Okay this is how I came out.

I came out in the ninth grade, two years after I realized I was gay.

I sent an e-mail to my mom asking her "What would you do if I was gay", and she replied "you're not gay". For months I tried to tell her I was gay but she kept telling me it was just a phase and I'd grow out of it.

Back then there was a show called "Thirty Days" where for thirty days someone would go into someone else's shoes. In the episode in question, a straight guy went to live in a "gay town" where most people would look at him and assume he was gay. When the preview for this episode came up on the tv my mom ordered me not to watch it (I guess she thought being exposed to gay stuff would make me think I was still gay). Of course I watched it anyway.

It was like that for a while, anytime anything Gay came up on TV or in real life she would order that the subject be dropped. I remember one time a trailer for "Queer as Folk" came up and she had a tantrum when I wouldn't stop watching it (the freakin trailer, not the episode).

But everything came to a head when I wanted to buy a DVD called Gravitation, an anime about two men who fall in love and she wouldn't let me (I was too young back then to buy it because it was R-rated or something). She actually picked it up and while she thought I wasn't looking she called it "disgusting". I didn't talk to her for a week after that and eventually she caved in and bought it for me.

Since then things haven't been a whole hell of a lot better. She tries to maintain that this is just a phase (a phase that's lasted six years...) and she tries to get me to say that I will date girls for her sake but I am quick to try and dismiss any such fantasies by reminding her: I'm gay, it's gonna stay, and she'd better get used to it.