I'm sick of sacrificing my happiness for the sake of others. I have a bunch of issues, I understand that, but my parents especially don't know most of them. I was ready to scream this morning. First, my family is starting back up foster care to help earn some extra money, I understand that we need the money, especially with the economic problems right now so I don't voice my objections to it at all. I don't want strange kids coming to live in my home again, we originally quite back about two years ago. The moment a foster kid steps into the house, everything revolves around them. I can't even leave my mouth wash in the bathroom because gasp it has alcohol in it. Also my parents seem to think that everything needs to be fair and equal between trailer trash kids moving in that we haven't known for more than a week, and their own son.

I'm sick of that. Also I'm sick of hiding myself, I'm bisexual, I've known for quite some time. My parents don't know because my father has repeatedly shown himself to be fairly intolerant and I fear his reaction. I'm also andro, I have a feminine side that I don't trypically show, but it's starving for attention if that makes any sense. Basically being andro means I have no direct gender identity, if you asked me if I wanted to be born as a boy or a girl, I could not answer except with "duh, I don't know". I love watching UFC, on the flip side I love watching What not to Wear. Well that female side of my personality is being strangled so that my parents don't think anything is wrong, I tried once before to tell them and it ended me in this quacke of a therapists office with both my parents freaking out, revoking all my internet privliges (because it has to be some bad influence from someone on the net), and they simply didn't even look at me the same for several months afterwords. Things are slowly returning to normal, but I've had to go the extra mile to act more masculine, and it's stressing me out to the max.

I don't know what I'm looking for here, perhaps help, perhaps sympathy, or maybe just for someone to listen to me some. The reason this has all come to a head like this is because I meet a guy I'm very interested in. I have a good idea that he wouldn't be opposed to a relationship, but I don't know how to go about having one and not have the rest of my life crumble to dust.

Well, you do seem to have a pile of headaches facing you, but in reality it's always the same difficulty morphing into different problems because it's not being addressed.

For instance the foster kid issue is clearly a secondary problem stemming from the relational problems you have with your parents. You need their attention/acceptance, and it sits bad with you to be put in the backburner while your needs are not being addressed. Although it's a real problem, it's not your original one. Your original problem is of course the difficulty you have fitting your gender identity/sexual orientations with your expectations of society, and what you perceive society expects of you. All the rest comes from there, and that's where you should start solving your mess.

You say your father is intolerant... Can you define in which manner? Is he a religious fundamentalist that will put you in a boot camp to cure your homosexuality (yes, I know, you are bisexual), or it's the usual anti-gay person who never really thought about the issue? Explain us why and how you think things might get tense with him. In any case, regardless of the reasons, I suggest you make things easier, and get yourself an ally, or at least some tacit support: speak to your mother about your issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. She may not be able to totally change your father's behavior, but the will for sure have a compensatory effect on your family dynamics. And since you are at it, tell her also that you are not comfortable having a foster kid at home while these issues are not addressed, if you feel that is important for you. It may or may not prevent the foster kid from coming, but at least your mother will know that all is not well and be mindful of you (which seems to be the main problem).

BTW, have you contacted some LGTB organization in your town? Talking and sharing experiences with them might really help you to put things into perspective. You are not the first to face these kinds of issues, and it would be a pity not to put past experiences of others into good use for you.

NB: and next time try to start a thread with a more informative title, so that it gets more attention from people likely to be ready to help you. Too late to change that now, but the current one looks like the typical inconsequential brat whining so prevalent in these forums.

My fathers own reaction is what worries me, not how he treats me. He's already has several heart problems and he stresses about things more than he should if he doesn't understand or accept them. I have five months left of high school before I'm sent to Job Corp so I think that enduring this is about the best thing to do, I just didn't want my last few months to be so stressful. The town I live in has at max 500 people living in it, and it's a very rural/religious/republican place, so there aren't any LGTB groups to reach out to, and I can't simply up and walk to the next town that's over an hour away either, the internet is really my only escape. I also have three friends that all support me, the boy I'm interested in understands the situation, and two really old friends who are both transgendered. I'd like to leave the house at first and avoid as much drama as I possibly could if I where to try to explain things to my parents. As for societies views other than my friends and family, I couldn't care less.

From your post I don't see any reason not to speak with your mother, right? That would already be a good start. You can then think about how to approach the father angle. Also, I don't understand why you are so annoyed by the foster child issue if you are anyway leaving home in five months...

>He's already has several heart problems

That's a common one I have heard from people in your situation. And if it's not your father, it will be your grand-mother, or whatever. It's your call, but I think that reason doesn't fly, because it's such an important personal subject, specially considering very close familial relationships. If you hide this you will always mutilate the relationship you have with your relatives, since you can't talk to them about anything related to your partner (and this includes more and more things, as your relationship grows and matures in time). Ultimately I think these kinds of reasons are mostly a handy way of excusing yourself from the tough job of being more frank with your family. Let's say you were afflicted with incurable cancer, would you hide that from your father, until he or you die first? That's just ridiculous, and not being heterosexual is less of a problem than dying of cancer.

As for the living in a retarded place, that also does not sound to me as a very credible reason. So what if you have to take a one hour ride to meet people? People can travel much further just for a concert, and don't tell me your worries are less important than a concert.

The internet is a good venue because you have zero risk, and it's totally valid to use that medium, you could probably get into contact with people that way. But at the end of the day you will have to gather your courage and engage the real world (namely your family). Besides, personally I found much more interesting to meet people live than just to communicate electronically, although both ways have their virtues and should be used.

