Friday's vent/Family stuff

[cormeum]

This forum is becoming something like a diary to me, a personal journal. A safe place where I can let out my emotions. Everything annoys me today. Want to bury my head in sand. My father is like „ What is it with you, walking around like a black cloud, you were so happy last weekend, what happened to you again? ” He says it not in a way as if he’d be worried about my mood swings, he’s more like angry that he’s unable to get inside my head, to control me. And this fatherly way of trying to find a connection with me is something I find so disgusting. I so hate it when he tries to invade my personal space but this father and son talk. He’s like „ Come on, you can tell your old man everything, are you sad because of that girl you saw last weekend in Moscow?

„ Dad, I didn’t see any girl last weekend in Moscow, can we not talk about it again for the hundredth time? ”

„ No, I know my boy, I know that only a girl could make you feel so bad. ”

No, you don’t know shit about me. You only think you do but you don’t. I was quite young when I understood that I cannot talk to my parents. At all. We can only talk about everyday things like my university or their job or something about people we know. But I could never open my heart to them like I do in here. Because I don’t trust them.

I know I wouldn’t tell them anything important. Even if it wasn’t about being gay, if I suddenly found out that I’m terminally ill or something, I wouldn’t tell them one word. I don’t know what happened that made me lose my faith in them and has there ever been any faith at all. I wouldn’t say I love them very much. And they have never tried to get to know me. They only know plain formal facts about me – when I’m born, where I’m studying, but if someone asked them, like, what is my favorite color or what is my favorite food or what would I like to achieve in my life, I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to answer. I feel like I have just a biological connection with these people. He made me, she gave birth to me and that’s all.

In Russian we have this word „ muzhik” which basically means a very many man. That’s what they want to make out of me. A real muzhik. They don’t care if I’m happy with it or not. Their only wish is not fail as parents. If you’re Russian and you raise a gay child, especially son, you’re totally failed. All neighbors and family friends will laugh at you and if you don’t feel ashamed, they will embarrass you so much you’ll never forget it. That’s why my father is asking about girls the whole time. Because I think they might actually sense that I might not be what they wanted me to be. And such thought is dreadful to them. They want to see me showing at least the slightest interest in the opposite sex which I'm unable to show.

Lately my mother talks about her friend's sons who are getting married or living together with their girlfriends, and usually she does it in my presence. I understand that as a hint that I should be doing something like that too. I'm just 20. Isn't it a bit too early to have family and kids and everything even for a heterosexual person? She acts like I'm 50 and my father watches every my reaction cautiously. Waiting a heterosexual reaction out of me. That makes me sick.

[Scootaloo]

I'm not going to pretend I know what it's like to live in Russia, but I know people. I also know that parents love their children, even when it may not seem that way.

Parents aren't given any special instructions, or go through any classes on how to reach their children, they are just regular people like ourselves. I'm guessing deep inside they feel like they are trying their best to connect with you, but truly don't get how to.

Some of that may be their ignorance, or how they were raised and what they know. But some of it is you as well. If you feel you can't talk to them or trust them, then you are shutting them out. And they will never understand you, if you keep yourself hidden.

You may be right about why your Father is harping on you about women. Then again he may be doing it because he wants to see you happy. Maybe he thinks your lonely and that why you seem so guarded and perhaps come across as depressed.

Everyone's relationship with their family is different and unique, and I may be way off base, but it sounds like your pushing them away more then they are shutting you out.

[TigerLover]

I might know a little of how you feel. You love your parents and to want to open up to them. But you ultimately know they're not to be trusted. They love you but their thoughts and actions are not guided by their love for you.
Is that anywhere in the ballpark?

Honestly I can't offer good advice. All I can offer is a cautionary tale.

I pretended to conform to what my parents wanted me to be. I worked hard at keeping them happy with me and pretended our relationship was just fine.

I never confronted our problems until they blew up in my face.

Now not only do I have no contact with my mother and a dysfunctional relationship with my father. But I also have no way to recover everything I sacrificed to try and keep our fucked up relationship going. So much time and effort wasted, so many rejected opportunities that'll never come again. Just to please them and patch over our relationship for another week.

