Coming Out Of My Closet

A little while ago I watched a video that I found in my facebook newsfeed. If you have a few minutes you should give it a watch, it's amazing.

Coming Out of Your Closet

So I watched this, and I realized that I had a closet. Now, my closet is probably not like your closet. My closet is made of religion and ignorance. I was raised in a very religious family, we went to church a few times a week, prayed at every meal and believed that every word of the Bible was a law to be followed. I was raised to believe that alcohol was wrong, premarital sex was a sin, and homosexuality was not only bad, but something to be feared.

I held to these beliefs for years. I dabbled in being labeled a "liberal" by family members, thought about not caring if being gay was a sin or not, tried to be supportive of people I knew that were questioning their sexuality. But I kept running back to the blanket of guilt I was under, feeling like I was not allowed to believe anything other than what I had been taught. So, I wrote a religious blog, and ranted about the gay agenda. I preached fervently against homosexuality, quoted Bible verses, and taught my son the same.

And then something happened to me. One of my very dear and close friends came out to me.

Oh my. What was I going to do now? This was the first real personal experience as an adult that I had had with someone I knew being gay. This friend was, and is, very important to me. He helped get me through a divorce, he helped me move several times, he knew my son, had hung out with my family, and was there for me sometimes when no one else was. So what did I do? I very calmly informed him that it was his choice but I couldn't support him 100% because he knew of my religious beliefs, and he knew where I stood.

And over the next few months, I questioned my friendship. Would I still allow him near my son? Did I want his "gayness" to be accepted by my family and seen as normal? But....could I really give up my friend? Could I turn my back on him and tell him he was wrong? As someone who grew up rejected for many things, sometimes by family, someone who was an outcast, who was overweight and told she couldn't be loved if she was fat....how could I tell my friend he was wrong? That I was rejecting him, and that his love for another was a bad sinful thing? I thought...

How can love be wrong? What if my son came out to me? What would I do then?

And I made the decision that I would support him a hundred and fifty.....no, a thousand percent. I would go to his wedding, have his boyfriend over for Thanksgiving, wish them a Happy Anniversary.

So I emailed my friend and told him I supported him, that I wished he was truly happy, and that I hoped he felt free and that I was sorry for not saying these things immediately. And of course he graciously told me thank you and he was glad i felt that way. No judgment from him at all.

But...I was still stuck in my closet. I was afraid to tell my very religious husband how I felt. I was afraid my mother and my family would be angry with me for thinking something different than what I had been taught. I was still stuck in my closet.

About a year or so after all this, I almost had a heart attack, I had had an enlarged heart from stress. I also had severe anxiety problems, and my doctor put me on Prozac for it. And when the medication kicked in, I figured out that I was anxious because of what I assumed others thought of me...and that I needed to just speak up and be me...say what I was really thinking.

So I came out of my closet. I informed my family that I believed in marriage equality. I believed in equal rights for everyone....gay or straight. I believed that love was good, and if a man loved another man..then who was I to judge?

It wasn't all that well received, I'm having marital problems because of my "new" views, I'm being told that my medication has made me crazy, that I've been lying to everyone all these years about who I was. I'm getting accused of a lot, I'm being judged and condemned, hated and feared for being as honest and loving as I know how.

But I'm happier than I've ever been. I don't live under that guilt I used to have.

I'm free.

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Family Vacation #2, Part 1

It's happened again. (cue Jaws theme....da dum, da dum.)

My family nightmare vacation was a complete train wreck. Oh sure, I had a few good times, a smattering of fun amongst the chaos. But the majority of the whole debacle was a flippin disastrous kerbobble of  "holy crap get me out of here!" ness.

Let me start out by saying that the very beginning of the thing was plagued by terror and and angst. Yes, I said plagued. We had planned to leave on Friday, July 19th. We were going to fit 7 people into my sister's Minivan and head to new jersey to pick up my son - who was at Ocean Grove with his father's side of the family. Then we were to head down to South Carolina for a family reunion. Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, you would be completely, totally and utterly wrong. You see, the Minivan is my sister's van, and she had offered to take me, my mother, my son and my brother along with herself and her 3 tornadoes children, because her husband wasn't going to go, because he had college classes he couldn't get out of. (You follow all that?)

