forgive them, too (that took a while, by the way). I just don’t like them, and I’ve found I can love them quite well from afar. Love happens in that unfathomable, true place in my heart. Loving them doesn’t mean doing what makes them comfortable and treating myself like shit! Guess how I figured this out? 🙂 Anyhoo, I moved 1800 miles to get the distance I needed to be my own person and live a normal life. I rarely visit my nutty parents, but you know what? I’d rather spend holidays with my friends. They’re kinder. They love the REAL me. I believe in you. You’ve got what it takes. Oh, and you know where I ended up? The Pacific Northwest. MmHmmm. And by my count there are at least 3 of us on this comment thread who did, too. So come on out, dear one. And if you ever happen to go to the Seattle gay pride parade, look for me where the muscular lesbians are doing donuts on their Harleys. I’ll be the one biting my lip and reaching for a hankie.
Wow…Namaste. I (almost) cry at the Metro Station. In public. Your writing moves me . Thank-you.
“fundamentalist Christians”…what is this? Except, there is nothing fundamentally Christian about not accepting and supporting your own child, gay or straight. Having endured the abuse of my “parents” for over 60 years (no, I’m not gay) my best advice would be, “Don’t walk, pack a bag, run like hell, don’t look back!” You’ll never miss what you never had in the first place: unconditional love.
Brilliant, Sugar, as always.
“We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.”
I want that stitched on a pillow. I want it emblazoned on a t-shirt. I want it printed on a banner, hung across the capitol building.
“A whole, vibrant, fucked-up, happy, conflicted, joyous and depressed mass of people who will say, You’re gay? So the fuck what? We want you to be among us.”
The truth is simple, isnt’t it?!
<3
“It’s miserable that your parents are hateful, ill-informed bigots. I’m sorry they’ve made you suffer so, sweet pea. There is nothing correct about their ideas regarding homosexuality (or alcoholism or drug addiction, for that matter). We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.”
Sugar, I think you’re absolutely right. I think Christians are responsible for a lot of really nasty shit. I think Christians love to eat up media hot-topics, particularly homosexuality, abortion, gun control, and everything else near-and-dear to the social-conservative agenda. I think these things, this Fox-News-esque Doctrine, often become their religion more so than the things Jesus allegedly said while he was alive, and I think these people are very responsible for ruining people’s lives, along with any desire to further entertain thoughts about an existent god.
I also think “Suffocated’s” parents want the best for him, although, I think they are misguided in their attempt to “correct” him and either very ignorant of their beliefs or very inarticulate. Most Christians who claim homosexuality is a sin often point you straight to a single verse of the bible and then say, “look! It’s right there! if you stop doing it, you’ll be a good person!” I believe these people forget two very important things:
1.) This country, while founded on pseudo-christian values, is NOT christian. Legally, you have the right to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. And legally, you should be able to have a relationship with whoever the hell you want to have a relationship with. I don’t know how politicians still get away with the glaring oversight of the constitutional separation of church and state.
2.) The belief in Jesus being ‘God’ absolutely hinges on what Jesus said while he was alive. From what I’ve surmised, this is what Jesus said, (nut-shelled version): we’re all on the same boat. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, unmarried with hundreds of sex partners, married monogamously for 35 years, if you’ve murdered someone, hugged someone, raped someone, lied to someone, immaculately told the truth your entire life, gave to charity, stole from charity, or anything else you can think of, good or bad. Jesus said, in comparison to God, who’s supposedly perfect, none of us compare. We’re imperfect. Right out the womb, we’re born pretty miserable people who often think themselves good. So good, in fact, we spend many hours of our lives trying to make ourselves better than others, earn a higher status than others, prioritize and push our ideas over others, or to call each other demeaning names, like ‘fag,’ or ‘homo.’
I find this pretty compelling. I also find it compelling that Jesus said, “In order to make you right again, I’m going to take the rap for you.” Whether you believe this dude is made up, whether he was real, if he rose from the dead or not, or if he was in-fact the human incarnation of God, it allows no excuse to judge another human being below yourself.
Apologies, Rumpus folk. I love this website to death I know religious-talk is as cliche as it gets for blog-comment-posts, so if I offend, I’ll try and refrain in the future.
Sugar’s right. You need to take control of this by moving out, far enough away that they can’t casually come visit you. If you know they have independent-adulthood markers that aren’t hurtful or disgusting, try to do/be those things too. For my parents, the marker was “kid moves out permanently and supports self financially”. Once you are out from under their thumbs, you can say “Mom, Dad, I’m gay”, on your own schedule and on your own turf. You’ll be in control because you can wait out their reactions and keep waiting until they realize that the only way to get your time and love is to accept you as you really are. You can send cards or call or whatever regularly to show that the door is still open on your side, if you want. Either they’ll learn to accept the real you, or they’ll conclusively prove that they’re not worth your time and love.