Whatever you decide, for the love of god do not cater to their demands.

[Zen]

I might know how you feel. You love your parents and to want to open up to them. But you ultimately know they're not to be trusted. They love you but their thoughts and actions are not guided by their love for you.
Is that anywhere in the ballpark?

Honestly I can't offer good advice. All I can offer is a cautionary tale.

I pretended to conform to what my parents wanted me to be. I worked hard at keeping them happy with me and pretended our relationship was just fine.

I never confronted our problems until they blew up in my face.

Now not only do I have no contact with my mother and a dysfunctional relationship with my father. But I also have no way to recover everything I sacrificed to try and keep our fucked up relationship going. So much time and effort wasted, so many rejected opportunities that'll never come again. Just to please them and patch over our relationship for another week.

Whatever you decide, for the love of god do not cater to their demands.

I hear you there bro!

[deephiance]

Back in the late 1970's at age 10-11 I begun experimenting with boys, I caught by my mother and given a really good thrashing and in no uncertain terms I was told that if this happened everyone would find out and I would be sent for therapy, which in those days regardless of age meant Reparative Therapy and Electro-Therapy.

Up until 1979 in Australia Homosexuality was not only seen as a mental illness, to engage in Homosexual act also resulted in breaking the law.

In 1981 at the age of 12 I fell in love with a class mate and persued him...successfully and for months we spent all waking moments in each others company or on the phone to each other....until he got involved in Bible Studies and he was given the 'Fire and Brimstone' talk which he then relayed to me and gave me the ultimatum to attend church and confess my sins and repent from a life of sin or he would tell everyone that I was gay. Life was never the same.

Rejected, isolated and ostricised because I was self aware at a very young age, but mind you it wouldn't have made any difference if I was 12 or 22, infact my age was probably the only factor that I was still alive as 'poofter' bashing was a sport and it wasn't unusual to hear about a man of questionable reputation beaten to death and understanding that they were a victim of poofter bashing.

Rejected by everyone I loved I built a life they would throw them off the scent. I couldn't trust anyone with the truth, not even parents. At the age of 14 I fell in love with a neighbour, it was a neighbour I had previously experimented with, and it was on and off for the next 15 years and he came from an ultra conservative family. We did everything we could to hide the relationship...we appeared to have girlfriends, we both even got engaged at the same time. Drugs made the lies more believable to us, but drugs would lead to a devastating loss...he was 27.

That was 1999 and I was still living a lie. You know what it is like to go under water and have someone hold your head under water? That is what life was like for me for 2 decades.

In 2000 I was asked by my mother 'Are you gay?' to which I replied 'Yes', and then she replied ' I always knew it, I have known since Mark'. Mark was my first boyfriend at 12.

That conversation was so conflicting that instead of relief I felt white hot anger....if you are cool with it now, why the fuck did you make me feel like I was a fucking leper when I was 11? It turns out that she was afraid of what people would think about here if she was seen to be supporting her gay son, that's how oppressive the times where in Australia, and dare I suggest most of the western world, where in the 1970's and 1980's.
[MENTION=24218]cormeum[/MENTION] I can't pretend to know what you might be going through with your parents right now, but I can suggest that you don't write your parents off too soon. They are just as fearful of what will happen if they become the parents of a gay son in oppressive Russia as your are fearful of being rejected or even hurt by your Parents...I would even hazard a guess that your mother probably already knows anyway, quiet possibly your father too, and they are trying to push you to a more 'acceptable lifestyle' to not only protect themselves but to also protect you.

Parents are funny like that, but they do love you.

[Ammon]

Back in the late 1970's at age 10-11 I begun experimenting with boys, I caught by my mother and given a really good thrashing and in no uncertain terms I was told that if this happened everyone would find out and I would be sent for therapy, which in those days regardless of age meant Reparative Therapy and Electro-Therapy.

Up until 1979 in Australia Homosexuality was not only seen as a mental illness, to engage in Homosexual act also resulted in breaking the law.

