LGBT+

The Aftermath

Everyone tells you to just come out to your family. That as long as they're not hardcore conservatives, everything will be okay. Nobody warns you about the aftermath: The judgmental stares, the awkwardly silent family meals, the occasional angry outburst and rude question, the unrelenting feeling that nothing will ever be the same again....yeah, nobody warned me about that.

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"I'm a lesbian."

I blurted out those three words with surprising force at the dinner table one Tuesday night, right after my dad's mundane comment about the decent weather we've been having and just as my little brother Tyler asked someone to please pass the ketchup.

The table fell silent, and my face immediately grew hot. I wished I could cram the words back into my mouth before they reached the ears of my unsuspecting family, but alas, the laws of physics would not allow for that. Sound is just too damn fast.

"Okay," Mom said, breaking the uncomfortable silence with an awkward response. "Um....alright. Thank you, Mia." Her eyes met mine only to immediately dart away. Evidently, those parenting advice books she liked to read did not prepare her for this.

Meanwhile, Dad was just staring at me, squinting slightly, as if he wasn't entirely sure whether I was there or not.

"What's a lesbian?" My five year old sister Susie asked, innocently.

"Don't worry about it!" Dad snapped, then immediately looked embarrassed by the sound of his angry tone.

Silence fell again. Then Tyler, who's request had been interrupted by my outburst, tried again. "Um, can someone please pass the-"

"Aren't you guys going to say anything?" I interjected angrily; my mood had changed quickly from embarrassed and afraid to kind of pissed off. I had worried about this moment for weeks. I had both anticipated and dreaded it. I had considered a million different ways to do it, badgering my out-of-the-closet friends for advice, and rehearsed this moment over and over in my head. Now, they weren't even going to react?! I wouldn't have it.

"Well, what do you want us to say?" Mom responded, a bit too politely.

"I don't know, anything! Just freaking react somehow, would you?!"

"Don't you take that tone with your mother!" Dad scolded me.

"Can someone pass the-" Tyler tried again, but I wasn't done yet.

"I'm sorry, it's just that I was hoping for a little more than 'Okay, thank you Mia'. What the heck does that even mean?"

"Well what do you want us to say?" Mom repeated, more angry this time. "Are we supposed to congratulate you? Reprimand you? What? What do you want from us?"

That shut me up. What did I want them to say? I had spent so much time worrying about what they would say, that I didn't really think about what I wanted.

"I just....I want to know that you accept me for who I am."

"Well, you're going to have to give us a little while," Dad said, as Mom put her head in her hands.

Wow, that stung. But had it really been reasonable for me to expect anything different?

"Are we going to talk about this all night?" Tyler groaned. "Because I can't eat my tator tots without ketchup."

I passed him the bottle.

"Thank you," he said. "Honestly, was that so hard?"

And that was the night I came out.