Boi Growing Up

..Caution. This may be a long one..

I have a heavy burden upon me as this week closes. It resides in the back of my mind accompanying every thought. It lays its head upon my very soul. I have the highly stressful task of coming out to my younger brothers this weekend. Yes, I am happy they are finally at the age where, according to their mom, they are old enough to understand. Yes, I am scared shitless because I am an over-thinker that always instantly extrapolates the outcome of a situation to be the worst imaginable. Yes, I know it has to be done eventually.

No, I am not ready.

For something this big, is it possible to be “ready”? Is there any amount of preparation a person can do before they reveal their innermost secret. Maybe secret is the wrong word because I’ve been publicly out since I was 18 years old. I grew up a socially adept kid, doing “socially acceptable” things. So there was no awkward stage in school coming to terms with who I was for me. I was too busy upholding a reputation to worry about who I actually was.

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you are beneath it” – Alan Moore

But to avoid going into a semi-autobiography on my realization of being gay, I’ll just continue with my point. These brothers are a part of my adoptive family so we came into eachother’s lives while I was still “straight”. While I still had a vaginal body count to claim. They looked up to me, and still do, like I was the coolest guy (well teen back then) in the world. I was dealing with this confusion, internal struggle, acceptance, or whatever you want to call it, while I was in college not living there so they weren’t a part of that for me. They were too little to understand. Actually, no one was a part of that struggle. I took all that on my own and hid it from the world like I do everything else.

One day I’ll look back in the archive of my old blog that I imported here and see if I mentioned it, but I highly doubt I did.

I wasn’t ready when my mom found out on my jointblog with my bestfriend where I mentioned a boyfriend. (Shoutout to the former friedchickenandrice.com!!)  I wasn’t ready when she told my dad in an argument and we ended up not talking for about half a year and still now have a rocky relationship him and I are trying to fix. I wasn’t ready when my stepmom sat me down when I walked into work and she told me my dad told her, but I was relieved she said that she sort of figured it out haha. That was cool because I knew between her and my stepsister I would always have a place in my family to talk about boys and stuff without it being awkward…and we do. I wasn’t ready when I told my oldest younger brother “The Wondertwin”, but he took it well. We are twins after all and super close. I wasn’t ready when I told my adoptive mom and pops, but also that was a funny outcome. They assumed too. Well mom did, the pops was like no way because I’m so tough with my brothers, but they’re super cool with it.

The last 2 brothers, only for now because I still have a baby brother, I’m not even close to being ready.

My “Cock-Block” (I’ll explain another time) comes to me for all his girl advice because he knows how much I used to do in highschool and that I “hookup” kinda frequently still. He just doesn’t know that they aren’t girls anymore. That would blow apart his image of me forever and he’d question everything I’ve ever told him even though I technically never lied to him. My “Marshmallow”, the youngest, is terrified of gay people for some indiscernible reason and has a warped view of the community because of the publicized stereotypes. Oh, he even told me once that if I ever were gay that he would never be around me again. …that one really stung a bit because that’s my little sidekick everywhere.

Such a little detail is such a major thing.

Maybe it’s my fault for waiting almost 5 years after I accepted myself for leaving them in the dark, but can you blame my apprehension? The one thing that we struggle with the most, is acceptance. “If they know this about me, will they still want me in their life?” As I’ve referenced to in my post on National Coming Out Day, I never had the rough coming out story. All my friends still liked me and some liked me more after. I didn’t get disowned or kicked out my home. I, gratefully, have had a hardship-less coming out experience. It still comes with the anxiety though. It can all change in an instant. Me and my younger brothers are super close. What if they decide to push me away? What if I’m not cool enough to hang with anymore? What if I no longer measure up to some arbitrary big brother standard and I am deemed “unworthy”? See?..my mind instantly hits worst case scenario.

This Sunday is my D-Day.

I plan to sit them down, whether their parents choose to be there or not doesn’t matter to me, explain to them what’s been going on, be upfront about everything, and accept their reaction and answer their questions. I’m hoping for a lot of questions. I’ll be more comforted. That’ll mean, to me, that they want to know as much as possible because they don’t plan on shunning me anytime soon. Put simply, I’m nervous. I work so hard to make sure I’m everything they want/need me to be that I forgot that there are things they’ll need to know as they get older. I just wish a had the right speech, the perfect blend of words, the best way to convey…

That I’m still me and nothing has changed.

As I sit down to write this, I do it because of a heavy weight bearing down on my mind, but I also do it with caution to going against the very way I want my blog to develop. I never want to be considered a “gay blogger”, but rather a “blogger who happens to be gay”. I don’t want my views to seem like they come from some agenda because of my sexuality. Although yes, I will sometimes post about certain issues that are personal to me in the LGTBQ community. I’ve been writing on blogs since I was 14…when my posts were 2 sentences long and all in lowercase letters. Way before I even had a grasp on my sexuality. We are all just people, gay or straight, and my opinions are not a derivative of who I choose to love. Me being gay, just happens to be a bonus. :]

Til next time. Stay frosty