It never ceases to amaze me what a difference a few hours or a few days can make on someones life. This has been a whirlwind of a weekend and it doesn't really show any signs of slowing up anytime soon.
Friday afternoon marked a change in my family life. For years and years now, my father and sister have not known a lot about my personal life. They were not aware that I was gay and of course not aware that I am now married to Derek. There was so much I wanted to say to him to help him understand, but I knew it would be fruitless. It's just not something he or my sister will ever understand. I had not told them for a multitude of reasons. Mostly I guess because I knew it would hurt them and they would be disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ashamed of who I am. I've spent 15 years of my life coming to grips with it and realizing that who I am is who I am. I can't change, nor do I want to. I'm proud of the man that I have become. I'm just sad that the rest of my family will never truly understand or accept me for who I am. I have no doubt they will always love me. If there is one thing my family is great at, it's letting each other know we love them, even if we don't agree. I guess that's so much better than many people have it, so for that I'm grateful.
Now while I am grateful that everything is finally out in the open, I am disturbed about how it all came about. I will be the first to admit that I should have told my father and sister a long time ago, but fear makes you hide things like that. However, I will never understand how a third party outside of my family feels it is okay to talk about my life to my family without speaking to me first. This all came to light because someone I knew from a long long time ago (when I used to go to church camp as a child) stumbled upon some stuff online about me. This person sends me a friendly email saying hello and a quick word or two as if nothing was wrong. And then a couple of weeks later, my Dad knows everything and even tells me it was through this certain site that things were found out. Did my father need to know? Absolutely. Should this guy have been the one to tell him? Absolutely NOT. At the very least, if he was so concerned he should have emailed or called me to talk about it. But even then, I don't really see how it is any of his business.
He proves one of my points about SOME, not all, of the people involved in the church. They will preach and be the most upstanding Christian and then will turn right around and do things behind your back in the name of "concern for my soul" and "God". That's disgusting to me. Don't use a God who loves as a way to cause problems in someone else's family and do things behind someone's back without speaking to them first. If my Bible memory serves, Jesus and his followers confronted people one on one. If they were concerned they talked to the person they were concerned about, not someone else. I believe if Jesus were alive today, and he was upset with something I was doing, he would come to me and only me....not my father.
I haven't really talked about that part of things yet, and just needed to get that off my chest.
And if that stress isn't enough, my car started having problems this morning. I think something is messed up with the brakes or something, but it wouldn't drive, felt like everything was locked up. I had to have it towed to a repair shop and now I am just waiting for someone from the shop to call and let me know what's wrong and how much it's going to cost to repair.
The Kennedy Center needs to call me with good news soon. I don't know how much more bad news I can take this week.
2 comments:
So what was your dad's reaction?
Was he mad that you were gay or mad that he didn't know and you never told him?
I think he was more hurt and disappointed. He didn't yell and wasn't really mad...more upset. And I think it was the fact that I am gay. I'm pretty sure he understood why I had never told him.
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