ex-classmates coming out at school, factors preventing me from following suit?

Empty Closets - Parent and Family Stages of Grief

 

I think I've reached an impasse with my mum - I feel like the best I can expect is tolerance (rather than acceptance).

Got a question for you: Are you are still living at home?

For me, I think the biggest barrier for me to come out is the fact I can't do so until I move out. To live an out life and come to a home where I'm not 'truly' accepted feels uncomfortable to me. Seems like the coward's way out, but sometimes pragmatism needs to take precedence over expectations of ideals. What do you think?

 

I'm still living at home with my parents, so there's no way I can come out just yet. When I move out and go to Uni, I think that then would be the time when I can even start thinking of maybe coming out to them.

But anyways, seeing as this has been going on for a few months, I'd say that you should perhaps give her some space? Don't necessarily ignore her, but don't constantly prod her with the subject. It can make her feel uncomfortable and such. However, as you said that she's cold towards your sexuality because you seem too "straight". I don't want to say anything bad, but your mother seems to be knowledgeable of only the typical gay stereotype. Maybe you should tell her soon that the world isn't black and white and more people could be gay than she would guess.

I can see that the matter is serious, and you feel like you've lost your mother, but I believe you've tried seeing things from her viewpoint. Every mother wants their son to be good. To be almost prefect. They want you to have a beautiful wife with grandkids and the like. However, now that she knows you're gay, she might be perhaps questioning herself about where she might have gone wrong. I don't really see that she might be a homophobe, but it could be a huge shock to her. I really hope that she will open up again soon, however, you should be prepared for anything. Sometimes, what works is that you give her some tough love. Confront her, hell, get angry. Maybe that will make her accept you more.

One is for certain: This is not your fault. At all. You are who you are and if she doesn't accept you, then it's all on her. I'm not saying that you should disconnect her from your life or anything, but this really isn't your fault. I actually kind of know how you feel, because I feel like the same could happen to me if I came out to my parents.

This is all just my opinion. I don't want to make you feel bad, sad or make you lose hope, I'm just trying to help and trying to perhaps be a wee bit realistic. Life isn't a fairy tail, we all know that. But I truly wish you the best of luck and hope that everything goes well for you

 

I'm much older than the OP but many of my Facebook friends are from high school. I came out on Facebook not too long ago and received many likes. I also got a few WTF messages. Mostly support messages came from those who already knew I was gay.

With my mom we just had to agree to disagree. I wish she could have accepted the real me instead of the character of me in her mind.

 

Episode,

As I recently related to someone else on another post on this forum, I'd like to help you realize what "it gets better" actually means.

In many ways, you are lucky, I see you're 17. At that age for me, I couldn't admit to myself I was gay. And in the United States back in the 1990s, things were only beginning to become much better for gay people. It was still something of a social death sentence to be gay in high school in my area.

So 17 for me was a plethora of misery...suicidal thoughts, depression, shame, denial, loneliness and lies. I knew I was different. Different is never good. Looking at another male and feeling the most wonderful feelings, seeing someone so beautiful made me so happy in one instant and in the next moment, realizing what it meant, complete agony -shame, followed by denial of my feelings and lies to myself that it could only be a phase. I was a man, how could I have those feelings toward another man? I was supposed to feel that way for women. It will go away if I wait long enough, if I deny my feelings long enough, maybe if I pray. Thats probably what it was, I made God mad so he made me gay to punish me and if I do better he'll make those feelings go away. What the hell is wrong with me?
And meanwhile 18 came, I got some Playboy and Penthouse magazines. I was old enough to buy them so me and another friend went out and bought some. Page after page of naked women. I might as well have been looking at a furniture magazine except for the very back, there were a bunch of small picture ads and usually there were a few fully naked men back there. $6 each for those damn magazines and I'd catch myself turning to the very back looking at 2 or 3 pictures of the only men in the magazine - then hating myself and turning back to the centerfold to try and see if I could straighten myself up. Long hair, perfect breasts, great body, long legs and ugh vagina...for all it did for me she might as well have been a brown leather recliner in a furniture magazine.
Fast forward to 20years old. I just moved out, got my own place. And I got a couple thousand from my grandparents to help me out being on my own, so I bought a computer. So here I am, all alone in my new apartment, just got the computer setup out of the box and its ready to go. :sigh:: Bored. Hmmm. What should I do? Remember this was back in the days when everyone didn't have their own computer, there was a computer in family room because computers still cost 2000 a piece. So now I finally had one of my own, all by myself in my apartment and I'm a guy - what time is it? Pron time!
And thus, I finally got tired of the lies. Nobody else could snoop on my computer or interfere, I could look up anything I wanted...naked. lol I knew what I wanted to look at and it wasn't girls. So that was truly the first time I had to admit to myself that I was gay. I had come out of the closet to ....Myself. It would be another nine years before I could say, "I'm Gay" to another person.
To this day you could hook me up to a lie detector, as me if I'm Gay, I could say No and all those little sensors wouldn't reveal a thing I didn't want it to. Many years of lying to everyone including yourself will give you that ability. It will also make you a very unhappy person.

So lucky for you, you're much farther along in acceptance and coming out than I was. You accepted yourself, you have a few people to support you, things are already starting to get better. And it DOES get better.
Right now you're still at the age where school and parents are the center of your life. For most all of your life, you haven't really lived for yourself. School, parents and friends have been the center of your life. And you've worked hard to live up to everyone else's expectations. And thats the beauty of the mechanics of how things really do get better. In a few years that will change and it will no longer be about your grades, what your friends think of you, if your parents get mad and ground you.
You will be an adult and you can live like one. You can live for yourself, be the person you want to be and live up to your OWN expectations.
And over the course of years, you'll always be busy, too busy to care or waste time with people who don't accept you because you're too busy working, maybe college, spending time with friends, maybe even coming home to a boyfriend, all your energy will be spent living and enjoying a good life, you won't have time for bigots.

It'll even occur to you that if your parents can't accept you, its their problem. By being gay and hating yourself, you've realized how holding hatred and bigotry in your heart only breeds more negative emotions and loneliness. Having learned that gives you a unique strength many don't have. If one day they wake up and realize they never really knew you and they lost you. By then you won't have to feel that as a loss, the time they could've spent with you can be spent with others who are happy to know you and cherish your love and friendship. (A little corny I know but true) And if your parents are wise then at one point they will realize this and put a stop to their h8.

And lastly, (well only lastly because I don't wanna bore you to tears with an insane book of a post), but lastly, you'll realize that all the self-loathing, hatred, all the negative emotions you have on being gay melts away when you stop trying to live up to someone else's idea of who you ought to be or who you think they want you to be. LIVE FOR YOURSELF. LIVE UP TO YOUR OWN EXPECTATIONS.
Good Luck!

Here is a response I recently posted to another on the forum, you might find it interesting as a lot of it pertains to you as well:
http://emptyclosets.com/forum/1723248-post9.html

 

It's just this psychological and emotional barrier of knowing you're not loved as yourself by your parents, that is preventing me from coming out.

I can really relate to this, and hence I have not come out to my family as of yet.

The best advice I can give you is to build a support system (at university, you can go to LGBT meetings). If you're financially independent or when you are, I suggest you to move out and broach the subject then.

Try to hang in there, the good times are ahead! Good luck with your HSC!