A girls gotta do

I have struggled all my life with what I now recognise as the *unreasonable expectations of my mother; and my coming out to her has coincided with my decision to stop torturing myself so I can make her happy.

That said, when I came out to her a few weeks ago she took it well but since then we've had a few intense conversations where she hinted that I was being selfish in "choosing" to be gay, because otherwise I would have thought about how it would affect the people who love me, and if I had thought and cared about how it would affect them clearly as a good daughter/sibling I would have continued to stifle myself in the name of their happiness. Before that line of conversation got out of hand I cut it off by summing up my sentiments thusly:

If I could be different to make you happy I would, but that's not an option and I'm not going to change, I don't care what you think of it or if you call it a choice, I don't care how you want to rationalise it and how you think we can fix it, forget about all that cause I'm not interested in changing. I love you very much, and I know this is difficult for you and we're just as the beginning of this process. I'm not asking you to accept it or like it. But this is where we are, I'm gay and I'm not changing and you don't like it, so use your energy to figure out how we move forward from here.

Since that conversation she has been very silent, I've called her twice and gotten the lukewarm shoulder. I understand that this is very difficult for her because of her personality [sic disfunction] as well as her religious beliefs. But the thing is, after all these years of angsty bending over backwards to see to her comfort and make her happy, I suddenly find that I am fresh out of the desire to see to any one's comfort but my own. I love my mother dearly, and I know I need to allow room for this to be difficult for her, but now that I recognise how unfair our relationship has been all these years I feel like it's her turn to deal with not getting what she wants so I can be happy.

So, if she's gonna be frosty to me because I came out and told her don't waste her time trying to manipulate me straight, then that's her problem now, and I won't spend my time calling her out of guilt, and suffering because I feel like I'm being an unreasonable daughter. I'm gonna take all that valuable time and emotional energy to accept that I am actually not an unreasonable daughter and I have every right to follow my own path wrong or right, and I deserve to be happy because THIS is my life. Mine. Even though it makes her unhappy because if she wants to be happy, that's not my purpose, she's got her own life for that.

*In an nutshell she's always made it seem like every mistake I've made or choice that she didn't agree with was a huge trangression against her and meant that I didn't truly care about her, because if I loved her I would never do anything to make her unhappy (and I mean EVERY, y'know like not washing dishes, or cleaning my room). Nobody wants to hurt or disappoint a parent and it's a great point of suffering for all of us if we ever do, and after dealing with her reactions a few times, I bought into the idea that if you loved someone you never did anything to hurt them. So if I ever had any desires that were contrary to what I knew would make her happy I struggled with the guilt of being a bad daughter. And more, I truly love and appreciate my mother, and the idea that she wouldn't know that was intolerable to me so I was willing to do anything to prove it. So for most of my life I've had to deal with that terrible feeling that every choice I made was potentially something terrible I was doing to her. Unless you've a similar relationship with your mom you cannot begin to understand what a huge burden that is.

for me, such a revelation, but the world carries on without so much as a ripple.

In my opening post I said I believe my purpose in this life is to face my truths. I knew if I were untrue to that I would suffer so I started this blog to help me mitigate the effect being closeted would have on my life, but:

It failed, rather than helping me with the burden of keeping my secret, every time I logged in was a reminder of my my failure to live up to my purpose. Also, it turns out the only real way to alleviate the pressure of a truth untold is to tell it.

So I did. I came out to my mom; and it went as well as can be expected.

I will continue to post here, but now with the comfort of being who I am rather than as a daughter hiding from her mother.

The Ripple Effect

My purpose in this incarnation is to be fearless with my love and with my truths. So far so good; except with this one thing:

I can't tell my mother I sleep with women because that truth cannot exist between us without creating an acridity that will strain our relationship.

It's not the shame of my sexuality that prevents me telling that truth; it's the fear of losing her. She is a christian who believes homosexuality is a perversion and a sin, and she won't be able to accept that I have fallen out of God's grace. Our conversations will begin to orbit her need to change me and I'll have to let her go to maintain my self and I'm just not ready.

I've always been gay and I am proud of my sexuality and I don't want to change, but for most of my sexual life I identified openly as bisexual among my friends, but avoided relationships with women so I wouldn't have to talk about it with her. Now, I sleep only with women and I have chosen to live in the closet because though I can't spare her the pain of my sexuality forever, I can spare her the most painful way of finding out - from someone else.

We can't buy our parents protection from who we are - my omissions are intended to buy me time to appreciate her and our relationship in a way I was incapable of when I was younger. This blog is where I'll come to talk about the price of my journey to letting my mother go.