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Do I Have to Define My Sexuality?
What I’ve always thought was openness might just be a defense mechanism, or a cop-out.
I think I was 13 when I told my mom, half-jokingly as a way to test the waters, that I might someday end up being with women. She didn’t love it.
“It’s just that I’m worried you’re going to have a much harder life than you need to,” she said. I think we both knew she just didn’t want me to be gay.
I didn’t show it to her then, but I was disappointed. My mom, in everything else, is the best. She’s always been incredibly supportive of everything I do, super proud of every little thing. But with this, she was telling me she didn’t like something I potentially was.
When I was a little older, the conversation of gay marriage came up, and I was even more surprised to find out she was against it.
“I just don’t know what that might do with the adoption issue, if it will be easier for same-sex couples o adopt when they’re married, and I don’t feel comfortable with it.”
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t understand how it could be wrong for a same-sex couple to adopt, or that gay marriage could ever be an issue. (At this point, I still didn’t know she also votes conservative, which was the real shocker.) But that's when I realized…
