What is it to be happy with your life? Is it who you are, who you've become, or what you wish to be? For me it seems an uphill battle to be happy with any of those. As I've realized before, my mind is split between coming out and staying like I am- a facade, an actor. Either way I can't change this part of me. It's a core aspect of who I am.
I sometimes really hate myself. I hate this life, I hate what I've done to myself. I wish I could have a different life, or somehow start from the beginning again. I can just do my best to fake being straight, and put my mind on a constant strain but can I really keep it up my whole life? And why is it that I have such an urge to not be free...and to even help in shackling myself?
Can I just stay here in the closet my whole life?
I don't want to come out, so maybe I don't have to ever come out. Maybe I could keep this going, have a boring relationship with a plain woman and go through life without really taking any risks. It's just I can't connect with people and I'm hollowing out. I can't stand having to accept my being gay. I want to run away from it as far as possible. What kind of cost could amount by not coming out? If I keep going in that direction I may actually kill myself. I used to play this tune when I was younger. I didn't know what it was about but I'm getting closer to its meaning these days.
My mind's getting pretty messed up. I'm to the point where, in mid laughter and seeming happiness, I'll go stone cold blank faced and have no clue what we were so happy about. The thoughts run through my head: "Oh right, that's not who I am. I'm not happy. I don't have a fun time". Really, what could possibly be funny? What could be so important? I'm disassociating to the point of delirium. Maybe I'm just so tired of being fake, but when that feeling hits me those thoughts and questions generalize to all of life and I become very depressed. I want to live but it would mean giving up the safety net of illusion, something I've learned to live with my whole life. I have to face this continuing deterioration every day and it makes me wonder if it's worth getting up.
Throughout my writings I've been back and forth between ecstatic confidence and suicidal depression. It never seems to stabilize or get better. I just keep moving on through the nights.
and yet...when I just wake up after a good dream, when the air breathes into my skin, when everything's right, and when my mind's not at war with itself: when I'm feeling alright... it's more than just a feeling.
Does life ever get better? Yeah it does. It might not be soon, but what are you going to do, other than stick around and fight through it until it does? And if you don't feel like fighting today, do it tomorrow.
To be brutally honest, get the fuck out of the closet. Just reading this makes it painfully obvious that staying in will inevitably lead to suicide as your mental health further deteriorates. You will have to make a choice between a short life of pain and suffering, ending with the remorse and sense of loss from your friends and family, who would never even be graced with why you would have made such a choice, or toughing out the bigotry of the ignorant and truly enjoying yourself among those graced with tolerance. The choice to me seems fairly obvious, but I guess it is subjective and, ultimately, yours to make.
Perhaps this is not the greatest advice, but from my view, choosing not to do/be "who you think you are" is also part of who you are. Choosing not to be happy and be in pain is fine, you're grown up (I assume), and can make your own decisions regarding this. Making those kind of choices is the humane part of this experience we call life. You'll eventually make a choice that leads to your happiness... or not. Life is what you make it.
With that said, I recommend choosing happiness. Literally the worst thing that could happen is you have to start from scratch relationship wise (family and friends), and if that does happen, then I refer to this old quote: "Those that matter don't mind, and those that mind don't matter". Cheers.
As scary as coming out seems, you won't be happy running away from it forever. Running becomes habitual and will make you hate yourself. Feeling like you're fake and lying all the time must be horrible, no wonder you feel depressed and hollowed out. I know it's really hard but you need to face your fears, accept yourself and come out. You'll be happier and stronger for it.
'Does life get better'. Ending with this i will assume that you are young (Late teens).
Acknowledging who you are is part of creating ones adult identity, which is what will framework for defining yourself and your actions for the rest of your life. To live a better life you must take the first step, you must come out, to be brutally honest, the only one who can do something with this situation is you. I can try to give my thoughts on why it's important, but ultimately you're the one who decides how it's all gonna go down.
Beeing gay is not something you can change. Try as you might, changing ones sexual preferences does not happen. One can live a life imitating that one is attracted to the opposite sex, but this will more than likely not be a happy life.
The people you are afraid that you will push away from you by coming out, are the people who are supposed to support you in this situation, and if they are not doing that, then it's up to you to find someone who will. You friends and family should want to see you happy, not live your life hiding a part of your personality, so strong, that it is the major driving force behind all your future relationships.
