Ah, Christmas. Time for eggnog, mixed emotions, brightly-colored wrapping paper, passive aggression, family, friends, and ideally some happiness, love, and hugs mixed in somewhere.
My DGF and I travelled to my brother's house, where my parents and my sister-in-law's family are also staying. I feel like I'm on the periphery of a family--like I don't *quite* fit in, like I'm not *quite* a real, functioning adult. Things that "real" people have--kids, a house--just aren't part of my life (and maybe never will be), and this drives some kind of psychic wedge between me and other people. Like I'm just on a different trajectory. During non-holiday times of year, I just quietly exist in my own separate paradigm. But somehow on Christmas eve, trying to fall asleep on the couch in my niece's playroom, I just felt so... Different. Not inadequate, exactly, more like a different (perhaps slightly defective) species. I can't explain why. It's not just the gay thing, though that's part of it. Maybe everyone feels this way at Christmas. Do you? Does anyone else recognize the feeling I'm struggling to describe? Merry Christmas, dear readers. Sending you all hugs and wishing you all peace. Love, BW
18 Comments
12/25/2012 04:28:56 am
I absolutely know how you feel! I do believe that many gay people feel this way. It is sad that we hold ourselves up to some standards that really don't apply to us. We need to remember that not all straight people live up to those standards either.
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AJ McGilbra
12/25/2012 04:48:44 am
Absolutely. But then, I tend to feel that way at any family event or gathering where beig gender queer/Gayish/etc is not generally accepted.
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Annabel
12/25/2012 06:54:36 pm
Absolutely-i know they love me but i also feel like they dont know me or how to deal with ne coz there is like a wall there-they cant understand it and never will so im gonna stop worrying and have a Xmas i will enjoy next year!
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riley
12/26/2012 06:48:51 am
Understand the feeling, am a victim of it every time I visit my family. I feel out of place, not fitting in, and out of place. Maybe it's just all in my head. I know Thayer love me, but still overtime it takes me a few days to be less tense around them.
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Yep
12/26/2012 07:43:36 am
I also feel out of place. It is because I am gay, gender non-conforming, and just of a different mentality generally. I consider those things to be related (in my own case, at least). My priorities are different, what I consider to be interesting conversation is different from what they consider to be such, and they have some prejudices against gays, women, and people that don't follow gender norms. It has been this way my entire life. I have figured out how to make it a workable situations, but I am not part of the "inner circle" over there and never will be. Sometimes I am upset by this, but others I'm not.
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12/26/2012 08:33:04 am
I have this problem with my nuclear families (parents divorced a zillion years ago and remarried other spouses), but I lucked out when my former partner and I got together: hir family is working-class, salt-of-the-earth folk who accept and love hir, and they "adopted" me and have been wonderful to me for the past 14 years. We still go to visit them (as friends) years after the 2 of us split up, and we have a lot of fun. I'm very lucky.
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Caughtinyoureyes
12/26/2012 08:51:37 am
I know exactly what all of you are saying...it's really weird. While my DW's family "knew" she was gay, it wasn't til our wedding that there was no hiding it. I stopped feeling like the zoo animal. This year we bought the hostess a can of Gay Coffee. We ALL had a great laugh and things went smoothly. My dd is great, my ds is sort of coming around. My family all knows, but it feels like if they can just see us as friends, never having to think about us as having sex, then rhey are ok.They have a hard time introducing us as a couple at holiday gatherings. This makes me both angry feel not normal.
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It's like you drafted this post from my brain. I spent most of Christmas eve teary-eyed in the back bedroom, trying to not let my own family angst take my partner away from her family time, while I sorted out pangs of terrible alone-ness and generally feeling like an overgrown child all the time. No kids, no house, non-traditional jobs, non-traditionally-gendered me, heck we can't even have pets where we live... so what do we bring to the adults-only table?
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I have, my entire life. You are right, it isn't "just the gay thing" It's being surrounded by people whom I am "supposed" to be close to, and I'm not because, well, because these people have never really seemed very interested in being close to me.
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Caughtinyoureyes
12/27/2012 11:42:04 am
Why the hell do we keep doing this crap?
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At the risk of overly generalizing I'd say because we don't want to be the "bad guys" The insensitive louts that ruined everyones Christmas by saying what we thought and by "dredging up the past" by pointing out how other family members fucked us around because, well, because they knew they could get away with it.
Justina
12/27/2012 10:34:41 pm
Your holiday post really touched the tender places we all seem to have in our hearts. In an Italian family of married sisters, all with children, I stick out like a sore thumb. And am usually relegated to the "spinster aunt" role in the kitchen (aka dishwasher).
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Hi BW,
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Hi Toni:
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Toni
2/28/2013 12:02:40 pm
Hi Ed,
Hi Ed,
Josie
1/4/2013 11:41:09 am
I think the more comfortable you are in your own skin - truly comfortable and confident - the less you care how your family views you. And you love and embrace your differentness, even if they can't.
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