So instead of renting a car with just the first 4 of us, we decide to depend on the stability of the plan to use the minivan. Big mistake. My sister's semi-psycho husband finds out about the plan and gets all ticked off because it turns out he can get those darned college teachers to give him the time off for something as amazing and special as a family reunion with his precious wife and darling children. Huh. Right. And before you hummina wha? me - this man is pretty much an asshat to his wife most of the time. Doing things which I will not mention here, because a lot of it is unmentionable. The few things I can mention are these: He spent that entire week yelling, threatening to slash the tires in the van, taking the license plates and trying to bend them up - all so we can't go, because my sister is going without him.

Anyway, because of Nut Job, we come up with this cuckoo plan to sneak away a day earlier while he is at school. And then, to be really clever - we decide to double cross our double cross by leaving a whole 3 days earlier - just in case. We thought we were so awesome. I ask my exhausted and lethargic sister when Nut Job is in class this week, and she says Wednesday. So we plan to leave Wednesday. Then she tells me she was wrong and it's Tuesday. So we plan to leave Tuesday. My mother scrambles to find people to cover her shifts at Pizza Hut, I run around packing like a Tasmanian devil in heat, and my brother does what he does best and says "eh, whatever" to the whole thing. Then the sister calls back and says she's wrong, Nut Job has college on Wednesday. After a long moment - during which I seriously considered throwing my sister into oncoming traffic - we decide to leave on Tuesday anyway. Because what the hell, vacation is fun and you should make it a really long one when you're packed into a minivan like sardines with lots of small children and 2 semi invalids and one crazy mess of a woman. And my mother.

This is what it took to pack up that van. Every few days.

So, Monday, while Nut Job is at college, we super fast pack all the stuff we can and bring it to my house. The theory was that we would have all the stuff here, so that we could quickly pack the car on Tuesday morning. My sister says she'll show at about 10 am. So I spend the entire night worrying about if we are going to be able to leave or not. The next day, I text my sister at about 10:30, "???". She replies that she needs more time and she doesn't know how to get away from Nut Job. I tell her to figure it out, since she has a set of her own brains, because at this point I don't know what to say and if NJ will even believe any of it. She finally shows up at 2 pm, and says she told him that she was going to try and do a practice "pack up" of the van, since he spent all week whining about how 8 people would never fit in the van, and it was illegal. (It wasn't - we called the police and checked) I thought that was the most obvious lie in the history of lies, but hey - we finally got in the car and got it packed and on the road. We ninja pick up my mother, and I have to go 20 miles in the opposite direction to give my husband money for work and say goodbye. At 4 pm, we aren't even on the road and my sister wants to take this kids to say goodbye to their dad. Let me give you a small example of what the texts are like: (S is my sister, NJ is the Nut Job husband)

NJ: Where the @&*! are you?
NJ: If you come back here for anything I"m going to slash the #($^@)^ tires. 
NJ: I love you
NJ: I just want to see the kids and say goodbye
S: leave me alone
NJ: #($^ you. 
NJ: I love you
NJ: I just miss you
NJ: It's my (*&@^$( van bring it back
NJ: I'm calling the cops
S: we'll see you in a week, if you hadn't been such an *^& I would have brought the kids to say goodbye
NJ: $&@^ you

And that would have been a 2 minute text-conversation. All that in 2 minutes. It's rather sad. Anyhoo....we veto the saying goodbye thing, based on the aforementioned text/conversation and we hit the road. We find out Nut Job is on the road as well, looking for us. We get stuck in traffic right outside of our town, and we don't breathe a sigh of relief until about 50 miles later, when we know he must  have given up and stopped trying to find us.

this is what we all felt like

Officially on our way to Atlantic City.

End of part one. (I'm serious - it was that stressful from the get go.)

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How I Ended Up Promising To Go On Vacation With My Family. Again.

I'm going on vacation with my family. I haven't decided yet how I got tangled up in this grand plan, but it's happened. I mean, I'm pretty sure my mother managed to guilt me into the whole thing, all I heard for 2 weeks was -

"Please?"
 "I can't drive all that way by my little ol' bitty self, but I will if I have to"
"Do you want me to die in fiery car crash because I was too tired to make it and couldn't keep my eyes open?"
"Pretty Please?"
"I'm so old and tired but all I want to do is see my family this year and I won't be able to enjoy it if I have to drive all the way to South Carolina by myself"
"After everything I've done for you..."
(insert big blinky blue puppy dog eyes here)

Can someone explain to me why I've signed on for another round of this?

