This should be a happy post, but I don't think that's possible tonight.
I can at least start with the positive. With the financial situation finally resolved, I am cleared to move in to my new apartment! I think what I most look forward to is cooking for me and nobody else. There are so many things I want to get back to making...my Andouille Sausage Alfredo...homemade grilled chicken quesadillas...stuffed shells and ravioli...
But who am I kidding? I could have been cooking all of that while living with my parents, but I didn't. If I really wanted to cook, I could have. They have no objection against cooking.
I read a couple days ago that, in other modernized countries, the children continue to live with their families, even under the same roof, until well into adulthood. Some families in China never move out, they simply stay together and look after each other all the days of their lives. As the family grows, the bonds between each of its members grow even stronger. As a cultural statement, Americans seem to believe that if you still live with your parents much past the age of 21, you're a leach. This is certainly how I have felt over the last 2 1/2 years. With each day that has elapsed since I moved back in with my parents after the campaign, I have only grown more bitter and resentful toward the good people who raised me. This is not good for our family, it is not good for my parents, and it is not good for me.
Why should I be resentful, you ask? Why should I harbor anything but gratitude and good will toward my parents? Don't get me wrong, I still love them. Sometimes I even like them.
As I write this, I catch myself dismissing many of my complaints about life under my father's roof. He's been very good to me, I'm thinking. Not all fathers are this good to their gay sons. Not all fathers would give their gay sons houseroom into their mid-twenties after knowing for years they even had gay sons. I am telling myself that it could always have been worse.
But...
Last summer, I went on a date. One lousy, test-the-waters, try-like-hell-to-be-a-normal-twenty-something date. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be. He wasn't much of a guy...seemed nice at first, but then you get to know him... Anyway, long story short, I was kicked out of the house. In a move I will never forgive, my dad told me if I was going to be gay, I wasn't going to be gay in his home. I could live my "gay lifestyle" somewhere else.
Well, obviously, I caved. I agreed to go back in the closet for as long as I lived at home. The stronger thing to do, I thought, was to tell him to fuck off and go find somewhere to live my gay lifestyle in peace. But since I knew that he would never change, I decided that I had to be the one to change if I wanted to keep any relationship with my father at all. I still loved the man and while I may not like to admit it, I did (and do) owe him a lot. Plus it would just kill my mom. I mean, it would just kill her. So I kept silent, and in my silence, resentment grew.
I did resent being told to go back into the closet, but not for very long. After all, that was my choice. I didn't have to go back to his house. He doesn't understand what making that kind of sacrifice means. There's no way my father, a straight man who grew up in rural Illinois of the 1970s in the construction industry, could ever know what going back into the closet would mean to a modern gay man who had already come out once. No, I resented him for making it impossible for me to ever properly repay the hospitality he'd shown me. No matter what, I would always be in his debt. Maybe some of that's my fault too, since I'd shown the willingness to accept his demands from the start. But as anyone who has lived or worked with my father will attest, he is a very hard man to please.
Getting out of this house is not only the best thing I could do for myself, but it's also the best thing I could do to save the relationship between my father and I. When I worked on the campaign, there were always several states between us, and we got along great! Now I have to hope that living on the other side of town can work just as well.
...Are you still reading? If so, congratulations. I didn't mean to write this much when I sat down here. But it occurs to me that at no time over the past 2 1/2 years had I ever actually written any of this down. So I hope you will indulge me this exercise in vanity on this, the eve of my next independence day.
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