In any case it's good to hear that you have good friends, so that you don't have to keep silence about that aspect of your life. It's already a better start than many.

>That's just ridiculous, and not being heterosexual is less of a problem than dying of cancer.
>As for the living in a retarded place, that also does not sound to me as a very credible reason.

Please don't speak of things you don't understand. Let me explain to you where I live. My soon to be first girlfriend at the time when this story took place was dating another girl, another good friend of mine. As she left school one day she got ambushed a beaten up because of it. She was put in a wheel chair for several weeks because of the damage caused to her genitals. Two years later she died of brain cancer. Did the school expel the kids who beat her up, oh fuck no, she wasn't on school grounds officially and it wasn't during school hours. Was the crime pursued as a hate crime, nope, not at all. That's the kind of place where I live, in fact, I live not but a hundred miles away from where Mathew Sheppard was beaten and killed by several guys tying him to a fence and leaving him there to die. Finally, I don't have a vehicle I can use to just up and drive away for half the day to go to an LGBT meeting.

I don't want to leave my mother alone without a car. None of our family is exactly healthy (Damn you gene pool), I've had two knee surgeries at the age of 17, my mom has osteoporosis in her back and has had five knee replacements and three hip replacements and takes 4 methadone every 6 hours or something like that for pain, my father has had a double bypass, and has knees worse than mine.

Ok, you have successfully convinced me that you live in some hardcore Retardistan, and that going public with your sexual orientation is probably not the best idea. I myself inhabit a liberal European country, so usually when I hear these kinds of complaints I tend to blame more the individuals than the society around them. I mean, I have a gay friend who for years hid his homosexuality although it was pretty obvious to everyone around him and nobody gave a shit. The problem was in his own head, not in his environment, as he thought. In your case, you have objective reasons to fear the environment, so it's different. I guess you'll be leaving your place, when you start working?

Now I am less understanding about the relation between your problem and the medical conditions affecting your family. Like I said previously, your plan seems unrealistic: hiding your preferences when you develop long term relationships is going to become very hard, and will cripple your familial bonds. You basically have to weight the pain you'll inflict on your parents by effectively removing them from your life, versus the initial uneasiness/shock they'll get from a more frank relationship with you. I vastly favor a difficult moment that they can in time get over with rather than a lifetime of lies, aloofness and misunderstandings. I think you underestimate the resilience of your parents. And if you are really afraid about your father's heart, start by talking with your mother. This would already help things, and it's not likely that it will make her osteoporosis worse or require a new hip replacement (BTW: the prosthetics she received seem to be pretty crappy, these things are supposed to last longer than that, although I heard some infamous cases of inferior models being sometimes used).

A reasonable plan for me would be to leave your taliban county, and when you are settled in a more sane place invite your mother and explain things to her, preparing the way for a talk with your father. (on a side note, I still don't get the issue of the foster child, if you are leaving the house... the biggest obstacle I see to that project is the poor condition of your parents, but they are adult enough to decide on that by themselves).

>I guess you'll be leaving your place, when you start working?

I turn 18 in July. My parents income is too high for Job Corp to accept me, but when I'm 18 they use my income which will be minimum wadge. It takes a month for them to check the income, and a month or so to process and move me in, so September is the likely date.

Once I leave and I'm not under their roof, I do plan on telling them, but I said once that I tried telling my parents about my gender identity and the reaction was.... far worse than I could have imagined. Constant fighting matches that lasted about a month, therapy constantly, depression on my part, it was a disaster. My computer was removed from my room (and I mentioned before that the internet is my only real escape from this), my door was removed from the hinges and taken off, it was terrible. Also this is when my fathers health being one of the issues surfaced, It's hard to describe but the difference in him, but if you knew him before and after the change was by far for the worse. He hardly slept at all, looked tired all the time, he was obviously stressed out and didn't hardly do anything around the house like chores. He drives 300 miles a day for his job as a copier tech, and his lack of sleep was putting his life in danger, I don't want to be responsible if something were to happen to him. I do love my father, it's just beyond his scope of understanding and I've accepted that. I'll at least wait till he quits his job before I tell him. On a side note, yes my mothers replacements were mainly bad. Here first thee knee replacements were put in wrong (or in one case, not glued in) all by different doctors, and the fourth one had to be replaced because it became septic (infected). Her hip on the opposite side went bad because her leg was shorter than the other after all the knee surgeries, and so she had a replacement put in that had a manufacturers defect and is actually involved in a recall and class action lawsuit (which may solve our money problems should we win), so she had it replaced with a traditional one (the first one was causing terrible pinching pains, that caused her to scream from pain), and the second one wasn't put in at the proper angel and dislocated too easily, so they revised it the final time.

Well,... It's good to hear that you'll leave the place and become more autonomous, and do intend to tell them (at least starting with your mother). As for your father, don't make the mistake of assuming that every bad thing that happens since that time is because of you, the man seems to have his own weaknesses that where in place probably before you were even born. Also, considering what happened to your mother, I could well imagine he's exhausted for other reasons than you.

One thing I think will be important for you is that once you're out you really contact other people and educate yourself on these matters, so that you learn to manage better your parents. You need to learn to explain them your specificities in ways that do not seem threatening to them, and this requires some experience (I'm specially thinking about your father).

There's one thing I don't get though: did you tell them or not? If they had such a strong reaction, it means they got it, right? What do they know or not, in the end?

They seem to have thought it was just a 'phase' I went though, and I didn't tell them about my sexual orientation, just my gender identity.