That's pretty much what it sounded like in my head anyway. So now I'm roped in and committed to a two day drive to from New York to South Carolina. At first it was all like - 'I'll pay for everything', and now it's - 'How much are you chipping in?' And somehow the "I'll rent a car" has changed into "We're going in a mini van with your sister and her 3 children", but I'm still going.

I'm pretty sure I did this 2 years ago and it ended up disastrously. (Part 1 and Part 2 for your reading pleasure) And that was without the screaming children. I can see it all now -

We'll get on the road 2 hours later then planned. Ten minutes into driving someone will have forgotten something vitally important so we will argue for another 5 minutes about whether we should turn back and go get it or maybe we should find a Wal Mart along the way, but by the time we figure it out we will be one hour into our journey and won't be able to turn around because no one wants to waste gas. Then the complaining person will complain about having to spend money on something they could have gone home and gotten. After another 25 minutes arguing about that, one of the kids will have to go to the bathroom, while the other two fight over the Nintendo DS and the bag of chips. The chips will spill and the youngest will cry. As soon as that's over, one of the adults will be too cold. The other adult will be too hot and then I will yell at one of them to put on a jacket and the other one to take off the dang sweater. As soon as that's resolved the oldest kid will be hungry, and so will I, but we don't want the crappy food we brought - we want Burger King because it's fun and yummy. So we will find one, commit to getting dollar menu items but then spend $30 on greasy french fries and soda when we have sandwiches and cans of coke in the cooler. After that two of the kids will fight about something else while the littlest one falls asleep and the adults whine about what music to listen to and one of us will have a headache so we shouldn't listen to music at all. My mom will stop us every 3 minutes and tell someone to pose for a picture, or make us stop the car so she can get a shot of that beautiful tree, or sunset, or blade of grass. And we will all alternately smile and yell at her for the duration of the trip while she snaps crappy pictures of us and posts them to facebook so all our friends can see pictures like this:

Thanks for the triple chin angle, Mom.

 And this:

The inevitable "shoving food into face" shot.

 And this:

What the heck? You wasted film on this?

I swear I am feeding the kids benadryl with breakfast that morning, and bringing lots of cheap vodka in a flask.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

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You Know What I Hate?

I used to watch Mad TV. A lot. And on one episode, there was this comedian that would stand up and yell "You know what I hate?" and then follow that with...well, a list of what he hated.

I was making that a regular part of my blog, until I got all peaceful and content and ran out of things to hate.

I'm finding lately that I still hate a lot of stuff, I just had to collect it for a while. So...

YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE?

1.

People that, before your impending divorce, were friends with both you and your husband. Then, when they find out you're splitting up (or that he beat your ass and made you and the kids live in a women's shelter while he stayed in your nice house and lived off of Burger King...) they claim that they aren't "taking sides", but then they call you and pressure you to "see his point of view". Hmm...wonder whose side they're on? (and nope - this actually isn't about me)

2.

Facebook walls that are just an excuse for everyone to see how great you are. Or how positive you are because your entire life is just kittens and fluffy rainbows when we all know you watch daytime TV while eating doughnuts by the dozen because Bubba left you for his new girl Bertha May and they ran off to Toledo. Or what a great mommy you are because you bake yummy soy health special goody muffins from scratch for your 3 year old who really prefers to lick peanut butter off a spoon. Or how humble you are because you're praying on your knees 47 times a day because you feel a need to seek God so you can be a better you. I have an idea - stop the holier than thou updates and then you'll be a better you by default.

3. 

When you're at an event....say...your kid tries out a Tae Kwon Do class, and he's never done things like that before, so he looks a little awkward while trying his damnedest. And then every time he does a spin kick you hear a giggle from the side of the room. And just when you realize you can't beat rotten snotty children to a pulp just for sheer joy of seeing them learn a lesson - you turn your head and see 2 adult ladies rotten excuses for humanity sitting there giggling behind their hands and looking at your son. The worst part is, as the moment of awareness hits you and you think you can drop kick an adult without looking like a complete asstard - you figure out that you'll end up in jail for protecting your own kid from morons. What a letdown.