If you know your family and friends will be pushed away then your friends are not really your friends, and your family does not have the unconditioned love for you which they are supposed to have. You will need to find an alternative. You can become part of a community larger than yourself, find others withing the group who you can socialize with, who are on your level and don't care whether or not your gay.
Does life get better? I like to explain this with a quote that works for trying to stop people from commiting suicide. "Suicide is a long term fix for a short term problem". As you mature into a full adult, you will get to choose. You get to choose where you want to live, you can move away from your family and never speak to them again, you can move away from your friends who don't accept you, and lead a life in happiness under a new identity, and this new identity can be how you truly want to.
Life does get better, and as cheesy as it sounds: Hang in there!
On November 24 2011 18:09 kammeyer wrote: Ecstatic confidence and suicidal depression fluctuation is called manic depression, seek cognitive therapy.
What qualifies you to tell someone to seek a specific type of therapy? If you do not truly know your stuff, it is better to remain silent, rather than misinform someone.
I am not trying to make you look bad, i just want to make sure that you know what you are doing so that you don't accidentally harm someone.
If you don't wish to reply here feel free to toss me a PM.
It's your life. It's the only one you'll ever have. It gets better when you're no longer forced into social situations you don't want to be in. Your happiness in life is entirely up to you. Get independent. Make your own happiness. Apologize for nothing.
Op. I would seek help somewhere. Phone somebody, there are many helplines that will help you talk through things. It says you are are from Canada, what province, I can get some resources for you if you want.
I don't think anyone here can really tell you what to do with your life. After all, its your's. I think though you need to speak to somebody.
Why don't you want to come out though? What is stoping you?
Op. I would seek help somewhere. Phone somebody, there are many helplines that will help you talk through things. It says you are are from Canada, what province, I can get some resources for you if you want.
I don't think anyone here can really tell you what to do with your life. After all, its your's. I think though you need to speak to somebody.
Why don't you want to come out though? What is stoping you?
It is true that nobody can tell the OP what to do with his life. You can however, give good advice, and the OP can choose to fallow some of it. It is not productive to discourage people from posting good advice.
Happiness is partly a matter of finding people who like you for who you are. All of who you are. But to find those people, you have to take the really scary first step of being yourself around other people to find out who likes you. And that can be terrifying, because part of you will wonder if anybody out there will like you for who you really are rather than the mask you wear, but I promise you they're out there.
You don't need to go around telling everyone that you're gay, if you don't want to. But you ought to be proud of yourself for admitting it to yourself. I've met plenty of gay people through mutual friends who went for most of their life unable to admit it to themselves. It's a difficult thing to got even so far as you have, so be proud and take comfort in at least that much. If you can accept it on a personal level, that's another huge step, without even telling anybody else.
It's tough. It requires courage to admit to yourself who you are, and to be that and fuck the haters. Everybody says shit like that, and I know that it sounds simple and shallow. It's much easier said than done, but regardless it really is the truth. There's nothing wrong with you, you're just different. Learning to embrace it is a difficult journey, but a worthwhile one. The only trick is to keep taking steps forward.
Of course life gets better. You learn to deal with life better. And to do that, all you need to do is keep taking steps through life.
I have some fantastic advice regarding your problems.
Suicidal depression is not cool. This one time I was feeling really bad because I had a stomach ache. I was like "Dang, if I had to live the rest of my life vomiting like this, I'd rather die." Then I realized I could drug myself up and I felt much better
Also, if you're having trouble getting yourself out, and the resulting closetedness is hurting your sex life, then just remember: Sex can wait! Masturbate!
If you are more concerned about having to hide your identity, just pull up the youtube video of Reflection (the Lea Salonga movie version, not the Christina Aguilera weaksauce version). Then when the chorus hits, just belt along with it "When will my reflection showwwwwww...whoo I a-a-a-am (Hitting this run is crucial even though it's not in the movie version) INNNNNNNNNsii-iii-ii-ide." I always feel better about the prospect of having to hide my identity whenever I sing that song in my dorm and my neighbors yell at me to shut the fuck up.