In 1981 at the age of 12 I fell in love with a class mate and persued him...successfully and for months we spent all waking moments in each others company or on the phone to each other....until he got involved in Bible Studies and he was given the 'Fire and Brimstone' talk which he then relayed to me and gave me the ultimatum to attend church and confess my sins and repent from a life of sin or he would tell everyone that I was gay. Life was never the same.

Rejected, isolated and ostricised because I was self aware at a very young age, but mind you it wouldn't have made any difference if I was 12 or 22, infact my age was probably the only factor that I was still alive as 'poofter' bashing was a sport and it wasn't unusual to hear about a man of questionable reputation beaten to death and understanding that they were a victim of poofter bashing.

Rejected by everyone I loved I built a life they would throw them off the scent. I couldn't trust anyone with the truth, not even parents. At the age of 14 I fell in love with a neighbour, it was a neighbour I had previously experimented with, and it was on and off for the next 15 years and he came from an ultra conservative family. We did everything we could to hide the relationship...we appeared to have girlfriends, we both even got engaged at the same time. Drugs made the lies more believable to us, but drugs would lead to a devastating loss...he was 27.

That was 1999 and I was still living a lie. You know what it is like to go under water and have someone hold your head under water? That is what life was like for me for 2 decades.

In 2000 I was asked by my mother 'Are you gay?' to which I replied 'Yes', and then she replied ' I always knew it, I have known since Mark'. Mark was my first boyfriend at 12.

That conversation was so conflicting that instead of relief I felt white hot anger....if you are cool with it now, why the fuck did you make me feel like I was a fucking leper when I was 11? It turns out that she was afraid of what people would think about here if she was seen to be supporting her gay son, that's how oppressive the times where in Australia, and dare I suggest most of the western world, where in the 1970's and 1980's.
[MENTION=24218]cormeum[/MENTION] I can't pretend to know what you might be going through with your parents right now, but I can suggest that you don't write your parents off too soon. They are just as fearful of what will happen if they become the parents of a gay son in oppressive Russia as your are fearful of being rejected or even hurt by your Parents...I would even hazard a guess that your mother probably already knows anyway, quiet possibly your father too, and they are trying to push you to a more 'acceptable lifestyle' to not only protect themselves but to also protect you.

Parents are funny like that, but they do love you.

I knew there was something about you that made me think (in another thread) that you were just like me.
I actually enjoy your post where others believe you're cranky or arrogant

I'm actually the same, it's not crankyness or arrogance, it's called saying the hard truth even though some wont like it!

I've experienced the same thing except I started experimenting at age 8, or better said I've been experimented on by someone who was 3yrs older, and from age 7 to age 12 he ruined my childhood by blackmailing me.

At age 9 I had a crush on my neighbour in morocco. He was 2 yrs older. We met every summer and some years also in the winter. We really called it a relationship at age 14. And at age 17 in the summer I went to him and as we hugged tightly I wanted to kiss him but he took a step back and stopped the kiss, saying that he loves me but we can't do this anymore because we are now old enough to know what is good or wrong, and that this is against our beliefs (Islam).

Innerly, At that moment I felt my heart crash in million pieces. But I kept my cool and said "ok"
Every fiber in my body wanted to tell him that I loved him etc.. But the fear when I heard islam, made me silent. I had to spend and act the whole summer as if I wasn't broken inside. I went back to belgium and only went two years after back to morocco because I was going to tell him that he was the love of my life! When i arrived there, a friend of him told me that his parents moved him to sweden because they arranged a marriage for him! And that's the moment where I became introvert, and basically turned me into a 'rude' person. I pushed everyone out of my life. Didn't trust a soul. It took me 6 yrs to get over him.

After that I was done with hiding, I started living my life with the motto "what you see is what you get"
And who didn't like it can pick a wall and slam it with his head!

[LJay]

I'm not sure how much difference it would have made for me to know that I was not alone, that I was not different from so many others. Even now, in this supposedly more liberated world where there are students walking around in public schools "openly gay," I feel that cloak of hiding and fear. Even now.

