(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

I was pretty depressed yesterday, until jc2004, snowdaemon, and their friend, Duncan the Evil Library Assistant, showed up. Even with them around, though, and even having managed to make contact with my friends out here, I still wonder why I put myself through this every year.

I'm notoriously hard to buy for at Christmas, though some people made a valiant effort and actually succeeded (top of that list is snowdaemon and jc2004, and I can think of at least three people on my f-list who'll want to get their hands on Hanging Out With The Dream King: Conversations with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators, which means I'll have to find some time to read it myself first).

But the reason I'm so hard to buy for is not because I have everything I want, or that I don't want anything -- it's just because the things I do want can't be sold or bought.

Top of that list, right now, I think, would not be feeling like an exile here. Which I always do. My extended family is really, really nice, but I almost can't help feel like I don't belong anymore -- maybe just because I've been in Montreal so long, maybe because our generation's values are so at odds with theirs, but I can't help but wonder if it's because I'm gay, too.

While marriage and children come up constantly -- to the point where it must annoy my cousins -- the subject is not raised in reference to me. Normally I say very little about my life. Which is hard. Most of the accomplishments I'm proud of in this world are things touching on the fact that I'm gay.

If I bring up things like helping to start Victoria's first gay and lesbian youth group, or standing up to a homophobic school counsellor, or the time I was on welfare and in a job program and they threatened to toss me out because I put my gay-related volunteer experience on a résumé -- and they could have thrown me onto the streets then because we weren't in the Human Rights Act or the Charter back then -- when I talk about the articles I've written, or marching in the Pride parade, or the four times I've taken in queer teenagers on the run from their abusive families, or about always being out on the job even though one time it probably got me fired, or the very small part I played in the fight for same-sex marriage -- when I talk about any of it, I get embarrassment from my mother, and my father just quickly changes the subject, as if he hadn't heard.

All my acomplishments, all the things I've struggled for, are embarrassments in this family. I've fought uphill to make a life for myself in spite of everything, and that means nothing here. And I ask myself why I want approval for this from them, and I can cite all the logical reasons why I shouldn't care, but the truth is, I do, and I can't lie about that.

My presence -- my mere existence here -- seems to matter very much to this family. But only if I'm devoid of content. I'm not wanted here because of who I am, and any discussion of who I am is to be kept to a minimum.

I still don't know why I do this to myself every year :(

Comments

[archdiva.livejournal.com]

Oh...that's just not right.

*Hugs and love*

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

Next year we'll have an orphan's Yule party, for everyone who feels the same way :/

[melting-penguin.livejournal.com]

Remember, your real family is made up of the people who love you. Not the genetic crapshoot that comprises your blood relations. They're the ones who lose out by not celebrating eveything that makes you you. And you rock.

(And when will I be able to get my hands on the dream king?) :)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I do have a lot of family who love me. I even have family members who know and appreciate the sortsd of things I've done.

It's just especially exhausting being around my parents. How could my presence be of any importance to them, when everything that makes up that presence is unwanted...? :/

[link2lando.livejournal.com]

Wow... I am so impressed and I admire all the work you'd done. I know it must feel terrible to have your achievements overlooked or ignored. I felt like that for years. It's tough, but somehow, knowing that you've done your best is the only things you have to keep you going. No matter what happnes, you have accomplished things that others would have never dreamt of. You are incredible! Never forget that! Happy Holidays!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Though I haven't done much in the last four years or so except writing letters on same-sex marriage, and encouraging others to do the same. I want to get back into that kind of stuff :)

Happy holidays to you, too ^_^

[infinitecomplex.livejournal.com]

At least you know that you have two family members (well, a family member and an in-law - is that technically a family member?) here who love you for who you are - for everything about who you are - and who admire the things you've done, the obstacles you've overcome, and the person you've become.

*hugs*

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I certainly consider you a family member, and things got a lot better when you two showed up :)

And thank you :)

[jc2004.livejournal.com]

That totally blows not being able to talk about your life at all. I have to keep a quite a number of things secret and I've learned to just talk about generic stuff mostly - school, work, etcetera, and keep emotions and lifestyle out of it. The things I want in life are very different from the things mom and dad want for me. They're desperate for grandchildren and I definitely do not want to have kids and at times I've felt that my only value is as an empty procreative vessel, not as an individual person, so I can relate to this to some degree.

I think you could probably talk to some people in the family about your accomplishments - I can think of a few people besides the two of us over in Van. With mom and dad, it probably won't work - I've basically had to make peace with that in my own life; I can't talk with them about a lot of things in my life but I can express them to my friends and I can express myself in my writing and you have the same outlets so it's probably best to rely on those because neither one of us is ever going to be a mainstream ordinary sort of person.

Victoria sucks as well. It's easy to become depressed and introspective there. I'm sure you'll be fine once you get back to Montreal and feel like you're on solid ground again.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I know. We're in similar situations, there. The difference is that pretty much the only thing I have going in my life that doesn't relate to my sexuality somehow is school, which I'm growing to hate and can't describe unless I explain postmodernism in depth and why I hate it. So I have nothing to make smalltalk on.

And it is scary that you and I seem to be seen merely as womb and sperm, respectively. I haven't ruled out kids -- my friend archdiva is having a kid with a lesbian couple via artificial insemination. And Rhamona Vos-Browning and his partner were pairing up with a lesbian couple to do the same.

But if I did, I'm not really sure I'd want her around as a grandparent.

The cousins -- Michelle, Nicole, Tammy -- are all great to talk to, and really cool with things. Even some of the older relatives -- B is completely cool with it, though she doesn't like the more exhuberant displays of queer culture, like drag queens. Still, that's remarkable in a woman of 86.

