Coming Out to My Family

After two days of migraines and ridiculous amounts of stress, I decided that I need to stop carrying around extra responsibility and stress when I don't need to. I decided to finally come out of the closet with my family about being bi. I started by writing my dad a letter:

Dear Dad,

I’m writing this letter because I have something to tell you. I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to tell you, but I’m hoping that telling you this way in a letter will let you have time to digest. I’m telling you this because I love you, and I want to be honest with you.

I am bisexual. This means that I am attracted to both men and women, and I date both men and women. The first time that I dated a woman was a couple of years ago and that relationship was the only one that I’ve had with a woman. But, it will likely not be my last. And I’ve noticed that not telling you about it has an effect: I do care about what you think, and my fear of your disapproval has kept me from taking a relationship with a woman seriously.

Being bisexual may seem like an odd thing to you, but studies such as the Kinsey study from the 1940s indicates that the majority of people are bisexual to some degree.

I don’t know if the next person that I date will be a man or a woman. But, I don’t want the choice to be based on my fear of what you will think. I want to be free to choose the person that I feel is the best for me.

I know that you love me. It is very hard to mail this letter for fear of losing that love. Although you may not understand about being bisexual, I hope that you still love me now. Know that I am the same person now as I was before you read this letter; you just know one more thing about me. I am still [Karma]. When you are ready, you are welcome to call me so we can talk about this more.

[sis] doesn’t know yet; I wanted to tell you first.

Love,

- - -

Next, I called my sister. I spoke with her and my brother in law today. They were both great. They told me that they actually already knew because of myspace not being so private after all, and that they don't think of me differently. They think Dad will FREAK out though and recommended that I have them do some sort of spy work to get the letter before my dad gets it. But, I reassured them that I'm ready for the consequences.