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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I had quite a difficult day today. I stayed last night at my mother's house. It was the first time I've slept there since March 1979 when we bought our own place. Well except when my father was hallucinating during his final onslaught of meds against Parkinson's disease. But that we restraining hiom rather than sleeping.
This house is where all the streses of being faced with being gay happened, and where all my parent fights happened.
And today my mother wants to learn more about her son, and what it is like to be gay, married and everything.
I hadn't expected to have to fight back tears. I told her how I spent my teenage years lying to myself, desperate to be allowed to meet girls in case I was really not a little queer, how I was outed at school, how I was obsessed by one boy and lusted after upwards of 50 others, how I coudl not tell my wife to be that I was gay because I couldn't even admit it to myself, how I was unable to reinvent mnslef at university becuase one of my best friends was there and I thought it actually mattered. And I think it did matter.
She said "how lucky that it is different today", so I explained about Zach and Love in Action. She had no idea that other parts of the English speaking world were uncivilised. But as I explained I remmebered that it was an "illness" then and that she would have had me "cured".
It was not an easy day
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I was sorry to hear that you'd had such a hard day timmy. But also pleased to hear that you'd had a chance to really open up and explain to your mother some of the important things. I think that that is tremendous, and very valuable.
I know that it took my own Mum over 20 years to go from being OK in theory about me being gay, to wanting to know and hear about what that actually and emotionally meant. And it wasn't until that happened that I realised quite how much of a stress it had been, feeling unable to be as open with her as I am with all the other people in my life who are important to me. But for the past couple of years she has been 100% supportive - even going as far on my 50th birthday this year to tell me that she was proud of her gay son.
So I hope that however hard today has been for you, it will have been cathartic, and cleared the way forward. Best wishes!
NW
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Regrettably not cathartic. But she seems at last and rather late to be trying to understand.
She is a paradox of contrived values. For example, when I was a teenager "Glad you are going out with girsl, dear. Your father and I worried that you might be going to be a homosexual", set alongside "Homosexuality never crossed my mind. I had a very sheltered upbringing. We knew there were homosexuals of course, actors and people like that."
I suppose she is trying. But the thing that get to me most, though I strove hard to hide, was that she never noticed a kid in pain. And never noticed a kid where the name of his beloved and longed for "love" appeared in every sentence.
I know we almost all hide. And I know we seem to be successful, in the main, but I was outed at school, and I know from one old friend of the time that I was "obviously gay", so it all seems a little uncomfortable.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Timmy, a very moving message. Thank you for your frankness and openess. I only wish that even the writing of the message had been cathartic for you - at least to some extent.
You wrote: When I was a teenager "Glad you are going out with girls, dear. Your father and I worried that you might be going to be a homosexual."... But the thing that got to me most, though I strove hard to hide, was that she never noticed a kid in pain... I know we almost all hide. And I know we seem to be successful, in the main.
But they did perceive that something was not completely right in the world of their child. It is possible that your behaviour tried to rule out (for them) the possibility of homsexuality. In which case, what were they to do?
You also wrote: I suppose she is trying.
And at her age, Timmy, that is really something! Can't you meet her halfway?
Real tight hugs.
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I am doing my best to meet her halfway. The thing is I also have a real problem with the house. When I go there my whole childhood washes over me and all the memories crowd back.
This is the home where I grew up confidently expecting to fall for girls, the home where I was supervised every second of the time with no privacy, the home where I took schoolfrineds back once only because they never returned, the home where I learnt how to mastrubate - a wonderful, unemotional, mechanical, mysterious act. And it is the home where I was crushed to discover that I was queer because John's image came into my head during that mysterious mechanical act. Not his face. A face would have been easier to explain. His naked body, in the changing rooms at school
Against that tapestry it is hard not to regress to 12 years old
And this was the home in which I lied to myself all my teenage years, the home I can back to from university in the vacations, and the home where I lived four more years after university, getting gradually more and more desperate about who and what I was.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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No Message Body
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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I find this point interesting for the other day a close friend (str8) who knows us both well pointed out that I behave in a completely different way when my father is around than when he isn't. I've always known I feel different when he's there and never feel I can be myself –regression to childhood. I never realised it was so obvious to others.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I either get aggressive or oppressed, usually. Yesterday I foun dit hard to remain adult. I wanted to cry and have someone take the pain away. Only neither of my parents was ever any good at taking the pain away.
I want to feel loved by them. I am told my father loved me. My mother says she loves me. But I never feel warmth
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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