4.

People you invite to see your blog, by every means possible, but they never bother to accept the facebook invite, or follow the link you personally emailed to them. And they never stop by or comment or give you a thumbs up. The worst of it is....most of those people are family. Thanks a lot people who claim to care about me.

5.

 I guess I'll just narrow this down and say: People. They bug me all the time, from the lady who thinks she knows how to raise your kids better than you do, to the people who park grocery carts in the middle of the aisle while looking for Pop Tarts, to the moron who zooms past you only to pull in front of you and slow down to 2 miles under your current speed limit. People are idiots. I think I'm going to go live in a cave now.

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Nonsense!

I am awake at 8 o'clock in the morning, after sleeping for only 4 hours. I have now become aware that sleep deprivation makes me feel high. I'm giggling and snorting at funny things I find on the internet (including myself...) while sitting here in the dark with a Breathe Right strip on my nose that's pushing my glasses off my face, and my living room is dark - so I'm squinting to see the keyboard because I'm too tired to stand up and turn the lamp on. On the plus side, the squinting helps keep the glasses on my face.

this is what I look like right now

I literally just sat and stared at my screen for 5 minutes because I forgot I was blogging. The sad thing is, I can't remember what I was blogging about. I think I had a point, or a purpose - but it's gotten lost somewhere in the haze that is my overly taxed brain. Either that or I took to long to edit that photo above and now I just plumb forgot why the hell I'm awake at 8 am and blogging. I don't remember.

See what I mean about sleep deprivation making me high? And don't pretend you don't what it's like to be high. Or drunk. Or just plain coo coo. Is coo coo even a word?

Well, it is now. I think I'm going to play something completely worthless on Facebook, fiddle fart around for a while, take a nap, wake up and actually try to compose a real post.

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Random Whines

Oh my gosh. I never blog anymore!!

I wonder what's up. It's not like I don't have anything to say - cause I say a lot.

At least according to my husband. I myself personally think I spend most of my day playing World of Warcraft and washing his underwear, but hey - that's just me.

So what can I blog about.....hmmm....maybe a bunch of random opinions? Sounds good. Ok then -

Chick Fil A. Don't know, don't care. All I know is that I am sooooo sick of seeing everyone whine about it. I'm also sick of seeing everyone protest - on both sides. I am tired of seeing crap on my facebook wall -

Like This:

And This:

I just don't care. Eat Moar Chikin, eat beef instead - whatever. Just shut up about it and find the next big little thing to argue and complain over.

What next. Oh yeah -

I lost about 30 pounds. You heard me. Guess that going to the gym thingy really works. Along with the whole eating right plan. Cookies and chocolate don't help you lose weight. Who knew?

My mouse to my computer doesn't work right. It has a short in it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to play Zombie Lane on facebook with a shorted out mouse?!?!?! GAH. And I'm too broke to buy a new one right now. In fact, my whole computer doesn't work right, it shorts out, my screen goes nutso, then I have to restart it, and then it won't restart. I think the world could come up with a perfect computer, that never went psycho on me, I mean - we're at the point where we are sending crap to Mars to take pictures, and you guys can't come up with computers that don't break down every three days?!?! Speaking of which -

Mars? Really? Who flipping cares?? How about we spend our money taking care of - oh, I don't know - world hunger or some other small insignificant problem here on earth. Where we live. Right now. Earth. Eh, forget it - where's my eleventy billion dollar souvenir picture of outer space - since that's where my tax dollars are going.

Well, I'm out of things to bitch about today. Tune in later for more.

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Runnin' With It

So I miss blogging.

Trouble is, as usual - I get bored, busy, tired, sick *insert random lame excuse here*.

Then there's the whole "I like too many things to stick with one genre of blog." issue. I like - in no particular order - Zombies, My Husband, Video Games, The Gym (most days), my Kid, My Dog, Reading, Writing, Singing, Blogging, Facebook and post Apocalyptic genre anything.

 That's a lot of crap. And that's only half of it.

So that plan is to blog about anything I like, whenever I like. However I like.

Because I can. So that's the idea, and I'm runnin' with it.

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