On the other hand, if you are more concerned about the loneliness and isolation of your closeted condition, just remember that you are not alone! 70%+ of the children of asian immigrants remain single until well into their 20s. I've been single for like 5 years now and in that time I've learned to love the finer things in life, like planking, My Little Pony, and Taylor Swift. Also, I have over 200 friends on Facebook now, so do the math. (The math being that 200 > 0, thus I have a positive number of facebook friends, and and almost positive number of rl friends =D).
So get out of bed in the morning, because the day will be beautiful and full of sunshine or not (if you're in the northern latitudes this time of year). Also, if you don't get out of bed, then you will eventually die of dehydration and your corpse would be really disgusting to remove for whoever would be responsible for cleaning out your room should you fail to continue being alive. Don't do that to that poor, poor soul!
But in all seriousness, if your condition is as you say such that you cannot uncloset yourself for some reason, then find something in your life that you can be passionate about. When I was in the depths of my stomach-flu for example, I really enjoyed watching anime. Watching the Soul Society arc of Bleach got me through that dark time real well.
Listen to "more than a feeling" 20 more times until you feel better man. Where do you live? You can consider moving to a more well-received community. Have you talked to Mora? He's the coolest gay person on this forum (imho)
Do some research, find a local support group for gay people (guarantee there is one in your area unless you live in a pretty small down) and go to it. The internet is a less ideal but still way better than nothing option. That should work as a starting point for helping you get accustomed to being open with who you really are in the company of those who will support it. Living a lie (any kind of lie) is a terrible thing that will ultimately destroy you. Take it from someone who spent the better part of two years lying to my very fundamentalist family about still being Christian, it's better to just get it out there and then cut the people out of your life who won't accept that you're different from them.
I've been thinking on how to respond to this for a while, You have to come out, some how and some way. Being in the closet is horrible, everyday happy day is overhung with dread, guilt, shame, etc, and the thing is, you know this. Its how you feel right fucking now, and I know how I felt, you learn to love hating yourself, because that's the only way you can cope. I remember what being in the closet felt like, I felt ashamed, I felt like I had committed murder, and imagine you feel similarly. So re Shaetan and Plexa, what is stopping you coming to terms with being gay?
What are you afraid in coming out? It isn't the 60s anymore, being gay is totally acceptable and you shouldnt be ashamed of it. You have to accept yourself as what you are to be happy. There is a place for everyone in this world and i hope you will find the one for yourself. Keep your head up!
Edit: Heres a song that helped me when i was feeling down:
My experience with this type of stuff is rather limited. The one gay guy I know (that came out anyway) was in love with my straight friend and so he was depressed for quite a while. He eventually got over it and it got better. He now has a pretty cool boyfriend and is happier than I ever saw him back in school.
The guys from the tv show 1girl5gays also have all run "It gets better" campaigns. They're all in Toronto but they highly recommend being who you are and they keep pushing the fact that it does get better. They're all on youtube and some of them are pretty powerful.
That said, regardless of gay or straight, I do think that it gets better after high school. Literally everyone that I've discussed it with kind of agrees with that statement, except for 2 guys that were the stereotypical popular dumb jock who are now stuck in dead end jobs with the realization that the people around them grew up and no longer think their their typical immature behaviour is cool.
You get to hang out with cool people who are in your circle of friends because you want them to be; you're not limited to people just in your school just because that's the vast majority of people you know/meet. You get to do what you want to do. You get to take control and be responsible of your own life instead of just being a reed, swaying in the wind. It does get better.
Your sexuality is just a minor, minor part of your life, whether you be gay, straight, or bi. Society today paints it as huge thing, possibly the main defining thing in your life. But to be totally frank, the fact that you like guys should not dominate your life... there are much more important things to focus on, like friendships, being helpful to others, etc. Try doing some volunteering or something, you can meet other really nice, genuine people, and you can feel good knowing that you helped other people out.
Also, if you truly feel like you're heading towards delirium and suicide, please--for all of us here that care about you and most importantly, for yourself--try and find a counselor or psychiatrist that you can talk to.
