Switches · North York, Toronto
My family are twenty minutes away, close, warm, and permanently uninformed
Pinned as family_does_not_know
- Wants
- somebody who does not need to be introduced to anybody
- Rope so far
- Seven years, both directions, none of it discussed at home.
- Around
- North York, Toronto
Sunday dinner is at my mother's, every week, with my two brothers, their partners and whoever else has turned up. I go. I like going. Nobody at that table knows anything about this and I have decided, with a clear head and no particular anguish, that nobody ever will. It is not a wound and I would rather it were not treated as one.
Thirty one, North York, seven years in and both directions. People sometimes want this to be a story about a repressive family and a brave person escaping it. It is not. They are warm, funny, and deeply present in my life, and they would be hurt and confused by a piece of information that would improve nothing for anybody. I keep plenty of other things to myself as well.
What it costs is a set of small logistics. Sundays are gone. Some holidays are gone. A partner of mine would never meet my mother and would never be mentioned at that table, and I know exactly how that sounds after a year or two of it.
So I am putting it in the post rather than in month eight. I want a long relationship with somebody whose own life is full enough that being unmet by my family is a technical inconvenience rather than an insult. I had that once, for three years, and it worked because we talked about it properly at the start instead of hoping.