Hi, I'm Joe.
I guess I've known I'm gay for 12 years now, and sort of just ignored it. In fact, looking back on it, I really avoided relationships for years because of it. My first real relationship was with a woman, I was 24. By this time I had accepted that I was "bi", still telling myself that I enjoy both men and women 50/50. For the first year it was a "great" relationship, but after a while the doubt of it gnawed at me constantly. I eventually broke it off, not because I thought I was gay, but because it was a codependent relationship, and I couldn't handle juggling the emotions anymore.
So after a couple of months of thought, I decided that I have to explore the entirety of my emotions. If I don't, I'll never be happy. So I signed up for Okcupid, and much to my chagrin it was less than two weeks before I met someone. Mind you, I'm talking about people interested in a genuine relationship, one night stands really don't do it for me.
It's amazing.
I couldn't stop grinning on our first date. The sheer emotion of it was overwhelming me. The release of it all was making it genuinely hard to think. He's a great guy, he has his feet on the ground and know's what he's doing. Sadly, we don't really relate on a lot of things, but I enjoy spending time with him.
So now there can be no doubt in my mind, I'm gay, and I'm scared to death.
Even more than before, the thought that this really is what will make me happy. As the person that I am, I cannot deny this to myself. I've spent at least the past 10 years in hypocrisy. I like to think I'm a pretty worldly person, and I like to give advice. I always tell everyone that they have to give into the truth of things, all the while I was just denying the truth of my own situation. It was fear before, but not like this.
I'm going to have to tell my family. Oh shit.
My mother is devout Roman Catholic. Went through Catholic school, brought my sisters and I up Catholic. She wasn't happy when I left the church at 16. She's actually quite accepting of things, and of all people in the world, I am most like her. But of course the one thing she always has to make ignorant comments about is homosexuality.
My father on the other hand was born and raised in Afghanistan, and is devout Muslim. This man is made of fucking wrought iron. He has literally come so close to death that his parents had resigned him to his fate, and laid him down at the cemetery grounds in a funeral cloth while he was still alive. That was before his father died at 8 and his mother at 14. His two brothers and three sisters raised him. He got through school, graduated first in his class on a Masters in Chemistry and Botany. He eventually moved to the US when he was 27. Met my mom; bam, 3 kids.
In the early years of my life, I couldn't stand him. He was a complete and utter asshole. Absolutely stubborn, unaccepting, and unwilling to compromise in his whatever it was he felt that something should be. But, for however emotionally unavailable and angry he was, he still loved us and gave his life away to feed us. He moved away for months or years at a time to find work and put food on our table. We were dirt poor. I went to 6 different grade schools. Now, he has a nice and cushy job working a desk job for Snapple.
So now we come to the crux of the problem.
In 2008, my father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He had chosen to not tell us about it until the day of the surgery. They took out a tumor the size of a golf ball, and began a BCG wash treatment. Essentially, think localized chemotherapy fed through a catheter into your bladder. It was hell for him, but it thankfully worked. For some time, at least. In one of his routine checkups earlier this year, they found that the cancer was back.
This time it would be serious, they were going to have to remove his bladder, prostate, and urethra, and create a urostomy with part of his intestine. At the time, we had invested hope that the cancer had not become metastatic, and that removing the bladder would end the problem once and for all. When the surgery had been completed, the doctor came down and informed us that they had found that the lymph nodes around the bladder and shown signs of being cancerous, and that it had most likely entered his lymphatic system. He is currently going through his rounds of chemotherapy. I moved in with my parents in June to help out around the house, and to take the opportunity to finish school.
For all of the hell that it's been, good has come of it. My father has become more human. He smiles now, he laughs. When he's alone in his workshop, I can hear him singing sometimes. Gone is the stiff ass man who only ever scowled. The man who didn't talk to me for a month after I told him to shut up once when I was 16. Finally, I can bond with him.
With so little fucking time left.
All I want to do now is make him proud. I want to finally finish school, get my degree in Bio, and get a job in conservation or something. Something I know will make him happy.
But god damnit, I'm going to have to tell him I'm gay.
I can't even fathom the response. I'm so goddamn scared, and I don't want to ruin things now. It's tearing at me, and I have no idea what to do.
