Well, beginning probably isn't the right word. It's been looking like Christmas (without the snow) for awhile now, since the first day the Hallowe'en candy went on sale. This time of year makes me think about family. My family. Not that I wasn't already thinking about them before, good things and bad. It's just occurred to me how many closets I may be extricating myself from this coming holiday season.
Daydream Believer's Conundrum: To Un-Closet or Not To Un-Closet?
The Closets:
The Reigning Champ: BisexualityThe Solid Second: Lefty Radical Libertarian Pseudo-Anarchist Communism
The Newcomer: Polyamory
We'll start with the reigning champ. When I first identified myself as bi, I had a very well reasoned two-pronged excuse for keeping my parents out of it. Prong 1: It was none of their business who I was sleeping with (more frequently, who I was having no luck trying to seduce, but that's another matter). Since then, I've opened up some. Including nearly giving dear old Dad a conniption one pleasant summer morning when he asked where I was going, and I said to get an STI check. Which is really a lot more tame, run of the mill, care-and-keeping-of-a-healthy-sexually-active-adult than he seemed to think it was. Prong 2: Unless I stand a reasonable chance of actually wanting to bring home a girlfriend for (insert holiday here), it's not terribly relevant to them, outside of the fact that they care about me, want me to be happy, and want a general understanding about what's going on in my life. Still true. My luck with women has not gotten any better. My prospects in that department are nil.
Which brings us to the solid second. I have always known I was (little-l for those north of the 49th) liberal. I've always believed (or in moments of existential crisis, at least wanted to believe) that people are basically good, and that people should be basically good to one another. All people. Any people. The homosexuals and the blacks and the asians and the mormons and the buddhists and the jains and the marxists and the anarchists and the prostitutes and the schoolteachers and the clergy and the businessfolk and the women and the men and the both and the neither. Everybody. As recently as a month or so ago, I've started to get involved. I've been writing letters, going to meetings, wearing buttons, debating issues, considering issues, and so on. I'm beginning to show signs of activism.
Don't get me wrong, I think that this is great. I'm not convinced that my family will think it's great too. I like what I'm doing, and I'm hoping that I'll change things. But I'm afraid that my internal compass will waver when confronted with the gigantic magnet known as my father. I'm afraid of the conflict between knowing that my Dad is neither evil nor stupid, and knowing the kinds of things he does for a living, and that generally, people who do those kinds of things disagree with me on a lot of things, at the most base of levels. I'm afraid that the way I see the world might waver when pressed against the hard-wired logic of "Dad's the boss". I'm afraid that I will start thinking that my Dad is either evil or stupid, which could make for a very awkward Christmas dinner indeed.
Last, but not least, the newcomer. This one's tricky. This one's the scariest of the lot, I think. This is the one that, if it should come to light, is likely to cause the most problems. It's new, well, sort of. I've been thinking about it for awhile, and am really only now considering the long-term practical applications of it. This makes it sound like scientific research, I know, and it's not. I'm blindly fumbling forward, trying to take steps away from what I know I don't want in the hopes that, at the polar opposite of what I don't want, I'll find what I do want. Whatever that is. But for now, I want to be left alone to figure it out. I don't want to talk about it with a counselor, with my mother, flying-spaghetti-monster forbid with my grandmother. I want to try the shoe on before I decide if it fits, or how it fits, and I don't want anyone to tell me they think it's ugly until I've decided if it fits or not.
None of these conundrums are terribly new. None of them are secrets, and I would tell the truth about all of them if directly asked, by just about anyone. However, I don't know when or if or how to start telling the people who are important to me and not frequently present in my day to day life. None of these things are making me lose sleep right now. It's just something that occurred to me when a Christmas Carol popped into my head this evening.
Keep dreaming.
Daydream Believer
