for my mom

• 

you've done a lot for me, more than what one can expect in a lifetime.
you nurtured me, you sheltered me and protected me from harm.
you were always there by my side, ready to fight for me in just one heed of a call.
i know most of the time, i can be a burden.
i've grown up having my own beliefs and opinions that sometimes contradict what you taught me leading to petty fights between us.
but you easily cave everytime.
you are the weakest link when it comes to arguments.
yet you never seem to show how hurt you were.
and you still insist on what you think is right and what you want me to believe.
oh how pushy you are sometimes!
now this is the first and last time that i'm going to admit it and if ever asked again, i'll deny it even to the point of death:

thank you for being pushy.

because if not for your persistence, i would not have been who i am right now.
i know i have my flaws, yet you disregard it and concentrate on my positive attributes.
for you, i'm an angel. hah! how funny it will be if my friends knew about this.
they'll be laughing so hard, they have to stop reading this just to take a breather.

i actually don't know what to say.
i feel that a simple "thank you" is too small of an appreciation as to what have you done for me, what you've sacrificed for. but knowing you, just saying those two words is enough to make your heart melt.

so i say this, thank you mama. you are the best. i love you.

out

There was no official date as to when I outed myself. I remember it was back in college, where i had my first “real” relationship (i had a previous partner back in high school. He was 23 while I was 15 and we lasted only for 3 months and met only thrice). It wasn’t exactly the way I planned it (well, i really wasn’t planning to out myself that time). A classmate of mine accidentally saw a doodle that I did at the back of my ex-bf’s notebook and that was it. No questions were asked and no one seemed to have frowned upon what they had discovered as if it’s a normal thing. I was actually surprised by how easy my friends have accepted the fact that one of their classmates (or should i say 2 rather) is gay. It wasn’t what i had in mind. The paranoid me always thought that once i outed myself, all of my friends will slowly drift apart as if i have a dreaded communicable disease that one should be cautious of. But that wasn’t the case.

It was a different feeling when i outed myself to my high school friends. I usually categorize my friends in 2 types: “high school friends” and “college friends”. The latter knew it first since me and my ex-bf were in the same class and like what i said before, we got accepted easily (even by our professors). It was a wee bit different to my high school friends. though no one voiced out disappointments, i can sense a feeling of “panghihinayang” . some also got offended when they knew that i outed myself first to my college friends, as if there’s a hierarchy that i must follow or protocols as to who should i tell it first. A sensitive guy (gay) that i am, i easily got offended and slowly distanced myself away from them. Personally, I expected a lot from them. I thought they would be the supportive one and would encourage me to be true to myself since they knew me even before high school. We were classmates for almost a decade. Yet, they were the one that made think twice about what i did.

As for my family, i remain to be in the closet up to present. Honestly, it’s not their feeling of anger that i’m afraid of because i understand where they are coming from since I am the only son out of 4 kids. It’s their feeling of disappointment, much like what happened when i told my HS friends. what if they didn’t accept me for who i am, Who will i turn to now? There should be, forgive me if i am not aware, a support group for this. I know i’m not the only one carrying this burden. There are even PLUs who are even on a worse situation than i am.

I’m not thinking of outing to my family anytime soon. but i have a gut feeling that they know it already, they just don’t want to confirm it. It’s like a giant pink elephant in our house that no one pays attention to. For now, i’ll leave the giant pink elephant be, hoping that no one would notice.