I guess I've known I'm gay for 12 years now, and sort of just ignored it. In fact, looking back on it, I really avoided relationships for years because of it. My first real relationship was with a woman, I was 24. By this time I had accepted that I was "bi", still telling myself that I enjoy both men and women 50/50. For the first year it was a "great" relationship, but after a while the doubt of it gnawed at me constantly. I eventually broke it off, not because I thought I was gay, but because it was a codependent relationship, and I couldn't handle juggling the emotions anymore.
So after a couple of months of thought, I decided that I have to explore the entirety of my emotions. If I don't, I'll never be happy. So I signed up for Okcupid, and much to my chagrin it was less than two weeks before I met someone. Mind you, I'm talking about people interested in a genuine relationship, one night stands really don't do it for me.
It's amazing.
I couldn't stop grinning on our first date. The sheer emotion of it was overwhelming me. The release of it all was making it genuinely hard to think. He's a great guy, he has his feet on the ground and know's what he's doing. Sadly, we don't really relate on a lot of things, but I enjoy spending time with him.
So now there can be no doubt in my mind, I'm gay, and I'm scared to death.
Even more than before, the thought that this really is what will make me happy. As the person that I am, I cannot deny this to myself. I've spent at least the past 10 years in hypocrisy. I like to think I'm a pretty worldly person, and I like to give advice. I always tell everyone that they have to give into the truth of things, all the while I was just denying the truth of my own situation. It was fear before, but not like this.
I'm going to have to tell my family. Oh shit.
My mother is devout Roman Catholic. Went through Catholic school, brought my sisters and I up Catholic. She wasn't happy when I left the church at 16. She's actually quite accepting of things, and of all people in the world, I am most like her. But of course the one thing she always has to make ignorant comments about is homosexuality.
My father on the other hand was born and raised in Afghanistan, and is devout Muslim. This man is made of fucking wrought iron. He has literally come so close to death that his parents had resigned him to his fate, and laid him down at the cemetery grounds in a funeral cloth while he was still alive. That was before his father died at 8 and his mother at 14. His two brothers and three sisters raised him. He got through school, graduated first in his class on a Masters in Chemistry and Botany. He eventually moved to the US when he was 27. Met my mom; bam, 3 kids.
In the early years of my life, I couldn't stand him. He was a complete and utter asshole. Absolutely stubborn, unaccepting, and unwilling to compromise in his whatever it was he felt that something should be. But, for however emotionally unavailable and angry he was, he still loved us and gave his life away to feed us. He moved away for months or years at a time to find work and put food on our table. We were dirt poor. I went to 6 different grade schools. Now, he has a nice and cushy job working a desk job for Snapple.
So now we come to the crux of the problem.
In 2008, my father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He had chosen to not tell us about it until the day of the surgery. They took out a tumor the size of a golf ball, and began a BCG wash treatment. Essentially, think localized chemotherapy fed through a catheter into your bladder. It was hell for him, but it thankfully worked. For some time, at least. In one of his routine checkups earlier this year, they found that the cancer was back.
This time it would be serious, they were going to have to remove his bladder, prostate, and urethra, and create a urostomy with part of his intestine. At the time, we had invested hope that the cancer had not become metastatic, and that removing the bladder would end the problem once and for all. When the surgery had been completed, the doctor came down and informed us that they had found that the lymph nodes around the bladder and shown signs of being cancerous, and that it had most likely entered his lymphatic system. He is currently going through his rounds of chemotherapy. I moved in with my parents in June to help out around the house, and to take the opportunity to finish school.
For all of the hell that it's been, good has come of it. My father has become more human. He smiles now, he laughs. When he's alone in his workshop, I can hear him singing sometimes. Gone is the stiff ass man who only ever scowled. The man who didn't talk to me for a month after I told him to shut up once when I was 16. Finally, I can bond with him.
With so little fucking time left.
All I want to do now is make him proud. I want to finally finish school, get my degree in Bio, and get a job in conservation or something. Something I know will make him happy.
But god damnit, I'm going to have to tell him I'm gay.
I can't even fathom the response. I'm so goddamn scared, and I don't want to ruin things now. It's tearing at me, and I have no idea what to do.
