Monday, February 09, 2009

damn lies

Today has gotten weird and a little icky.
Some of you probably know that one whole side of my family is pretty strictly Mormon. My mom is the black sheep for marrying out of the religion and going all liberal, and my (similarly queer) sister and I have been keeping mum about the fact that we like girls for years now on her behalf. I hate hate hate not being open about my queerness, but my mom has made it very clear that she would become (in her opinion) estranged from the rest of her family if we came out, so that's been that for years now. Most of the time it doesn't bother me, because I rarely think of it; I don't see or speak to my Mormon relatives often, my mom and I no longer discuss "touchy" subjects (my choice, it's just not worth it to me anymore), and the whole thing just hides out in the back of my mind, rarely rearing its ugly head.
If I were braver, I'd just say to hell with it. But I love my mom, and it's hard for me to deal with her tears and the possible repercussions that she might have to deal with. And this may, in fact, be a line I'm not yet willing to cross. Someday I may have to: what if I decide to have a child? That's not something you can hide. But for now, I'm doing what I hate to do and hiding behind a "family friendly" facebook profile. I fucking hate this. But if you want to help me live a lie, find my goody-two-shoes alter ego (same name, picture of me hiking in a striped tank top)and friend me.

4 comments:

Lauren Eggert-Crowe said...

wow, i'm so sorry. i don't think i knew about the mormon side of your family, and i'm sorry it's causing so much anguish. so is this in addition to the fb profile you already have or is it the same one, sterilized?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'm a little confused too. If I "friend you" there, could they track me back and catch on. If they were so bored and inclined? Maybe I'll just stay with the Ammie! The Original Flava! (she so tasty!)

a said...

Ooh, sorry if that was confusing! There's a whole new profile out there in addition to my queer lefty one. I don't really care if you friend it or not, I'm just going to be an apathetic pretend facebooker. Whatever, I'm over it.

a said...

And everything resolved peacefully! Various family members were blocked from seeing our debaucherous pages and added onto our fake ones, and I even have two cousins that I can actually talk to! Like, in a real way! And as my sister pointed out, the fake pages might allow us some family contact without dropping any bombshells, It's nice to feel a possibility for connection :)