It’s Time I Tell My Homophobic Parents That I’m Bisexual
I realize this will change everything — but that’s precisely the point
I’ve been estranged from my parents for most of this summer.
The reasons are numerous, ever-compounding. My father is a narcissist, and I wrote him off years ago — not that he noticed until my mother started complaining. She and I were on congenial-enough terms until her guilt trips intensified.
“I want to know my daughter,” she says. This has been the running theme of every conversation between us this past year. I don’t share enough, I don’t text enough, I don’t visit enough.
It’s true that I’ve been avoiding her. When I share anything, she feels the need to cast a judgment and offer unsolicited advice.
She hates that I no longer attend church. She feels that it’s her duty to bring me back to The One True Faith, even though I officially left the Catholic Church when I married Jack at the Methodist Church twenty years ago, and even though I’ve told her that now I am “merely” spiritual.
In the same vein, she and my father both constantly talk about politics. LGBTQ issues are one of their favorite topics to trash, likely because they feel it their holy duty to fight for the sanctity of marriage — that is…
