Source: Flickr by Ej Umo

I was raised in a smalltown just outside of mainstream surburbia, and it had be just mum and I my entire life – my father apparantly left my mother the mere minute she give birth to me. My mum and I have always been close – one advantage of the fact my mother gave birth to me when she was all of 16. We could take about anything – even the topic of sex was a completely open book with her.

Well, that was until I turned 16 and become strangely curious about sex with women. I immediately freaked out -yes, I’d been taught that was perfectly natural (which I’ll always be so thankful for), but it suddenly occured to me that when these thoughts are your own, it doesn’t feel so natural. Part my panic was the fact I’d never even had an interest in boys – I’d seen my friends end up devastated countless times by boys who simply treated them as any less than humans, and assumed the whole male species was this way, as my father was the classic example of male scum.

Well, I became classically bookish – I buried my head in a fantasy world to escape reality, but that was without prevail.

A few months before turning 18, I graduated high school, at which point my mother agreed to me travelling to the big city (many hours away) with a few friends for a celebration vacation.

Well, the trip there was certainly interesting – my best friend asked me about my sexuality after taking note of my growing interest in ‘The L Word’ (something I had longed manage to cover up from my mum, as I was ashamed of watching it, forgetting the fact I was actually highly aroused by it). She caught on when she heard me discussing the storylines with an openly gay friend a few weeks earlier – hell, the words just fell from my lips. “Tia, I’m a lesbian”.

Crap, those cheers will ring in my ears till the day I die – turns out everyone damn well knew it, surprise, surprise!

When we arrived, a few of the girls were bold enough to suggest we spent our first night clubbing at a newly opened lesbian party spot – I was apprehensive but eventually gave in more for curiousity and the need to meet someone who was “just like me!”. It was a roaring success – met my girlfriend there… yes, Lana and I are still together, 3 years down the track.

Cut a long story short, when I arrive home, Lana and I kept contact via telephone and email – I told mum she was a fellow school graduate and we were interested in pursuing similiar things at uni., and hell, she believed me.

So, months passed and Lana and I met up again at uni. – I moved into the city for my first session to see if I could cope with that lifestyle, and work from there was the concept. Things got heated between Lana and I – I was racked with guilt after the first time we slept together cos I was so in love with her and yet I couldn’t tell my mum – the woman I told everything.

I came home at the end of session and bought Lana with me – it was crunch time. I sat down with mum and Lana one night and bit the bullet, although I felt like I wanted to spew the whole time.

“Mum, I’m a lesbian, and Lana and I are seeing each other. I love her and there’s nothing you can do about it”.

Well, I hadn’t expected mum to hit the roof or anything – as I said, she taught me about homosexuality in the first place. But I hadn’t expected her to ask Lana to leave the room because:

“Georgia and I need to talk”.

And then it all came out (pardon the pun):

My mum is a lesbian, too, which is way she and my father were no longer together. Her parents are fundamentalist Christians, devout in every way. She started dated my date only to keep them satisfied, and the fact she had sex with him was apparantly rebellion. She got kicked out of home, of course, but hey, she said “It meant I could finally tell everyone I’m gay without fear of growing apart from mum and dad”. Twisted logic, but she figured her parents already hated her, and couldn’t hate her any more, so she was straight out. Dad knew he and mum stood no chance and left on the basis he would provide child support – it was his wife he was keeping him from me because she was against his past and didn’t want their children finding out.

A relief in many ways – mum and I can now happily attend many gay events together and at least now I know why she taught me the way she did – it all adds up now! She now has a partner and I’ve never seen her happier – I guess my life did a 360 in a matter of minutes.

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