I don't think you can get a lot of help without telling people about the conditions in your community, you make it sound like homosexuality is not well accepted, but don't say anything specific. Anyway, there's no reason to feel like everything is fake and bad, you're only lying to people about one thing and there's no reason why you can't enjoy the other things in life. Plenty of people are single late into their 20s or 30s and still lead really happy lives. Get a hobby, maybe. Watch ponies. However, if you are going between extreme highs and lows, you might need to seek help from a therapist. Your sexual orientation is only a small part of your life, enjoy the rest of it. Also, don't kill yourself. That doesn't solve anything and only leaves regret and sadness for everyone who cares about you.
On November 24 2011 20:38 evanthebouncy! wrote: Listen to "more than a feeling" 20 more times until you feel better man. Where do you live? You can consider moving to a more well-received community. Have you talked to Mora? He's the coolest gay person on this forum (imho)
This is very true, when i was a teenager one of my best friends where a couple of gays. As i girl i loved their good understanding for girls, their humor, their honesty without a thought of sex in their mind :D. Send Mora a PM, he is the most handsome and cool gay person here, it least what i know.
"Reserve your right to any deed or utterance that accords with nature. Do not be put off by the criticism or comments that may follow; if there is something good to be done or said, never renounce your right to it. Those who criticize you have their own reasons to guide them, and their own impulse to prompt them; you must not let your eyes stray towards them, but keep a straight course and follow your own nature"
Seems like just about everybody that's posted here has brought positive things to say. One thing about your OP stood out to me though, Roe, and I dug up the password to my TL account to remind you that it just isn't possible.
I don't mean that you can't fake being straight for a while, or forever. That's possible, and possibly-but-not-probably even the path of least resistance. Were you so inclined, you might be able to stay in the closet for the rest of your life. Maybe you could go to straight bars, meet straight people, marry a straight woman, make some straight-or-not babies, and die as a straight man after a (hopefully) long, straight life. Maybe you'd (straight) fool everyone until the day you died. It's possible, at least.
Unfortunately, it's also certainly possible that you could decide to come out and discover that everything goes exactly as wrong as you'd planned. Maybe worse, even. As tempted as I am to tell you that only good things can come from coming out -- as dude above put it, "It isn't the 60s anymore," -- I won't, because that actually could turn out to be a big helping of bullshit, for you. It left me dazed and confused when a friend told me years back that he'd been -actually- disowned by his parents for being gay about a year earlier; honestly, I can't even come close to imagining how he felt (/feels) about it. That said, and admittedly for the sake of reassurance, it's also possible that coming out could number among the happiest days of your life. As far as I can tell, though, it's generally such a non-event for most people nowadays that it's actually disappointing. Unexpectedly, there aren't any fireworks or gunshots (usually), nobody cries but you (or not), and a few conversations later you're promoted to "my gay friend/son/coworker," or…just Roe. The way I figure it, for every <large number> of folks that come out to their friends and family, one or two at best will run into something unpleasant. And, I've yet to meet anyone who said they regretted coming out -- including the few people who had awful times at it. "Awful" is an amazing understatement, by the way.
It's sure possible that you'll feel this way for a long time, too. It could be a very long time, and maybe it won't get better on its own. Seeing the OP here at all suggests to me that you're feeling out of options, and that you trust TL for some good ol' fashioned internet guidance. So, trust me when I say that, however open my post leaves your other options, you absolutely need to tell someone about how you feel. This is not negotiable; you need to talk to someone about how you feel, ASAP. Even if you aren't going to tell someone all the reasons why you feel so unhappy -- remember, it's your choice if you want to pretend to be straight, -- tell them that you feel this way. If you need to, invent a whole new self who's unhappy because of a bad breakup with his basically-a-model rich girlfriend with great teeth. Then, bring her up with "Can I talk to you for a second?" to a coworker, teacher, acquaintance, or anybody who isn't a completely random stranger. You might be amazed to find out who's willing to listen and make suggestions. In the worst-case scenario you'll learn that the person you talked to who won't be worth your time later on...and that's bound to be worth the time to figure out early.
Early on in your OP you said you wanted to have a different life, that you wanted to start it over from the beginning again. Unfortunately, -- and I signed in and paced around for over an hour to remind you, not to mention time spent writing, -- that IS impossible. I don't know if you're the religious type or not, but, start-to-finish, this "living" thing is a one-shot deal, as far as anyone's got me convinced. There aren't any extras to spare, so don't sit around waiting for another; instead, you should go live YOUR life, and do your damnedest to make it into something special.
