I finally came out!

It went so much better than I had anticipated. I posted before with a little background on my family: highly conservative people who expressed a lot of anti-gay sentiments while I was growing up. I was very worried both of them would overreact, even though they had said things like, "We'll still love you even if you were gay!" I didn't believe them. But now I'm officially out to them and things went much better than I could have ever hoped for. Here is the story!

I decided the night before that I would finally tell my parents so that I could stop worrying about it so much. I made myself promise that I would do it no matter what. It must have been fated to happen because the next night, it was one of the rare occasions that both of my parents were in the living room together and both of my younger brothers were upstairs doing their own thing.

I was very nervous and didn't want to tell them together. My mom went upstairs to tuck my youngest brother into bed and I asked my dad if we could talk privately in my parents' bedroom. He said yes and went into his room and I followed behind. I said, "There's something I have been wanting to tell both you and mom for a long time." I came right out and said it. At first, he was very quiet and kept puffing on his e-cigarette that he uses and that worried me. But he reassured me soon after and said that he still loves and accepts me for who I am and that the only thing he is concerned about is how hard it's going to be for me now because I'm a minority. We talked it out and I guess my mom had come back downstairs.

She must have been curious or heard our whispering because she came into the room and started to brush her teeth, wash her hands, etc. She accused both of us of talking about her! My dad said, "No, your daughter has something to tell you." So I walked out into the living room behind my mom and she sat on the couch. I took a seat in the chair across from her. She looked at me and laughed and said, "Please don't tell me you're having a baby!" I said, "No, you don't have to ever worry about that because I'm not straight. I'm gay."

Absolutely seamlessly, she replies with, "Oh, I knew that!" After that, we talked about it and how they both felt like they had known for a long time and thankfully had had time to digest it because it wasn't coming out of the blue. My dad asked some questions about how long I had known and I told him as much as I could remember from my childhood. He also asked what kind of girls I'm into, which was sort of weird, but I explained to him that there wasn't a specific "type" I adhered to. I told them about my girlfriend and they were cool with that too. At the end of it all, they both hugged me and said they were glad I had come out and they hoped that it would no longer be a source of stress for me anymore.

The only thing that bothered me was that neither of them wanted me to bring it up to my younger brothers. They are 10 and 15 and my parents "don't think they can handle information like that". I disagree, especially with my 15 year old brother. We have a very close bond and I think that he would understand better than anyone. My mom said that it may be confusing for my 10 year old brother because I have always dated boys in the past, but I tried to explain to her that even he knows that sometimes that sort of thing happens (just the other day, he was telling me about how a gay boy in his class always used to say he liked girls). Perhaps I'm being too sensitive about it, but thankfully, the hardest part is over!

I'm so glad to finally be out and I'm really thankful that my parents have been mature, loving, and understanding!