It's ironic how 'gay' can be interpreted to mean 'happy' yet I don't feel gay at all being a homosexual...
All my life I've spent on trying to make my parents proud. My mother was born as an illegitimate child and has spent all her life being ill-treated by her siblings. Even her 'parents' are biased towards her legitimate siblings. My mum was never open to the privileges that her siblings, my aunts and uncles, enjoyed and as a result of this, as well the emotional trauma she had to endure through her childhood, she has been afraid of making something of herself because she simply doesn't have the ability to do so - she was too affected by all the 'putting-down' her family gave her and lacked both a voice and a keen ear, especially at a time when there wasn't Internet access and all she had was friends to listen to her, yet she didn't WANT to talk about those things that bothered her because she was made to feel ashamed of them.
Because of this, she's wanted me to make her proud. She wants to show her family that her son can be better than all of them, that her son can be successful. I've tried so hard and for a time she was very proud of me but then...
At the age of 11 I realised I was different. I felt attracted to my male peers and I took a sexual interest in guys rather than girls. I admit that I haven't actively tried to quench these feelings: quite the contrary. I flaunted my homosexuality to my peers by the age of fourteen, I was desperate to find a voice because I was pressured (by my own accord) to retain the image of the perfect son within my household so my mother wouldn't be further ridiculed, and as a result I sought elsewhere. I've had a number of 'romantic' (albeit desperate and predominantly physical) escapdes with boys my age. Boys have never had an interest in having meaningul conversations with me. I think my most emotionally intimate contacts with boys have always been when we're alone and I start acting like a pathetic damsel in distress in order to embark on my much-needed little escapades. I've never been good at communicating with people like normal people do because I've been raised to feel inferior in society, the offspring of an illegitimate child and her working class husband.
I've always wanted to break free from this. I've had profound social ambitions, of breaking boundaries. I've read books like Pride & Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, books and films about gentry and inherited wealthy. There are times when I've dreamed of my mother discovering that she was indeed the long-lost daughter of a Duke or a King, and that her blood is in fact not obly pure and legitimate, but blue-blooded, socially superior to those people who trod on us like dirt for all these years, those people who shamed us and mocked for our lack of success which they themselves inflicted upon us!
Yet I'm gay. Gay. Homosexuality, open homosexuality, is unorthodox and controversial. I've tried to convincs myself of the social and cultural merit of homosexual individuals in history: Oscar Wilde, Emperor Hadrian...
But I've realised that homosexuality was never a part of these cultural heroes' success stories: instead homossxuality has cast shadows and controversy over these otherwise brilliant people.
And because of this disturbing, dark side of my characyer, I've invested deep thoughts into them, trying to justify myself, yet I am always ashamed of kissing and lusting over men because this part of me will eventully let my mother down, it will tell all society that not only she is cursed to be an unsuccessful and socially troubled woman, but even her son would bear the shadow of controversy - she, born in illegitimacy; her husband, born in poverty; her son, born in homosexuality.
Put the internet to work for you.
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