Just for a few minutes, imagine life as a book where you're the protagonist, alright? It might not be a best-seller, but it's somebody's baby -- it's got to have other characters, conflict to develop those characters, and maybe some kind of overarching theme or eventual great accomplishment...but, then again, maybe not. It might be a series of loosely-connected vignettes leaving critics with all kinds of "wtf???"s after reading. (…Hey, I said it might not be a best-seller. =D)
Now, do you really want to end your book at one chapter, leaving all the readers depressed and probably hungry for more? I get the feeling that you don't, call me crazy. I'm not exactly sold on how great it was, but people wouldn't -still- be talking about LotR if it'd been a short story about a guy who gets sent on a quest to do something great and then hangs himself instead, end of story.
Regarding your last question asking whether or not life ever gets better...well, dude, there's only one way to find out. So...get to it! Get out there and write your novel, not a freaking short story. Be awesome, be an idiot, make mistakes for a change, get things right for a change! Live something more epic than Wheel of Time plus the Bible glued together and taped to a T-Rex fighting velociraptors with nunchucks!
And, for fuck's sake, don't you DARE jump after asking for advice on Team Liquid!
Also, I didn't peruse your post history for long enough to determine your gender, so if you're a girl just substitute with equivalent awesome girl'ness as needed.
Don't be afraid to relocate yourself, there are communities worldwide that are more accepting of homosexuality than others. Many countries (or states/provinces) have legalized gay marriage. At least where I live, gay marriage is legal, there is annual gay parade and even more awareness programs, and in general, we accept each other for who they are. + Show Spoiler +
Look dude, life gets better as long as you can get through it. Now to be fair if you are in highschool your view might change after highschool.
A lot of people can understand going through highschool and staying in the closet since high school is bad enough when you are straight (what with all the assholes) and I can only imagine it being worse if you are gay.
But you know what for your own sake you should get some help.
I'm going through some depression, nothing suicidal but I am getting help and I feel just a little bit better everyday. Its a different source from what you have but do know that therapy helps. I think its important you know that and work with it.
Also, come out to the people close to you. One can only hope your parents care enough for you that they will accept you and help you. You don't need to tell everyone when you come out but you should tell someone.
Also, why the fuck is it called being in the closet? Fuck that noise. A friend of mine told me that being in or out is bullshit. In the end you are who you are and you choose to tell who you choose to tell. The whole concept of the closet is negative and makes it harder for people to come to grips with their sexuality especially at a young age. The whole concept of having to be in before coming out is wrong. People should be themselves and one can only hope that with time everyone comes to accept it.
If you tell everyone will you be ostracized by some? Sure. But then again people are ostracized for having a lazy eye or an amputated arm or even poor skill in sports. So fuck the assholes who hate you for something as unimportant in the grand scheme of life as being gay or straight or tall or short.
If its truly who you are then its ok. And remember that with time it does get better. The older you get the more mature your peers are and the more likely they are to accept you regardless of sexual orientation. Its only people who aren't worth your time that will hate that you are gay. If they think they can catch or you would hit on them (even though they are straight) then they don't need to be your friends and you don't need to talk to them.
The only real suggestion I can give truly is to get some therapy. There are many types. I would avoid psychotherapy but move towards cognitive therapy to be honest. Psychotherapy is based in some poor and outdated research.
You don't need a psychiatrist right away, they just like to give out medicine so start with a therapist and if they feel you have serious depression requiring medication they will give you a referral for a appointment with a psychiatrist who will determine your medical needs and prescribe something. They will make follow up appointments to check on you as well.
If you are in university the schools often offer fairly generous coverage for mental health with little co-pay (mine is 10 bucks a visit and 75% off meds if i need them). If your parents have health care the coverage on mental health is usually also quite good. If you are in high school there are often subsidies and ways the school can get you some help with little cost to you. Again therapy is a lot cheaper and it seems it will help you deal with what you are struggling with here in this blog.
I have a degree in psychology so you can trust that my recommendations for help are reasonable and worth your time and effort to at least attempt. Most therapists are understanding of cost needs and will set up a schedule that works best for you (i go every 2 weeks because even with the copay it is expensive with regard to my personal budget for example).
