Not Sure What To Do

Hey everyone, I need a little advice about the situation I’ve ran into with my family. I’m 30 years old and am only out to a handful of friends, ex-girlfriends, and my old co-workers.

Little background on my family – my parents have given me mixed messages over the years about their views of LGBT folks. My father is extremely homophobic, but is extremely open and accepting of people who are transgender. He often sounds nostalgic when he talks about the good old days when “fags were committed to mental asylums so they couldn’t spread their evil propaganda” and how gays “ruined beautiful San Francisco with their debauchery” and so forth. My mother regularly flips between “homosexuals are a scour of the earth, a sinful abomination trying to recruit innocent youth” to “queers are human too and should be treated humanely and with respect”. My sister has no mixed messages, she simply and unabashedly hates everyone that is not a white, middle to upper class, heterosexual.

Currently, I’d like to add, I relocated to stay with my parents until May as my father was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemo treatments and my mother has her own slew of health issues and the relocation was done to assist them with their financial and medical concerns.

With that said, my problems began one day about a week ago when I drove my sister to the store (who is visiting for two weeks) and she had asked for my keys stating she had forgotten something in my car. I thought nothing of it and gave her my keys. She didn’t return them and it had been more than an hour so I went searching to find her whispering to my mother. I inquired what the hubbub was all about and she gave me my keys and told me it was none of my business. They seemed to be cranky so I wandered off.

The next morning I went out to my car to find, what I’ll call my “Pride Paraphernalia” box (shirts, flag, bracelet, bag, etc…), had been pulled out from under the seat and ripped open. I forgot the box was even in there. I was unhappy that she had been rummaging through my stuff and I’m taking a wild guess that is what they were whispering about.

Then Wednesday morning I couldn’t find any of my clothing that I had hung outside to dry. Everyone feigned ignorance. So I went out to my car to see if I had anything suitable left in my suitcase and behold, someone had somehow gotten into my car and haphazardly thrown all my clothing in there and had pulled my pride shirts out of the box again and put them on the top of the stack. I went in and asked them all if there was something they’d like to discuss with me and no one would say a thing and pretended nothing happened. I patiently vented my disappointment in whoever did it and went about my business.

Since all this occurred my parents have been uncharacteristically irritable and short. Despite my voluntarily being there to help them, my mother was threatening to kick me out the house this morning if I didn’t “shape up and become responsible”. I calmly asked her what in she meant as I've been taking care of all the household tasks in addition to working full-time, and she screamed “Don’t test me!” so I shrugged it off and left.

I’m really torn here, because part of me just wants to yell “Yay, I’m gay, have a great day!” and leave permanently but part of me would really like to work this out.

Unfortunately, there is a second complication, too that I didn’t foresee. I own a home which I am paying the mortgage on in the other town where I used to live, and as an educator I don’t have a lot of expendable income to also pay rent at an apartment in this town. I also can’t abandon my teaching job here in the middle of the semester to move back.

So, in other words, I've got myself into a situation and am at a loss as for what to do. They evidently are not taking it well, don't want to discuss it, my sister is fanning the flames, and they're threatening to kick me out. Yet, I don't have the resources at this very moment to move away/get kicked out nor any desire to break my professional work contract. I'm also a bit irked right now that I'm the only child that was genuinely concerned about their well being, made a major life change to help them regardless of their views, and this is what I've ended up with.