145. Oh, for a time machine!

AAARRRGGGHHH!

Okay, so I now want to go back in time and stop myself from ever having come out to my dad. And I’m sorry to anyone reading this because this blog has (for now) turned into the place I go to to vent about the aftermath. I’m writing this in the few minutes I have before work, and it is mostly venting so beware… rambling, incoherent post ahead…

First things first, I spoke to my dad the other night to once again ask him to stop discussing things with my mom because it is causing me problems, and he basically said no. He told me he’s trying to help me by forcing my mom to face the issue and ‘accept the possibility that this will not change’. Which is something I could actually understand and appreciate if the fallout for that in any way fell on him. Which, to be fair, it sort of is, but of course, most of it is landing directly on my head. I still think he has more of a problem with my being gay than he’s willing to admit to me, but I do think he thinks he’s helping. And maybe in the long run he is but for right now it’s hell.

Last week, on Thursday night my mom called me to tell me about a Christian retreat weekend that was happening in Northern Ontario that… well, basically ‘featured’ the ‘breaker annointing’. I have to say that the way she talks about spiritual things just sounds kind of insane to me sometimes. Like they’d booked a specific manifestation of the Holy Spirit which will be coming on Saturday morning between 10 and 12 or something. It’s all so… limiting. Anyway, I didn’t go, honestly not because of wanting to avoid going because we all know I’ll go to one of these things eventually, just to shut her up but because it was such short notice all it did was make me feel stressed about losing my weekend. Well, this morning she called me to give me notice about how last weekend was so good that they are doing it again this weekend. The thing is, this weekend is completely full for me… actually, this whole week. I’m tutoring tonight (Tuesday) and Thursday night, going to someone’s house for dinner on Wednesday night, Friday night is an Ani Difranco concert in Montreal, Saturday night I’ve got plans with a friend and then I’m babysitting, Sunday afternoon I’m getting together with an old pastor of mine and Sunday night I’ve got my book club. I’m full. So I can’t go. Well, first of all she doesn’t believe me that I’m going to Montreal by myself… I’m not even sure she believes I’m going. She thinks I’m avoiding her because I’m ‘hanging out with all my gay friends’… which is kind if sadly hilarious because I don’t really have any gay friends in Ottawa… I know 2 gay guys here, but I haven’t seen them for ages! I should really give them a call, actually, they are really nice guys! She tells me that she has been talking to my dad (a lot) and he is “really concerned” that I’m “running headlong into something” that I don’t understand… which again, is kind of hilarious to anyone who has been regularly reading this blog or knows me… I have been insanely slow and plodding with how I have been thinking about living out my life as a gay Christian. She wants me to go to this weekend because “there were women there who were delivered of things similar to what you suffer with” (“suffer with????” I don’t have a disease!). Which is revealing because last week she told me that it she wasn’t asking me to go to deal with the gay thing, but to deal with issues of shame and rejection that she thinks I have (and I probably do have to some degree, if I’m honest), but of course, that’s not what she really wanted.

I called dad right after I hung up with her to ask him point blank if he has a problem with my being gay because my mom keeps using him in her conversations with me to bolster her arguments and he told me that he doesn’t, that he never tells my mom that he ‘doesn’t like this about me’, but he’s not an expert and is still trying to process this, which I do have to give him leeway to do, of course, but I wish he wouldn’t do it with my mom because she uses everything he says against me. He did tell her that it would be a good idea for me to go to this weekend if only to somehow reinforce my beliefs on this issue, which is again, something I can understand him saying, but is irritating because I have been dealing with this for most of my life and at this point don’t feel the need to go and have some people attempt to ‘deliver’ me of my homosexuality in order to prove to myself that I’m really gay. And of course, my mom didn’t mention his reasoning, just that he wanted me to go.

She still doesn’t believe that I’m going to the concert by myself – now she’s latching onto the fact that I said “I’ve already bought tickets” – plural instead of singular… but isn’t that just how that is said? I don’t know, that’s how I say it… ‘I’ve got tickets to Ani Difranco’… whatever, I don’t care what she believes at this point, which I told her and made her angry once again.

I tried to convey to my dad that if he is trying to help then he needs to be careful what he says to my mom, but I don’t know that that is going to be possible, because, as he said “she’s bothering me more about this than you, I can guarantee you that…”, which is probably true. She hasn’t been able to talk to her friends about this since she first found out because she’s so ashamed, and dad already knows, plus she believes he shares some of the ‘blame’ so she doesn’t feel so ashamed talking to him about it. Plus she probably wants to prove to him that she is doing all she can, which is why this renewed level of conversation on this issue. So I don’t know how well he will be able to monitor what he says to her in light of how it will help/harm me. And as I know from experience, she will keep talking and talking and talking until you say something that sounds like what she wants to hear and then use that. I so so wish I could undo this. It’s driving me nuts.