Skip to main content

Visiting Family for the Holidays

In case you haven't seen my previous posts on the issue in past years, I can't stand visiting "home" for the holidays.  Any holiday.  Frankly, even for an afternoon.  My parents are of course equal parts insane and meddling, like most parents, but they are also very homophobic.  Due to this fact, visiting them is at best mildly frustrating and and worst catastrophic.  If you know me, you know that I don't change who I am for others.  Ever.  No exceptions.  I am who I am and if you don't like it, tough.  That's not to say I'm a terrible person or anything.  Most people enjoy my company.  The problem with family though is quite pronounced.

I've reached the point in life where I'm looking for a good man to start a (obviously monogamous) relationship with, settle down with, start a family and a life with, etc.  At the same time, that potential man would never be welcome in my parents' home.  I could never show him where I grew up, my childhood bedroom, the trees I climbed as a kid.  I could never have him meet my parents. 

It makes me very sad that I can't share this part of my youth.  It's not that I had an amazing childhood--perhaps frankly the opposite sometimes.  But, it is part of who I am and it is where I came from.  I would want my future husband to be able to experience those things, share in my life story fully, but they can't.

I don't need my parents' validation for my future husband.  I really don't care if they like him or not.  I do care however what this potential love of my life thinks though.  I would want him to be able to see the whole me.  I would want for myself and for him for my life to come full circle, to see where I came from and the man I've become today, to see the full picture.  

Simply put, I'd want to share everything with him and I can't through no fault of my own or his.  This becomes even more poignant if he can share that part of his life with me.  It makes me disappointed and embarrassed for my parents.  I live my life openly and happily, it's difficult to come into contact with the opposite in their house.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Last

 My previous post was found as a blank page in draft form this evening.  I found the existence of it to be rather poetic.  So I published it blank as is over a year later.  Seems fitting to be honest.
Post a Comment
Read more

Reagan, Deregulation, and the Fruit It Now Bears

President Reagan had an idea about how the world should run. He deregulated Big Business. That is, he removed the restrictions put in place that kept companies from cheating. He removed, primarily economic oversight. He said that it was unAmerican that in this capitalist society that such oversight, such restrictions should exist. To him, these concepts flew in the face of that illusive, figmentary idea we like to call freedom. He wanted Big Business to have the freedom to do what it will and believed that in doing so, said companies would check themselves. They would check themselves because it was in their best economic interest to do so. Yet, what he didn't realize is that what was in the best interest of Corporate America could be unknown to Corporate America itself! That Big Business could be akin to a compulsive gambler who as they fall further and further into the hole panic and begin making riskier and riskier bets, thus then subjecting themselves to even more debt ...
2 comments
Read more

36

Navigating life into your mid and eventually, ugh, late 30's is much different than your mid/late 20's.  Artificial time limits that we impose on ourselves for many of life's milestones seem increasingly close and their goals seem increasingly distant as the years tick forward.  It is important however to remember that these milestones are not actually set in stone.  They take work.  Sometimes a lot of work.  And they don't have an actual timeline. In my 20's I believed by 36 I would be married to a good man.  Have a family.  A career.  A home.  And that things would be, in all, pretty decent.  All the hard work of my early 20's would pay off and all of these milestones would be reached.  But of course, we're all a little naive about these things.  We have emotional responses to them which sometimes cloud logic. Three years back, I was in a relationship.  I had a good paying job.  And, as should come as a surprise to ...
Post a Comment
Read more