Run Out Into the Street

This is a blog post. I don't know you and all the details of yoir life. I'm not trying to instruct you to "go play in traffic" and get maimed for life or killed.

Read it and think about it for a bit before you actually do anything.

Some years ago, I read a story. I want to say it was probably an anecdote about a Black American author from, say, a hundred years ago.

Someone told this person she was being beaten by her man and trying to stay quiet so the neighbors in probably something like a boarding house wouldn't hear.

And this famous person told her "Scream. Run out into the street." In other words, stop covering up your abuser's crimes. It amounts to aiding and abetting.

This piece tells a story about when I was homeless because thst was preferable to poverty housing because of my health issues and someone who knew that told me she had no choice but to let her poverty housing make her sick. I knew immediately that was intended to silence me.

Similarly, after I finally got a job during my divorce and moved out of my parent's house, my mother discontinued a supplement I had my father on and he quickly deteriorated. Before I could suggest a cause-and-effect relationship between discontinuing the supplement and his deterioration, she vehemently insisted "Alzheimer's is just like that."

I used to believe that the common practice of parents telling children repeatedly "You will grow up, fall in love with a member of the opposite sex and get married." was ignorant people doing something stupid that happened to have the effect of being homophobic. 

I now think most parents who do that are closeted gay people who suspect their child is gay and want to get some brainwashing in early. No doubt telling themselves it's "To help protect my child."

If people around you want to randomly and repeatedly hang their shit on you, maybe you should rebut it. I try to keep it light and humorous when I'm trying to point out to them and other people their logic has giant holes in it, but this garbage is similar to the idea that predators count on victims being polite and thereby cooperating with being psinted into a corner: The sooner you are "rude," the safer you are.

If you not cooperating gets you violently assaulted, violently assault was always in the cards. Letting them get you alone after convincing onlookers this is a date won't be better. It will be worse.

If you give pushback and they double down, start planning a future with your parents not in the picture if you want to come out the closet. Because they will probably never accept if they are trying to politely and quietly lock you in the closet before you're even dating age.