I know that sounded harsh, but when your parents are abusive, it’s a blessing in disguise for them to be so bad that you can decisively cut them off without second thoughts, instead of having them be kinda-sorta not-that-bad. The “not-so-bad” ones will just go on hurting you in the present indefinitely unless they get an epiphany or get into therapy, and you can’t make either of those happen reliably. Either way, nobody can change the past to make them be the loving supportive parents that you deserved and needed. All you can do is get away from them and find people who want and deserve to be family for the real you.
Dan Savage has a sensible response (much of which has been expressed by previous comments):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SgkviV9GIY
I’m not gay or even too terribly out-of-sync with the larger society , but it was immediately apparent at an early age (like12) that to continue to seek and accept my parents’ approval and support I would have to compromise the most basic parts of me – to the point of sel-annihilation. It was not that hard a decision to strike out on my own (age 17) and do what I had to do to make it work. I was lucky I could teach gymnastics and earn better than minimum wage, but that doesn’t mean I had any so-called discretionary income, either. I took lots of other jobs that paid a “living wage” and some of those “jobs” were pretty dehumanizing – the rumpus likes to pretend that sex work is no big deal but it takes a huge toll and nobody’s going to convince me otherwise.
Knowing when to leave is the smartest thing that anyone can learn – that’s a Bacharach / David lyric that everyone should know
Don’t take comfort and the path of least resistance for actually living. You can make it if you really want it, but you must try, try and try, try and try: you”ll succeed at last.
The more people we can lend a hand to the better. We can’t all be strong all the time, but when we stand up and do what we can, when we can, things do get better! Lovely column as always. Thank you, Sugar!
The thing is, which I have not seen mentioned much, it that this isn’t just a LGBT issue, it’s a human issue. Outsiders come in all kinds of shape and colors and kinds of sexuality, and being in relationships with people who refuse to allow you to be who and what you are is never good. I had it with parents and partners, and when I freed myself from them I was able to blossom at least partially into the me I hoped and wanted to be. Now I am surrounded by people who accept my offness and think I am great because or even is spite of it. And I am happier, and my child is too, cuz if mom loves herself, mom loves the child better. So take the reins, run your own life, and never let anyone say you are bad for who you love.
I love Sugar, and I desperately hope that Suffocated is able to leave his parents’ home–and soon–but I have to wonder about the wisdom of this advice. If Suffocated is, at this point in time, unable to support himself without his parents’ help, and there is a chance that he could end up on the street, is that really better than staying with his parents and taking full advantage of the financial benefits they are willing to give him? I do not get the impression from this letter that he is just living with them because doing so allows him to use their car and continue to enjoy the comforts of middle-class life, or because he’s just lazy and not willing to support himself. The reality is that the economy is bad, and if Suffocated is unable to support himself now, it is reasonable to assume that he will not be any better equipped to do so when he moves to the Pacific Northwest. One can’t assume anymore that one can just pick up and move and expect to find a job in a reasonable amount of time. Suffocated does not give any indication that he has any savings with which to support himself before he finds a job, and putting himself at risk of homelessness/poverty will do nothing to improve his situation, even in the absence of his parents’ intolerance. Furthermore, for all we know, his parents are providing his health insurance, and when he moves out, he will lose that, which, again, will do nothing to make his life any better. I have never been in this situation, and I hope like hell that he can get out of his parents’ home and put their abuse behind him, but I think it’s very risky to make such a decision (which, theoretically, sounds more than reasonable) or to encourage such a decision without taking these things into consideration. Sugar says that it’s a question of deciding to make things better for oneself, but if it’s a question of leaving now and running the risk of ending up homeless and unable to take care of himself or hanging in there, taking what his parents are able to give him financially (and reminding himself that he deserves far better), waiting until he knows he can make it without them, and then leaving his parents behind, never looking back, and living the happiest life he can possibly imagine, I think the second option may be his best chance of making things better in the long run.
My sister came out 30 years ago to a similar religious-based rejection by my parents. Now, at 52, she’s still in a cycle of moving away and moving home–convinced as she was, early on, by the survivalist mentality that my parents used to oppress her. They sold her the same bullshit, that she couldn’t survive without them; it’s a trick many oppressors use. During the few years in which she had a wife and home, my parents feigned acceptance and whispered bitter asides like, “At least she’s not with a man who beats her,” or, “At least she’s not living on the streets.” Which was ABSURD–they were unable to see how happy she was, how in love, how well-adjusted. She, like Suffocated, was filled with promise and possibility. Only their constant negative murmur stayed inside her head, and eroded her belief in her ability to succeed in the world without them, and without their approval that they would never, ever give.
