Being A Grown-Up

From about the age of eighteen I have said at various times in my life, hey it’s ok – I’m an adult/grown-up I’m happy to accept my parents would rather not know about the less conventional sides of my life. We can move through our lives like adults, politely and without the need to explore the private sides of each others lives.

For the majority of my life since this point this has been true and like sophisticated people (with occasional blips) we hold polite conversations and I don’t feel the need (as I did at seventeen) to scream at them ‘I’M BISEXUAL! THIS IS ME!’
Unfortunately I do get upset from time to time (as evidenced by the last entry) and this is mainly to do with other people and their relationship with their parents. I met my Gentleman Friend’s Mum and Dad and, due admittedly to the nature of our relationship, I met them as a fully formed Mish – bisexual, polyamorous, the full gamut. We ate together, I stayed in their house, I cooked Sunday lunch – whatever issues there were I have sat in their garden talking to them and nattered over foodstuffs. That was almost certainly never going to happen with mine. I had plans of how I was going to introduce my Gentleman Friend to my wider family (these involved abusing my cousin’s wedding) – however I had sprung him on my wider family I have an almost premonition of how my parents would have dealt with this. My Dad, having known this man’s name for years would have forgotten it, everytime he was brought up in conversation. My Mum would have been an escapologist in the art of conversation at removing herself from the topic. Had I ever brought him to dinner…I can see a definite though polite refusal to acknowledge who he was.

The point is, I’ve reached a reasonably zen state when it comes to me and my parents. I’m me over here and polite over there. When other people are thrown into the mix I get upset. Because it’s a rejection that I can’t change.

This blog is online, they have a long standing invitation to read it. They’ve occasionally dipped in. Usually I’ve been told that they’d rather not read it. I expect too much from people I think and I know how demanding I can be, I guess that my parents do get the worst of it – because they’re my parents. I really do wish that I wasn’t in my late twenties and still getting upset over my parents, I also wish that I didn’t have to tell certain friends that it was highly unlikely that they will meet them.

Who knows maybe I’ll go over some old strategies, they’ve changed since I was a kid and I’m not a kid anymore. Besides, they clearly assumed that I was sleeping with M-i-L and they let her come to dinner. Mind you I think they thought that about Skimble too.