The man who poured beer on your head, that was weird and significant enough that you remember it. But how easily we- our parents’ children- overlook what our parents do to us. Your father not seeing you for who you are all these years, judging you, that is REJECTING you as often as he did during so many years is way, way more damaging to you than a stranger pouring beer on your head. It simply hurts when THE PERSON WE WANT TO PLEASE SO BADLY- rejects us. It simply hurts. So it is your father who hurt you then… by rejecting you, by stamping you repeatedly with the DISAPPROVED stamp. Like you wrote, nobody is perfect but it doesn’t take any of the pain of being disapproved by the person we are so invested in winning over.

Nobody is as invested as a child in seeing the best in one’s parents. So what you see, as you described it in your posts, is the best of who your father is. Reality is probably not as “good.”

Surround yourself with people who know you, who like what they know of you, who APPROVE of you, who want to know you better- this is crucial. Do not invest anymore in trying to make a disapproving person approve of you. Look for and keep people who approve of you. Surround yourself with people with whom you can be more and more yourself.

You wish you didn’t care what other people thought of you. Surround yourself with … gay-friendly people, gay or not, people who do not already feel negatively about gay people. People who feel negatively about gay people, those feelings are most often very deep in them (homophobia is a way to label those feelings). Don’t try to make them approve of you as a gay person. Stay away from any person once you realize he or she is homophobic (and as strange as it is, there are gay people who have those feelings…)

And then notice that the gay-friendly people you do associate with can be disapproving and judgmental otherwise. Ahh, the complexity of it all. The way to care less what disapproving people think of you is to stay away from them. Why bother?

Till later:
anita

• This reply was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by tinybuddha.