*This is a TL;DR maybe trauma dump kinda post so fair warning. 😉
I have been no-contact with my parents for about a year and a half now. I'd say in that time I've found peace I wasn't affording myself before and I hadn't consciously been able to figure out why. I held on to a sense of guilt and obligation they imbedded in me; indoctrinated into my brain.
I let them go at the age of 32.
I let them know my reasoning but I also note on here a very important thing they were and will likely never know: they don't know I'm nonbinary and they don't know I'm bisexual.
Their acceptance isn't something I crave because I have long since lost it. I've grieved it's loss a thousand times over; many sleepless, tear-filled nights wore away at the desire to feel their acceptance like rain to stone.
It started with "Mom, Dad...I'm not Catholic" at 16 and snowballed from there. The amount of therapists and counselors and priests they sent me to and the sheer distance emotionally they created with me had profoundly negative consequences on our relationship. Not to mention the heightened sense of awareness I began to note as to how much they wondered or cared about my preferences or my day or my thoughts on things. They established a power dynamic and believed they could throw money at the problem; but their "problem" was me. A non-dogmatic child.
I say all of this to build at least a semblance of context around the significance that a couple of days ago, I re-downloaded the book of faces to my phone. I generally don't care to use the app but friends of mine remain connected through messenger. Anyway, my mother reblogged the prototypical Christian supremacy thought line on the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Specifically the part where she and so many other people, fueled through hatred, see a drag showcase of the Feast of Dionysus and think of it as an abomination unto her lord.
...
It's a quiet pain.
Quiet because I expected as much but I know now I was correct. Correct to preserve myself. To look after my own safety; to walk away.
...if she'd heard her youngest child who staunchly accepts agnosticism is ALSO "one of those queers" well ...she'd have a downright panic attack. The phone calls I would receive alone would send me into a spiral. Instead...I know where I stand. I know where she and my father and my siblings stand.
Over there in their echo chamber of heteronormative, god-fearing obligations, duties, and restrictions. Atop their pedestals looking down upon the rest of us that live our lives in every other sort of manner.
While I'm over here. Loving the beauty that exists out there in the world and genuinely moved by what I've been seeing these Olympics. Especially the opening ceremony.
Gojira!? Are you kidding me? I fucking love them. Whales are in the sky!
If you've read this much, know that I'm sending you the positive vibes I plan to instill in my day. You're included and you're valid. 💞
Kisses.