[deephiance]

I'm not sure how much difference it would have made for me to know that I was not alone, that I was not different from so many others. Even now, in this supposedly more liberated world where there are students walking around in public schools "openly gay," I feel that cloak of hiding and fear. Even now.

true, younger people seeking for their own identity are still just as susceptible to being ostracised as we were, and while the day and age is definitely a more tolerant time and place than when we were growing up, those vulnerable years are still just as difficult.

[Zen]

Back in the late 1970's at age 10-11 I begun experimenting with boys, I caught by my mother and given a really good thrashing and in no uncertain terms I was told that if this happened everyone would find out and I would be sent for therapy, which in those days regardless of age meant Reparative Therapy and Electro-Therapy.

Up until 1979 in Australia Homosexuality was not only seen as a mental illness, to engage in Homosexual act also resulted in breaking the law.

In 1981 at the age of 12 I fell in love with a class mate and persued him...successfully and for months we spent all waking moments in each others company or on the phone to each other....until he got involved in Bible Studies and he was given the 'Fire and Brimstone' talk which he then relayed to me and gave me the ultimatum to attend church and confess my sins and repent from a life of sin or he would tell everyone that I was gay. Life was never the same.

Rejected, isolated and ostricised because I was self aware at a very young age, but mind you it wouldn't have made any difference if I was 12 or 22, infact my age was probably the only factor that I was still alive as 'poofter' bashing was a sport and it wasn't unusual to hear about a man of questionable reputation beaten to death and understanding that they were a victim of poofter bashing.

Rejected by everyone I loved I built a life they would throw them off the scent. I couldn't trust anyone with the truth, not even parents. At the age of 14 I fell in love with a neighbour, it was a neighbour I had previously experimented with, and it was on and off for the next 15 years and he came from an ultra conservative family. We did everything we could to hide the relationship...we appeared to have girlfriends, we both even got engaged at the same time. Drugs made the lies more believable to us, but drugs would lead to a devastating loss...he was 27.

That was 1999 and I was still living a lie. You know what it is like to go under water and have someone hold your head under water? That is what life was like for me for 2 decades.

In 2000 I was asked by my mother 'Are you gay?' to which I replied 'Yes', and then she replied ' I always knew it, I have known since Mark'. Mark was my first boyfriend at 12.

That conversation was so conflicting that instead of relief I felt white hot anger....if you are cool with it now, why the fuck did you make me feel like I was a fucking leper when I was 11? It turns out that she was afraid of what people would think about here if she was seen to be supporting her gay son, that's how oppressive the times where in Australia, and dare I suggest most of the western world, where in the 1970's and 1980's.
[MENTION=24218]cormeum[/MENTION] I can't pretend to know what you might be going through with your parents right now, but I can suggest that you don't write your parents off too soon. They are just as fearful of what will happen if they become the parents of a gay son in oppressive Russia as your are fearful of being rejected or even hurt by your Parents...I would even hazard a guess that your mother probably already knows anyway, quiet possibly your father too, and they are trying to push you to a more 'acceptable lifestyle' to not only protect themselves but to also protect you.

Parents are funny like that, but they do love you.

Thanks for sharing your story Daz. That's heart breaking mate. It's a real shame but parents seem to always buy into the "what will the neighbours say?" Mentality. I've learnt a few lessons from my parents, on how not to be parents. Like my wife says, "if either of our boys turn out to be gay, I want them to feel l like they can just come and tell us that there's this guy I like".

I had it out with my mum recently and when I add all the reasons together for remaining in the closet so long, I realised she was the biggest factor in that. We don't really talk much anymore, maybe she feels guilty, or maybe her religion is too strong. But anyway if someone can't be happy for you that's there problem, just wish I wasn't pushing 40 before I felt like that.

[deephiance]

I was 32 [MENTION=24253]Zen[/MENTION] and when I look at what someone like you has I wonder 'what if....'

What if I got married and had kids. Even though you see your current journey as being rough and unfair, you have something that some of us won't ever realise but want to desperately, children.

I would chew my own testicle off just to be a father...I love kids, and that is always going to be my one biggest regret.