Dearest Parent

Dear parent,

I needed to tell you. I couldn’t hold it in any more. My feelings have always been so intense about everything, and even more so about this.

I remember telling you, I remember saying the words, that now I choke upon. I remember saying how I felt. How liberal I was sexually, in some peoples opinions. I remember how liberated I felt, that finally, I was free. I could stop pretending. Maybe I could be recognized for the way I truly felt and not just shoved to one side.

Not that it really mattered; I just wanted you to know. I had feelings for a girl once; they were so intense, the times I spent with her were so much better than that of what I spent with any man. Our feelings bubbled over and it felt like we became one sometimes, even for short stretches of time.

I told you, when we were sitting in the TV room. You just said “OK.” And kept watching, it broke my heart. I wanted to cry so much, but I took myself away, it was so hard to say that and to have an answer so, nonchalant, so, bullshit; it burned me on the inside.

I remember for weeks after you told me that I was straight, that I didn’t like girls, I wanted to die. I said, no, I do; reminded you of the conversation, and you said you’d forgotten.

You’d forgotten? WHAT!?

Denial.

If you thought it was hard for you to accept that, and that you didn’t understand it, imagine growing up, feeling this way all your life, and never being able to tell anyone, then, when you “come out” to people and they don’t believe you, they ridicule you and they “forget”. Imagine the hurt, when the ones you most loved and cared about just called it bullshit. Imagine being me.

But you couldn’t, you couldn’t ever know, or even understand. I remember telling my best friends about it, and they just said you were in denial, you would come around, but you haven’t, not yet, and I don’t know if you ever will.

If you can’t accept me on something that is such a part of me, something that is so deeply burned into me, so far in my nature, how are you ever going to accept anything else?

I have never been purposely judgmental to anyone, lease of all the people I cared about. Yet they are to me.

I ask one question;

Why?

-Me.