First of all, my apologies for being gone for such a long time. I've had a lot of medical issues crop up in the past few months and when I'm not exhausted from those, I'm busy with other things. This happened a couple of months ago, on August 31st. I'd made plans with my psychiatrist to come out to my mom at my next appointment on the upcoming Thursday. I don't remember exactly what lead up to this part (it was a while ago, and one of the symptoms of my many medical problems is poor memory) but she somehow found out that I was planning on telling her something really big on Thursday, and she absolutely flipped the hell out. She was acting like I didn't trust her with anything at all, and I did feel bad because I could tell she was very worried about me and desperate to help with whatever was bothering me, which she couldn't do if her daughter refused to talk to her. Later I found out that she'd noticed me getting more depressed and stressed out recently, which likely also played a big role. It got to the point where my mom and I were both in tears, me trying to reassure her that it was just something difficult to talk about rather than something actually BAD, and her begging me to tell her what was wrong and getting upset that her daughter apparently didn't trust her at all. My dad and brother got involved too, and eventually I pulled my brother aside to talk to him alone. After making him promise not to tell on the threat of me never trusting him ever again, I told him I was bi. He just kind of nodded and said he thought that was the case, and told me he was on my side. We went back out to talk with dad a little more (my mom had retreated to her bedroom crying) and eventually I decided that despite how utterly scared I was, I needed to talk with mom before things got any worse. I went into the guest bedroom with her and sat in silence for several seconds. My heart was beating very quickly and my arms had that weird fuzzy feeling they get when you've got a lot of adrenaline running through your body. I stammered and restarted my sentence several times, and then went quiet for about another 10 seconds. Very slowly I choked out that I was part of a forum called Empty Closets (odd way to break the news, but I honestly couldn't think of any other way to do it) and she looked at me and asked me if I was trying to tell her that I was gay. I shook my head and corrected her, and after a few seconds she said "You know we still love you, right?" I nodded numbly, and she came over and hugged me. She asked me why I hadn't told her sooner (giving the classic "don't you trust me????" line) and I gave my reasons (afraid they wouldn't believe me, afraid they would blame "the gay agenda" for "confusing their poor daughter", things like that) and explained that it actually isn't quite as simple as "is this a person I find trustworthy in everyday life or not." I'm still not sure she gets that last bit, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't think it's anything personal anymore. After that she asked me if I wanted to tell dad or if I wanted her to tell him for me. I went with using her as a messenger, since I was emotionally wrung-out from the terror of coming out twice in a short period of time on top of all the fighting earlier that evening. She told him in another room, and when he came back out he walked straight over to me, hugged me, and told me he loved me. All in all, it went far far FAR better than my imagined best case scenario :icon_bigg Ever since then I have been far less stressed in day to day life, and much happier in general. I had no idea how much of an emotional and mental burden that had been placing on me!!! I thought I'd had it under control, but evidently not. They've continued to handle it pretty well for the most part. They even have yet to bring anything up like whether it's "appropriate" for me to have sleepovers with female friends or anything along those lines (which was an argument they used all the time in our debates of LGBTQ+ issues.) Later I found out that neither of them were particularly surprised when I came out and had in fact been waiting on me to tell them for quite some time :dry: Don't get me wrong, it's nice that's how things are and I am EXTREMELY grateful for having things work out so well for me (I'm aware of how many people don't get half as good a reaction as I did.) I just wish they hadn't continuously sent me mixed signals and hadn't been major jerkasses about certain topics. I wouldn't have been nearly as scared about the idea of telling them, ahahaha. I have been extremely lucky so far, with the small number of friends I've come out to and my family all reacting quite well and being very supportive of me. I know that won't always be the case, as I can think of several friends and family right off the bat where trouble will undoubtedly arise (including a straight homophobic female friend that I have a slight crush on but that's a story for a different time) possibly to the point of completely cutting off contact with us. However, it is very reassuring to know that I have a system of support made up of people who are close to me