Letting your loved ones and people close to you know about therapy is also really good idea if you get help because you can often work with them to alleviate some of the everyday stresses so you can focus on your feelings and getting better.
Good luck in dealing with your personal problems and I hope you feel happy again in life soon my friend.
Honestly, the key to loving your life is doing things you will respect yourself for tomorrow. Do this long enough and eventually you'll reach a point where you've done everything possible to make your life fun and enjoyable. Be humble, open-minded, and uninhibited in pursuing what you want in life.
You have one life. You have one chance to do everything you want. You dont have anything to lose, because it's already lost. There is no one that has the right to tell you what you can do and what you can't do. If you're into metal 'Metallica - Shoot me again' is my favorite song. Why? Because it expresses that everything can come, you have to take your stand. Dude, take your stand. You are awesome. The people around you will either respect you or pay for it by missing out on a chance being around an awesome guy. You shouldn't see everything in a nutshell, look at yourself from above and find out that nothing can fuck you. You are the one in position to fuck. GL MATE!
There are tens of thousands of people dieing of poverty, terminal diseases, war, slavery, etc. There are parents that loose their children. There are people that in one wrong move loose their houses and their family abandons them and they become homeless (hobos).
You feel depressed and suicidal, take a look at any of these. See what people in pain really look like. And for what? Coz they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Everybody has his/ her demons to fight. Fucking fight them coz you are most likely better of then one billion people to begin with.
To be happy you have to be strong. To be strong, you have to learn to appreciate what you do have (people from Canada with more then 2000 posts on an internet forum tend to have a lot). Grow up! You are never worth dieing for. Your loved ones, maybe.
On November 24 2011 18:00 Shaetan wrote: Out of curiousity, why can't you accept being homosexual?
This is probably the question that most needs answering.
Indeed.
I don't think I feel very bad for you.
Why does being gay matter? Are you Christian? Would your daddy disown you? Are you actually married with children?
There could be any number of reasons, broadly speaking there are 2 types of barriers to coming out, perceived threats to your current way of life, and actual threats to you way of life. Take example from my own life, I perceived alot of threats to my way of life, I thought my family would disown me, my friends would belittle me, and that by coming out that I die alone and unhappy. In actuality none of it turned out be true.
I'm lucky, and not everyone is as lucky as me.
Our job should be to guide Roe through the threats perceived and actual, and even if all the threats to his way of life are perceived, I don't think we shouldn't feel sympathy for him.
I agree I should have explained more about why I can't even accept it within myself. This post touched on it.
On November 24 2011 21:45 Kerotan wrote: I've been thinking on how to respond to this for a while, You have to come out, some how and some way. Being in the closet is horrible, everyday happy day is overhung with dread, guilt, shame, etc, and the thing is, you know this. Its how you feel right fucking now, and I know how I felt, you learn to love hating yourself, because that's the only way you can cope. I remember what being in the closet felt like, I felt ashamed, I felt like I had committed murder, and imagine you feel similarly. So re Shaetan and Plexa, what is stopping you coming to terms with being gay?
I actually thought I could change it when I was younger, so I grew the cycle of self hate. I was pretty influenced by christian morals, and the family on my mother's side is fairly conservative. Strangely though, I bought into all of it. I really did believe that I was diseased, that I'm unnatural, that it was objectively wrong to be gay. I was attracted to religious ideas because they asserted they knew the truth from something all powerful and unalterable. How can you argue against that? Further I couldn't stand on my own against their dogma and bullying. I was brainwashed...and I kept it going thinking I could just prolong the acceptance of my sexuality forever. Perhaps I'm just masochistic, or have "self-defeating personality disorder". After some introspection I caught some sense of narcissism wrapping around the masochism, like one is in answer to the other. Maybe this says something about who I really am, and what I need to change in order to accept myself. Either way, I can fight against them now. I can stick up for myself. I just need to not get sidetracked, as the poisoned chalice keeps getting pushed my way. I'll push it back every single time.
I can't express how greatfull I am for all of your replies (I really loved the short poem and marcus aurellius quote as well as the council meeting in particular). I'll read this thread any time I feel like I'm breaking down or losing hope, or even when I catch myself trying to suppress my feelings. Thank you all.
