I lost my temper.

I’m feeling kind of bad right now. Things kind of got a little heated and I came close to outing myself. If I had, I think I would be more ashamed because I would have done it out of anger. Erin had called me and I talked with her while my parents were in the room. I wasn’t expecting to have a long conversation with her; otherwise I would have gone to my room for a more private conversation. I was invited to a dinner party for a mutual friend. Now, living in such a small community the five degrees of separation is even more apparent. It’s complicated, but at the dinner party will be a guy that I know from high school. I wouldn’t say we are friends but we know each other pretty well. He doesn’t know I am gay unlike most of the other people at the dinner party. I told Erin, “Well, I’m going to have to keep my mouth shut.” Meaning, I will have to closet myself there. To keep the conversation away from that, I told her that my parents were in the room. When the call was over, my Dad looked at me weird and we started to have a heated argument as to why I wouldn’t speak of something in their presence. Apparently they think that I go around talking shit about people and that their presence was why I wasn’t saying anything bad over the phone. My dad even said, “We haven’t raised you right.” I was pissed. Frankly, I think that they did a great job raising me. He kept on talking, making me feel small.

“Dad!” I interrupted. “You don’t know the whole story! There are things between my friends and I that I don’t want you to know about. I’m not going to talk about it with you guys here.” I yelled a little more and left the room.