How many of us move away from home the first time without health insurance or a “nest egg” or any clue what we’re headed for? There are a million possibilities for Suffocated, and he will have to be as resourceful as anyone. But staying with those parents–whose treatment of him is unconscionable–hopefully is not one of them.
Sugar–I wish my sister could have had your brilliant crystal clear advice decades ago. Thank you. I gasped when I got to the last line–absolutely beautiful.
Thia made me cry, thank you sugar, and good luck to you suffocated
Sugar, This is the first time I’ve read your post. Your advice is so grounded. And strong. Resilient. Loving. Practical. Touching. I am awed.
Best to you, Suffocated, on your new journey surrounded by all this love and support.
Suffocated needs to get the hell out. Sugar is right. Go bankrupt, get food stamps. Anything is better than standing buy why people kill your soul.
Not all Christians are bad, of course, but the ones who are? Well… I’ve always loved the Gandhi quote, the one where he says, “Christianity. It’s a good idea. If anyone would do it.”
As someone who made the choice to get out, even though I’m still, six years later, struggling to find my feet, I say this, though at this late date I doubt Suffocated will ever see it: GET OUT. If you have, then good for you! If you’re still putting it off, be strong, and do it!
And to Sugar – thank you for crying at the Pride parade. The first year I went to one was the first June after my parents gave me that familiar “change your sinful lifestyle or move out” ultimatum, and I’d chosen the latter (to their dismay). I was living with a friend’s family who were Pagan and accepting, and I had plenty of queer friends online, and my girlfriend across the country, but it was hard. My friend’s family was going through hard times that I was unable to help with, and I was planning on moving back in with my parents for a few months to take the burden of me off of them while I found a new place to live. I was questioning my choices and my sexuality and wondering if I couldn’t just… go back to being who I’d been before, maybe pick up with my ex-boyfriend eventually and just… keep a part of me quiet and hidden.
And then I went to Pride. And it was everything you described and more. It was my truth. It was a huge rainbow banner, carried by anyone who wanted to join in, that was five blocks long. It was laughing with friends and rainbow bracelets and girls holding hands and kissing and running into a hate-spewing protester saying we were going to hell, and laughing in his face because in that moment, I knew who I was, and it was such a joyful thing that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever hate he preached, whatever hate my parents and their church preached, could not possibly be true, because I was exactly who I was meant to be.
That was the day, after a winter of self-doubt and self-hatred, despite the love of my girlfriend, my friends, the family that took me in, despite their reassurances that I was exactly who I was meant to be… that was the day I believed it. That was the day I let go of the idea I’d still half believed that I was just choosing a sinful lifestyle, and began living my life for who I was.
I was 20 that day. I am 25 now, my girlfriend and I will be celebrating our 6th anniversary this summer, and Pride is, for me, the most joyful holiday of the year.
Leave the horrible, hate-filled, soul-crushing place you’re in, Suffocated. And this June, find a Pride parade, go, and lose yourself in the sheer joy of being YOU. I love you, though I’ve never met you and probably never will. I love you even though you’re a gay man and I’m a gay woman. I love you deeply and truly, because I see myself in you, and I love you for it. I love you for trying, even though it’s awful for you and horrible of them to expect it, to be who your parents wanted you to be. I love you for being gay. I love you for being honest, even here. Love yourself, now, and do right by you.
And once you find it, never ever forget the joy of being you.
Great piece of writing. Well done.
Suffocated – I am a gay man and I must say that you deserve so much more than living in your current situation.
Your parents views re wrong, but they are obviously colored by their religious beliefs. The faster you get out of that house and into your own space where you can grow into your own man, find your new gay family of friends and start really living the better. Mental health and spirituality are so important and its completely unhealthy for you to continue to live in a homophobic house.
Maybe even move out with your brother, maybe a relative or a close friend.
The world is a big place, and there are lots and lots of great people in your future you have not yet met.
Young man – best of luck with everything. Don’t be reckless with your life – you get one chance. Stay away from drugs and always respect yourself.
Best wishes to you from Sydney Australia
Beautiful. Thank you. Great advice for a wonderfully strong young Man.
This made me cry today. I understand what it’s like to have controlling/religious parents (I’m not gay). It’s been such a struggle for me and remains a struggle to feel that everything that I do is viewed as dirty and sinful in my family’s eyes. Simple things like moving to cities that are my own choice, living with a significant other, spending time with friends who love and accept me are all seen as betrayals to our family and my parents’ morals.
I am so tired. Today I was wondering how I could continue to carry on, but I know I must. Thank you for this.
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