I 'came out' to my side of the family yesterday. My parents had about 50 people over for the 4th. Mom is one of 8 kids and she had 6 of her siblings plus their kids (my cousins that are my age) and their kids (who play with my kids), and some extended family too.
After five hours of hanging out one of my closer cousins said, "So where is Dan?" and I just out with it...I said he was with his mom and dad, didn't want to come. She looked surprised, I said, "Well he is staying with them". I think she though i meant he would be staying over night b/c I was pissed he didn't come to the fourth, and she laughed.
So I said, "No really, he is living with them." And then the people sitting around us in their lawn chairs (about 8-10 of my cousins/aunts/uncles) all just got stone silent and looked at me. Then I felt like an idiot. My closest age/friend cousin just came over and hugged me, said she wished she had known.
I took her aside and told her it had been since January. Gave her a very brief overview that he was regretting a lot of life decisions and struggling to figure out what he was doing with his life. I left out the porn/affair stuff b/c i love her but she is a gossip sometimes and she actually lives in our town, the rest do not. So I didn't want that out there in our hometown as public knowledge.
Anyway everybody moved on and we did the fireworks and stayed till midnight and it was a lot of fun.
Felt kind of dumb for telling them that way, but relieved too. Now everyone will stop asking me where he is every time we go to a family event.
