The Fairy Melusine (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefairymelusine) wrote2009-05-07 01:21 am
thefairymelusine) wrote2009-05-07 01:21 am
Entry tags:
Panic
This is more directly personal than most of my Queer Knight stuff, in that it's more about me than about an issue. But I have a play on in a rehearsed reading on Sunday. I have booked tickets for my parents. The play is apocalyptic late adolescent lesbian romance. A lot of it is based on me at sixteen or seventeen, and a friendship I had then. I have shown this play to a great many people, I have tried to show it to my parents but I am still worried about them seeing it.
I am out to both my parents. I'm out as gay/lesbian rather than queer or bisexual, because that's generally how I self define, and self definition is important, damn it. (I am moving more towards queer as a definition, because I like what I percieve as the lack of assumptions attached to it) My mother doesn't believe me, and hasn't believed me since I started going out with my boyfriend. My father appears to have forgotten I ever came out. But the play is very much focussed on female relationships and sexuality, while being quite mild. Given the last time my mother came to see any work of mine we had a somewhat awkward conversation, as I'd quoted her in the play and we ended up pretending I hadn't, I forsee a slightly awkward conversation about it.
I am very annoyed at myself for being worried about this. I'm out, it shouldn't be an issue, and even if I wasn't (either out or queer) there'd be no problem with my writing a play with lesbian romance if it was written with a proper view of the characters as people. My parents, or for that matter my boyfriend's parents, shouldn't have an issue with it and if they do I shouldn't let them. And the play is very very tied up with who I am now, and I would like to be confident about that, and like them to see it, because I would really like them to accept me as various things ( a writer with potential, an adult and just who I am). I'm being stupid and angsty about this for various reasons, and I, as I am with mental illness, am not adopting the "well, fuck that" attitude that I believe I should.
More on the sexuality thing later. The actual parental reactions may be on the Other Blog.
I am out to both my parents. I'm out as gay/lesbian rather than queer or bisexual, because that's generally how I self define, and self definition is important, damn it. (I am moving more towards queer as a definition, because I like what I percieve as the lack of assumptions attached to it) My mother doesn't believe me, and hasn't believed me since I started going out with my boyfriend. My father appears to have forgotten I ever came out. But the play is very much focussed on female relationships and sexuality, while being quite mild. Given the last time my mother came to see any work of mine we had a somewhat awkward conversation, as I'd quoted her in the play and we ended up pretending I hadn't, I forsee a slightly awkward conversation about it.
I am very annoyed at myself for being worried about this. I'm out, it shouldn't be an issue, and even if I wasn't (either out or queer) there'd be no problem with my writing a play with lesbian romance if it was written with a proper view of the characters as people. My parents, or for that matter my boyfriend's parents, shouldn't have an issue with it and if they do I shouldn't let them. And the play is very very tied up with who I am now, and I would like to be confident about that, and like them to see it, because I would really like them to accept me as various things ( a writer with potential, an adult and just who I am). I'm being stupid and angsty about this for various reasons, and I, as I am with mental illness, am not adopting the "well, fuck that" attitude that I believe I should.
More on the sexuality thing later. The actual parental reactions may be on the Other Blog.
no subject
I think the worry is natural, but the only thing to do is let them watch the play and then be confident in how you react to their reactions? I send good wishes for that as well as more general ones for the play being brilliant and life also.