but i think what bothers me about being asexual is not any personal insecurities. what bothers me about being the way i am is having the family that i have. i have "come out" to my brother as asexual, and he saw it as a legitimate thing and accepted me immediately. i'm eternally grateful that he is this way, but at the same time, he still constantly throws jokes about my parents thinking i'm gay around. sometimes, it's funny, but sometimes it's really not. the reason why this is is because my mom is very, very religious, to the point where she holds gay people in contempt for their "lifestyle." i have repeatedly told her i'm not gay, but even so, she doesn't believe me. she told me she would send me to a camp to wring it out of me if i ever was gay. no matter how much i tell her i'm not, she won't listen. it was horrible when one of my closest friends was gay; when i was going to visit him in north carolina with his boyfriend, upon telling my mom i was interested in meeting them, she outright asked me in a restaurant full of people if i was "homosexual," with tears welling up in her eyes as if she knew what i was going to say. telling her no is apparently not enough. this whole thing wouldn't blow over well, just because she's unfamiliar with it. religion is all she knows now, and while it has done a lot of good for her, it's also closed some mental doors. she has very conservative views of the world, and telling her what i am won't make sense to her. there won't be a chance of making it make sense to her, either. as for my dad, i don't have a relationship with him on any level. telling him anything is neither here nor there. but like my mom, religion influences his moral and political leanings, so i'm lead to believe he is less likely to receive my feelings well.
i'm prompted to say these things because i spent a week with my mom's family in south carolina. i love them, but when i made it back to virginia i nearly started crying multiple times because i had this overwhelming feeling of being where i belonged. i love my mom, and i love her family, too, but i didn't feel like they were my home. i didn't feel like i belonged there. but here, i felt like i was home. i felt like i didn't have to hide anything. i don't know how asexuality connects, but being surrounded by highly religious people with narrow ideas of how the world works is intimidating to me. nothing will sway them; nothing will change their mind. so it's beautiful, in a way, to be here, knowing that i can be myself. i don't have a lot of people that i talk to in real life, certainly not enough to have a support network, but the people that i do know make me feel so comfortable in my own skin that i almost had to pull myself off the highway. i just felt this enormous relief.
i just had to share tonight. i'm really tired, and it's been nagging at me for several days. i enjoyed my time with my grandparents, but i felt like i was ready to go home sooner than i expected. little did i know that coming home would give me all these stupid feelings.
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