It's not gonna end tonight, it's not gonna end when I get down. It gets better
^ YEAH!! Oh man let me show you this song, I think it is the best... I think you pretty much handled the situation fine... are you still religious (should try to break away if I were you). How old are you? It's easier to come out when you are economicaly independent and can basicaly say "fuck you" to your families w/o worrying about where to live.
Remember you are as happy as your mind is free of guilts, and in your case there is NO reason to feel guilty.
On November 25 2011 10:39 evanthebouncy! wrote: ^ YEAH!! Oh man let me show you this song, I think it is the best... I think you pretty much handled the situation fine... are you still religious (should try to break away if I were you). How old are you? It's easier to come out when you are economicaly independent and can basicaly say "fuck you" to your families w/o worrying about where to live.
Remember you are as happy as your mind is free of guilts, and in your case there is NO reason to feel guilty.
My mother used to go to church quite often, but in recent years she's become more of a spiritualist type. Doesn't really believe in the religions around anymore, but you can always see that believer in her eyes when the conversation somehow gets on to spirituality and god and philosophy(I always try to explain to her that philosophy starts where religion ends). In short she's become more lenient and tried really hard to grow as a person. Her mother(my grandmother) was extremely strict and abused my mother and my uncle a lot. I think this might be the reason she's clanged to faith for so long, she needs to know that somehow she can have another life and another chance at making things right(which I think is ironic, wouldn't you want the person you hated to be gone forever?). But above all I think she wants everything to be forgiven and forgotten, and that there was a meaning or a good-hearted plan behind all my grandmother's wicked and sinister actions. I think she's softened up over the years, in a good way. She's become so different, you can tell she's putting in a lot of effort to change.
At any rate(since I'm not gonna psychoanalyze my mother too much), what's interesting is my father in recent years has been a lot of atheist type stuff. Whenever we get on to the subject I get this weird feeling between the three of us. I don't really remember my dad much in childhood, he was always working. My father's recent words on the subject, along with the talk he gave me along with a box of condoms "you should have sex with someone you care about and love", have given me hope that he's someone I can trust. The family used to be very cold and uncommunicative. Suppressing thoughts and not confronting them was a common technique when any problems occurred. Passive aggressiveness is the disease which still clings to us. My sister hates it there, and she's moving out as soon as she can find a place.
Well anyways, enough of the dark past... Not currently religious though I wonder about the deist argument sometimes. I'm 21 right now. I just installed brood war on my new laptop and the colours are all weird and the screen is like half the size of my computer screen. Gonna enjoy watching DH this weekend
I used to sit in my room, hiding from everybody, trying to blend in and never quite understanding why. Through HUGE (and I mean enormous) amount of work I finally managed to admit to myself that I'm gay, but still there's a huge gap between admitting it and accepting it. I'm also from a conservative family, and I'm still somewhat religious too, so accepting myself for who I was was not an easy task. It took literally years to understand that men are defined by what they do, not by who they do... or something like that.
Anyways, here's the thing. I'm completely okay with who I am now, and here's how it went for me. My parents still don't know, most of my close family still don't know. I actually started by thinking about it myself, then telling my best friend. Baby steps. Don't think coming out of closet has to be all running through campus wrapped in a rainbow flag or anything. One thing is for sure tho. Accepting who I was was the most important thing to improve the quality of my life, my relationships, my friendships, everything I have today. Understanding yourself gives you the confidence of facing all the various opinions people might have about you.
Coming out of the closet starts from you, and you are the most important part in it. Not the people you tell to. If you don't have the confidence to carry out the message, it could turn out bad. Have confidence in yourself!
I wouldn't want to pretend that I have any idea what it's like to be homosexual and in the closet, however it kind of strikes me as if you've gotten used to it. Change is always scary, and from what I've read about your situation at home for example you won't get disowned or anything like that.
To me it sounds like the downsides to staying inside the closet are HUGE, whereas the downsides to coming out are...?
I could imagine some downsides to being gay in a fairly homophobic society, however I would say that the people that would judge you because of that don't matter. I hope you can find the strength to come out, because from what I gather from the other people in this thread that actually do have a clue (Unlike me XD) it will clear up a big source of negative emotions.
EPT
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