Saturday 21 July 2012

A step with my mother

I actually sort of confronted my mum yesterday. If you've read a few of these posts (http://iamabisexual.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/coming-out-to-my-parents.html), and seen the clip I did for Out4Marriage (http://iamabisexual.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/out-4-marriage.html), you know that my mum has never been at ease with the the idea of queer sexualities, and since I told her about my bisexuality, has not been particularly supportive.

I have a great relationship with my mother, and I have not let this one thing get between us. She just ignores it and I let her; I haven't wanted to confront her, because she's the one with the issue, and I feel as the child that it should not be my job to bring up stuff to deal with. So I've just never really known what my mother feels about it. I get the impression she would rather I was straight, or at least end up marrying a guy. I think she tries to forget about it, and when it gets briefly mentioned in other conversations, she goes very tight lipped about it.

But yesterday, we were talking about weddings, and I said "I'm not set on having a big wedding, but if I end up marring a woman, if she wants a big wedding, I'll give it to her." We were predicting whether my brother or I would have the bigger wedding.

My mother picked up on the 'if I marry a woman' bit, and didn't say anything in particular, but it made me really fed up. After all this back and forth on same-sex marriage, and my frustration at all that, I could not be bothered to let this lie any longer.

So I said "Yeah, a woman. You know this, it's a 50% chance it'll be a woman."
She nodded non-committedly.

We talked briefly about weddings some more, then I asked "Does [my brother] know I'm bisexual? I've never bothered to tell him. Have you?"
She said he picked it up off my Twitter account, so that's one mystery solved.

"I was never worried about him. I was worried about you though," I said.
"I know, I realised because you told Dad first," she replied.
"You made me cry you know," I continued, "before you knew, with things you said."
"Oh no, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, you once said 'but it's not natural, is it?' and I cried a lot at that."
"Oh I'm sorry."

So I got a few things off my chest, but she was not very forthcoming. I still don't know how she feels about it, and what she thinks. I just wish she'd be honest with me; I can't deal with the unknown.

I just don't know where she's at, which means I don't know what to do. She wants to support me unconditionally, which is why I think she doesn't tell me; my guess is she really doesn't like it, but doesn't want to say that to me.

But I don't want that! Even if it causes problems between us, at least out relationship will be honest, rather than this false thing we have going where she pretends everything's fine.

I might talk to my dad about it, on his own. He might have some insight, and luckily, he is fully down with the queers.

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