Dear CryptoDeaf 02/24/2018

outtheshellvlog (61)in #advise • 8 years ago

Dear CrytoDeaf. I'm 15 years old and still living with my mom. How do I come out and tell her I'm gay? I'm worried about what she'll say or do. Have you come out? How did your parents take it? I'm also curious why your CryptoDeaf images use butterflies, is it part of old school gay culture? ~ClosetCase

Hello there ClosetCase, you're only 15 years old, there's no real need at this time to even inform your parents about your sexuality. In fact some people grow old without ever having told their family at all. They continue to live as a gay man and even go as far as to marry their partner and their family is completely oblivious to this fact.

I know you likely just want to open yourself up to your mom and let her know so that you can potentially have a boyfriend over and introduce her to your love interest like a straight male would end up bringing home his girlfriend and introducing her to the parents. It's also a great way of getting parents off your back if they're nagging you about if you've got a girlfriend yet.

But my strongest advice overall is to just not tell your parents until you're a fully grown adult, out of school, with your own job and your own place and completely self sufficient. This way there's less risk of your parents flying off the handle in the off chance they're extreme religious fundamentalists. Let's face it I don't know your parents.

Other people have advised to check what your parents feel about gays and lesbians by simply asking them what their opinions are and winging it from there. Some parents state they simply don't care, others state they have a lot of gay friends while others will say that they can't stand them or that they live a "sinful lifestyle choice". If you decide to go this route, be cautious as some parents can be emotionally and some even physically abusive after learning their kid is gay. Who knows, you may be wonderfully surprised that your parents are completely accepting of the fact with wide open arms, or they may suddenly no longer want you in their house and kick you out as has happened in the past.

For my mother learning about my sexuality, well, I didn't come out of the closet until I was already out on my own and self sufficient and much to my surprise, she was a major "fag hag". Turns out these two women my mom and step-father used to visit every so often were male to female transsexuals and I didn't even know, that and my mom has lots of gay friends and my mom's previous husband was bi-sexual.

My dad and step-mother took it rather well as well and they're the extremely religious type. My step-mother is an ex-policewoman and when I was a teenager, she informed my dad that I may be "that way" so they had the talk about what to do back then when and "if" I came out to them.

My dad's response to it was, "Well, you know what you're getting yourself into, I won't go there." but overall he's not disowned me and still treats me well, he answers my phone calls (Live captions and TTY are amazing) and texts (provided he's not in church or at work at the moment, busy old man). On holidays like Christmas he and my step-mother both send hand made quilts, pillow cases, pencil bags, etc for both myself and my husband and wish us both a Merry Christmas and my family generally excepts my husband as part of the family without issue.

My aunt Irene is also a very loving individual and her children are all very accepting. I don't know about the rest of my family though as a lot of my family have disowned me. Take that part as you will.

Most of my aunts and uncles have disowned me, roughly half of my cousins consider me a black sheep, my grandparents on my dads side of the family disowned me, (mother's side, grandparents were already deceased) and I was disowned by my very own sister.

I'm not going to sugar coat this and say that it's all sunshine and rainbows with pink unicorns, glitter and rainbow sherbet, and I'm not going in on how one of my anti-gay cousins beat the ever living hell out of me with a lead pipe nor am I going deep in on how the police officer taking the report while I was in the hospital threatened to testify against me if I brought up charges against my cousin.

Times are a lot different today than what they were when I was younger, but people's opinions are their opinions. Be prepared to risk losing family and friends if you come out of the closet.

Lastly, to answer your question about the butterflies in my imagery. It's a thing I swiped from Japan. Deaf drivers in Japan have a butterfly on their back glass to inform police the driver is deaf. It's a really good idea honestly, would be nice to have something like that in the USA. Can't begin to tell you how difficult a situation is being a deaf epileptic in the back seat of a vehicle with the police trying to ask me misc crap and not catching anything the cop is saying at all. Especially at night when they're shining a light in my eyes and blinding me from being able to read their lips.

Generally the police have been very understanding, I tell them I'm deaf while pointing to my ear facing them and that I read lips, they remove the light from my eyes and some have made it a point to light themselves up instead so to facilitate conversation. Situations like that, though can be avoided with a symbol that'll tell the cops "Deaf on board". The sticker currently in the back glass doesn't seem to have attention paid to it so far.