My son has been through hell this past year. He had his heart broken by his best friend who led him on and then outed him to his whole school which led to him being totally ostracized by all of his "friends." He went through a period of self harm and depression all alone. He didn't confide in us, and we had no idea why we had lost our witty, happy son for a while there. His therapists and our friends kept telling us he would get better with our love and support, and today I am sitting in an arcade on the first day of a school holiday watching him laugh and talk to a group of kids from his new school who invited him to hang out this afternoon. I'm leaving him to it! He really is going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine. It's not perfect. He's definetly not out except maybe to a few online friends. He definitely still hurts and has a new cautiousness about other people. But he also has a new resilience. Here's to all the baby steps that led to right now. I was scared I'd never hear that laugh again.
My heart goes out to you as a Mom and to your son. Teens can be so cruel and being a teen can be so fragile. Its like the perfect storm that no one ever wants to relive if you weren’t within the norm. None of my three children thrived in Highschool. It is a playground of dodging targets if you aren’t the one holding the bow and arrow. Never let him forget you are there for him. You love him and that you accept him. You cant control the rest of the world he experiences but you can always provide a safe place to land. Once he is out of Highschool, the world become a completely different place.
Thanks so much. It helps to hear from people who care and understand, especially since we are respecting his wishes and not talking about it all to anyone in real life. I would give anything for him to be happy. He's such an amazing kid. He deserves all the joy in the world.
Interesting. When I first read this I asked, where are the homophobes at? Then I saw George. I can ignorantly say figures. The limited number of young people I interact with in AZ (Arizona) are so accepting of gay people it blows my mind. I dare say that a group of kids (young adults) is not cool if there isn't one or more gay people in said group. I have actually witnessed and talked to a few groups to confirm this thinking. It will get better. Ah but surviving school. I wouldn't take a million bucks to repeat the experience. Try to find a temporary escape for summer. Camp, cottage with relatives, etc. You can gain strength in the fact that companies screen for homophobia during the interview process - there are ways. (I do this.) Homophobes like "adult males" who grab a ladies ass are a LIABILITY. They also disrupt the team. The teen who outed your son is at risk in not being hired by a progressive company. - this is a huge black mark on his record.
A follow up to this post. I was meeting with people for Sunday morning coffee yesterday. One parent told me how young adults (high school age) at a Phoenix (Phoenix Arizona) high school regularly attend dances where it is not uncommon to see boy with boy and girl with girl at the dance. Recap, same sex partners at school activities is not a big deal. So what does this say about Georgia?
Thanks for the support! The most ironic part of the whole mess is that we lived in a very liberal enclave in a college town when he was little, so he grew up surrounded by gay friends and family members. He was eight before he realized that some people thought it was a big deal if a kid had two dads, so he took it especially hard when some jackasses at school started harassing him. And my husband is from the Pacific Northwest and is really only comfortable in a few areas of Athens and Atlanta that are know to have lots of transplants from other states. I don't want to misrepresent everyone here. We had to move to a small suburb for work and the little school here has much nicer kids than the private school we were sending him too. There were out gay kids at his previous school, and there are at his new school as well. It was just that the other kid was openly bisexual and my son only wanted to be out if the other boy wanted a relationship. And everything went downhill from there. I don't know why the other kid didn't just tell my son he wasn't interested and walk away. My son says you do see gay kids holding hands at school and such. I think they would be kind to him, but he doesn't think he's the "right" kind of gay kid to be friends with them. I'm not sure what that even means, and he won't elaborate. He really doesn't want to be stereotyped or labeled, and was visciously and unfairly so.
