What is it like to be gay with non-affirming parents? My dad emailed me last night to let me know that I am “devastatingly confused and deceived”. He told me he was the prodigal son’s father waiting for me to come home...
Of course he also hasn’t tried to have any kind of close relationship with me over the last 3 years since I came out. He yelled at me that God didn’t make me this way shortly after I came out to him. He blocked me on Facebook shortly after I came out publicly.
My father has never tried to see how I have been doing through all of this, or wanted to spend any meaningful time talking to me about my life or trying to understand what I must have gone through. But he somehow thinks he loves me “more than anything”...
Is that what loving someone more than anything looks like? Wow. It sure doesn’t feel like love. Because it is not loving well. And I know he thinks it is, which is really sad because of how much this kind of “love” has damaged me...
For a guy who has hasn’t tried at all to understand the hell I have been through for the last 3 years since I came out, at least he finally recognized “it is extremely tough to pretend everything is ok when it is not”...
There are not many worse feelings than to not have your parents love you for who you are just because you are gay. But this is what life can look like when having to choose between loving yourself and torturing yourself trying to be something you can’t, just wanting to be loved.
I don’t know how to express how heartbreaking it is to have all of your worst fears as a child, of not being loved for who you are if you are gay, come true as an adult. 💔😔
