A horrificly sad coming out story

[dsc]

I listened to this last night in my car and again this morning at work. I cried both times. This is the one truely different thing about being gay vs just about anything else. We depend on straight parents to love us even when we turn out not to be what they had hoped for. Jeffery's didn't.

http://www.themoth.org/listen

Go to the story by Jeffrey Rudell

Warning if you can't cry where you are wait till later to listen.

[cali]

1. Just remarkable.

this line struck me profoundly: hope builds up in the system until it becomes something toxic.

Jeffry is a remarkable man.

[Morning Dew]

2. OMG, how horrible.

and he's a hell of a speaker.

Thanks!

[cali]

3. I found it inspiring as all get out.

I love his wisdom and kindness and how he's triumphed over such devastation.

[Morning Dew]

4. I loved his ability to find humor in it as well.

I'd have been totally devastated.

As it was, my dad and I had a rough 5-6 years after I came out... that was hard enough.

What happened to Jeffrey, I couldn't imagine getting through with such grace.

[cali]

7. I'm not gay but I so relate to this

he has grace that I can't imagine having. I wish everyone here would take 9 minutes and listen to him.

[Warpy]

6. I did, too

While I don't understand how parents could do that to a child and have little sympathy at all for them, I have to think they did something right and that's the part of them he's forgiven.

A lot of us never get validated by our parents for various reasons. Few of us had to hear that our lives were burned to ashes in the front yard, though, that is really overkill. Most of us have learned to take the good stuff with us and dump the rest and I suppose he has, too.

Jeffrey is on my guest list for my fantasy dinner party. I think we'd have a lot in common for very different reasons.

His parents are not.

[duhneece]

17. "...On my guest list for a fantasy dinner party..."

I like that. Jeffrey is so eloquent in expressing how his mother's actions tore a hole in his soul, but is so gentle in his appreciation for his own lovingloyalty. What a man. What a human being.

[Hissyspit]

5. Why is this getting unrec'd?

Fucking homophobes.

[cali]

8. Nevermind them

I'm gonna keep kicking this until it has a 100+ recs/

[imdjh]

12. In case you hadn't notice, there is some similarity between DU and St Olaf

Some people probably think that unrec means they disapprove of what Ruddell's mother did.

[GCP]

9. Unbelievable - Skittle, where are you?

These people need the biggest ass-kicking that's ever been given.
WTF is wrong with people that they'd do this to the son they professed to love so much.
He sounds a great guy and they should be fucking proud of him.

[midnight]

10. k&R.

[Odin2005]

11. K&R

[imdjh]

13. I guess I've heard it too many times, and it doesn't surprise me that much.

But it does still surprise a bit. The first time I saw this first hand was when a Jewish friend's father declared him dead. However, his family stayed in touch behind Dad's back, and grandmother never honored the father's declaration. Perhaps that's the surprise here, not that one stupid bitch pulled a stunt like this, but that an entire family was so spineless as to go along with it. I simply can't imagine that happening in my family. No one had that kind of power, not even my grandfather. That kind of power died a generation earlier in our family. My great grandfather's sister, an aunt that I never knew I had until I saw her in the census records. No mention of her anywhere else, not in the family cemetery even. Lived 7 miles away all her life, and neither my mother nor my grandmother knew she existed. She got pregnant out of wedlock and was sent away. Isn't religion great?

[cali]

14. I don't think his story is so much about his family as it is about

him and how he dealt with it.

[ieoeja]

23. My grandmother got kicked out of her family for getting pregnant by her father.

Of course, if she was such a slut that she seduced her own father, I guess you can see their point. :sarcasm:


Her father's name was William Henry Harrison, grandson of President Benjamin Harrison and great-great-grandson of his namesake Pres WH Harrison. In addition to raping his daughter, getting her an abortion**, then tossing her into an orphanage, he had earlier married himself to the Klan when they were a rising power in American politics (and, yes, this was in Indiana where the Klan was HQ'ed during their biggest baddest self).

In case you ever wondered, what became of the Harrison political dynasty, you now know the ugly story.

While the preggers thing is why they tossed her out of the house, total shunning came later as the result of her marrying a Roman Catholic. They did get in touch with our family in the mid-90s, invited them to a family gathering in Indianapolis, and then seemed horribly confused that our family took offense at all the Catholic jokes they told.

Bigots are just as stupid as they are ignorant.


**While I was somewhere else, my mother and aunts were giving my (now ex-)wife crap about an abortion she had as a teenager, when their mother (my aforementioned grand-mother) shocked them to the bone by getting angry with the lot of them, telling them they had no idea what they would really have done under the right circumstances, and then informing them of her own abortion as a child.

[Raster]

15. Kick!

:kick:

[brer cat]

16. Thank you for posting dsc.

Few of us really understand the truly horrific end a coming out can bring. As a parent, it is totally beyond my comprehension. As a fellow human, I salute this young man for his incredible strength to survive with grace and dignity.

[Veruca Salt]

18. kick and bookmark for later listening

[closeupready]

19. Can't listen to it right now, but alienation from family has happened to SO many gay people I know.

It's almost a cliche.

[BR_Parkway]

29. Yeah, it's the reason so many of us "choose" this "lifestyle" - because

it's all fun and parties and dancing and unbridled sex with thousands of people.

And free toasters for each one we "convert"

I hope the mother has several years in bed, slowly, painfully wasting away - with nothing to take her mind off her pain except the son she declared dead to everyone.

[redqueen]

20. K&R

Bookmarked for later...

[VenusRising]

21. Sometimes, parents are just the vehicle by which we come into this life.

They don't deserve such a wonderful son.

:hug::loveya: to Jeffrey and all those whose parents turned them away for being their authentic selves.

[aikoaiko]

22. It is a sad story, but my emotional reaction was anger.

This story is a good example of why more adult children of asshole parents just need to give them the finger and never look back until the parents become reasonable.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. I knew a similar case when I worked with street kids

A young man with great values and wisdom beyond his years whose parents disowned him when he came out.

They thought that being gay was something he was "doing" just to spite them. Sad.

[myrna minx]

25. K&R n/t

[Javaman]

26. Love the moth.

brilliant true life stories.

I will give it a listen.

[cali]

27. kick for the best thread of the day. thanks, dsc.

[Divine Discontent]

28. rec