It's mostly just mom and dad who are at the centre of this rant. But since their the ones I'm staying with, it's the most difficult. Really, after all these years we haven't reconciled. I've gone as far as I'll go, and now they have to meet me halfway. And I don't think that's going to happen.

[jc2004.livejournal.com]

That's very cool about Rhamona! I've always liked him and I'm glad he's in a happy relationship - more people like him should be procreating.

Esther is completely cool with things as well, and I think Mouse is too (I remember going to lunch with the three of them and it coming up in conversation about you being gay and they were all positive about it).

If you do have a baby, that would be great. It would take some of the pressure off me.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I was never sure if Mouse and Esther knew, but I figured they did by now. I was actually a little worried about Mouse's reaction, since she's one of the most conservative on that side of the family (although I know she hates Stephen Harper). I also remember she was in denial about Liberace :/

I heard that about Rhamona a very long time ago. Don't know how that story came out. Bastian might know.

As for a baby, I'd want a stable relationship first :/

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm a straight woman working on a PhD. I've done things of which I'm ridiculously proud, and yet my parents are unable to see me as anything other than a small child. I suspect it's the same with your parents: it's not that they're not proud of you and in awe of your (many, amazing and utterly pride-worthy) accomplishments. It's just that you only get to have made those accomplishments by virtue of your preference for people of your own sex. And since we've now said the S word, every mention of your accomplishments reminds your parents that you're an adult and a sexual being, and that simply doesn't compute in most parental minds.

*hugs*

Next year I think I'll be hosting beer-and-pizza day in my apartment instead of family Christmas. You are welcome to join us :)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Next year I think I'll be hosting beer-and-pizza day in my apartment instead of family Christmas. You are welcome to join us :)

Thank you, but aren't you in Ireland? I'm pretty poor when it comes to travel.

As for parents, long experience has taught me that being gay is not merely an issue, but a very serious one with them.

My father is extraordinarily right-wing, edging on fascism, with very firm ideas about what masculinity is.

My mother makes a pretense of being left-wing, and even votes left, but pick her brain for even a few minutes and you find out she subscribes some extremely racist and homophobic ideas. And in spite of being an otherwise intelligent person, no amount of logic or reason will make her question her beliefs.

As my sister noted above, she really doesn't want to know who we are. Our value to her is measured entirely in our ability to reproduce, and in showing us off for the relatives. Anything that embarrasses her there is bad. Beyond that, she doesn't seem to care :/

[jc2004.livejournal.com]

Dad used to be a card carrying NDP member, though he's shifted over time.

I think not wanting to know who their children are is a problem that many parents share. They go into the whole parenting thing with an idea of who they want their children to be, basically reflections of their own goals and ideals and then it comes as a nasty shock to find out that their children are people in their own right, with their own goals and ideals. I think it's very disillusioning. Then parents feel bitter for having labored to bring an idealogically divergent person into the world who didn't ask to be there in the first place. It's irrational but commonplace - I see manifestations of it in so many people I know.

That's the cycle that really needs to be broken in the world; people creating children in the hopes of using them as vehicles through which to seize all of their missed opportunities or to provide them with things. At least robot technology is advancing. I think many people would be much happier with robots that they could program than they are with children, and that would solve the overpopulation problem as well.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Dad used to be a card carrying NDP member, though he's shifted over time.

That used to worry me, until I read his valedictorian speech, which was all about that stuff.

His problem seems to have been that he was a utopian. Utopians get disillusioned easily. I was like that early on, until I experienced actual persecution and poverty. I don't think I'll ever get over what I've gone through -- I don't think I'd want to. What I've seen and experienced is what fuels my desire for change. That's probably what it means to be Scorp Rising.

I have no illusions about what the human race is capable of in terms of horror and cruelty -- I'm aware of our flaws as a species. I'm also aware that we've gotten steadily better for most things, and we can and do change for the better.

It is a common problem, and a major motivation for people in the first world to have children -- well, that plus condom apathy. Now if we could robot children for the developed world, and some form of financial security for the developing world so they don't have to use their children as their pension plan, we might be able to beat this overpopulation thing :)

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

In that case I'll send you a beer sodden pizza box the day after and you can pretend you shared the love :)

This family Christmas was spent carefully picking our way through political minefields. When it transpired that my mother, who right now is singing what appears to be Kum Ba Yah in the kitchen while watering a tree sapling and wearing a kaftan, was pro-war, and my father is also pro-torture (but only of terrorists) I started to debate it with them but then ... what would be the point? They'll keep telling me that I'll think differently when I'm older, not realising that older is here.

Try this:

-So, what have you done this year?
-[do not tell them about your wonderful achievements because you know the information will be wasted]. Oh, you know, work and school, what about you?
-[tells you]
-[pick up something in that that gives you an opening for nostalgia and reminiscence]

Parents like their kid kids better than their adult kids because children represent possibilities and adult kids represent their own mortality and their failure to replicate instead of procreate. So remind them of you-as-a-kid every chance you get. It feels almost underhanded in its cynicism but if it gets us through the holidays without a hospital visit or a drunken coma then it works for me.

A friend of mine is working nights at casualty this week. She opened a man's chest on Christmas night to find two punctured lungs and a punctured heart. The man had been stabbed by his brother in law. We're really far more fortunate than we feel.

[zpurplefreak.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry your parents don't give you the unconditional love and acceptance you deserve. I'd be glad to share my parents, they are very loving and accepting and a true blessing. :-) Remember that there are non-blood-relations who do love you and accept all of you.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you. But I do have some family I get along with, as well as a circle of friends close enough to call a family.

I think I can get along without that unconditional parental love most of the time -- it's just when I'm out here. And I'm also just wondering why I bother to come out here now, considering how unwelcome I feel a lot of the time here :/