I had gotten home late (again) and didn't see either of them. The next morning I was eating breakfast before school when my mother handed me my open mail. She told they knew what was going on and warned me to avoid my father. She told me that he had wanted me gone but she got him to agree to let me stay six months (or something). She then threaten me that I'd have to leave immediately if I "flaunted" (being gay) in front of my brother, or if any relatives found out. Later that day when my father got home I was there. All hell broke loose. He said the most amazingly cruel and disgusting things. He may have hit me too. I don't remember. It's like recalling a blurry nightmare. It seems like a bad time, and it was, but from there my mother and I got closer. It was as though she was just showing rage to warn me about how upset my dad was. We began talking. Really talking and doing things. She helped me to talk to my dad. They visited after I moved. When it was time to graduate, both parents and my brother came to the ceremony. I never really saw my family all at once those first two years on my own, but I saw my mother all the time. When I moved in with my friend Patrick she asked if we were "more than friends". We weren't, but she didn't believe me for a while... She had met Richard (and knew who he was to me) before any of my family. She finally got so comfortable as to talk to her friends about me, and her mother and sister. All the relatives who were to never find out! And she slowly brought my father along with her in her quest for acceptance for me. My parents are now my closest friends. They have us (Richard and I) over all the time, and they visit us. We go to dinner often, day trips, they were supposed to go to Mexico too. Richard has even met my grandmother! It really is an amazing thing to have the support of my whole family for my life as it really is, with out "hiding things" from this relative or that friend, or any of that drama that I know is usually the reality in a gay man's life. It is all because of my mother.

Ugh!