Biking accident, moving, and mom (redux)

It's been two months since I last blogged and this has been a crazy two months... In bullet form:

• I had a mountain biking accident and spent two days in the hospital.
• My mom re-discovered I am gay and we had a big fight
• My mom's friends are awesome and one of the local catholic priests is awesome and both have really helped her.  I think we're going to be ok.
• I moved in to a new house! Well... not everything is unpacked so thats really present progressive tense not past tense.
• Work has been insane
• School has been slow :(
• Andrew and I had our five month anniversary yesterday!!!
• I met Andrew's mother for the first time
• Andrew's dad found out that Andrew is gay from his mom sort-of accidentally

Some of the above merits additional exposition.  I do a lot of mountain biking and had ridden this trail hundreds of times in the past year.  This particular day was a bit muddy and wet, and I was going down a hill really fast and hit a little beat up bridge.  My tires lost traction and I went forehead first in to one of the wooden slats.  I was wearing a helmet, of course, but I think the impact was against my forehead under the helmet.  I don't remember much of that day due to the head trauma and that whole evening is a bit of a blur. Some couple found me just wandering around disoriented in the woods, covered in blood, and they took me to the emergency room.  I wasn't able to form short term memories while my brain was swollen due to the trauma, so I apparently kept asking the same questions over and over again.  The nurses got tired of answering me so they started writing down the answers and just pointing (see picture below).  The stuff at the bottom is what Andrew wrote trying to help me remember the weekend.  I'm totally fine now and back to mountain bike riding!   

When I was in the hospital my mom and my boss were both there, and I asked my boss if anyone had contacted Andrew.  My mom asked my boss who Andrew was and he said "special friend".  She immediately turned pale as she realized what that meant, and despite coming out to her once before it was like she never knew :/ Andrew showed up later that evening and my mom said about two words to him before leaving, obviously quite shaken and upset.  Andrew stayed until like 2am.  

The next morning my mom came back and said that I "had made my choice" and that she was going to cut herself out of my life quickly.  I, in pain lying in my hospital bed, screamed back "well what the fuck are you still doing here then?? get the fuck out of here".  we shouted back and forth a few times and she hung around for a while in silence.  She eventually left and came back the next day to drive me home.  The ride home was weird but cordial.  

My interim short-term memory

Over the next few weeks we didn't talk much -- but I found out that she went to see a priest at one of the churches here.  He is very sympathetic to gays and runs the local "Fortunate Families" meetings here (think "catholic PFLAG").  He obviously said some really nice, supportive things to her.  Also, a bunch of her friends came to her support.  She even went to lunch with two of her friends who have gay kids, and I think they helped her.  We went to dinner a few weeks ago to talk about "my story", and she explained that this "wasn't about her" and that she wanted to have a relationship with me.  She said that she believes that everyone is god's children and that even though she doesn't understand "this", she loves me.  It was an amazing turn around.  She still can't really talk about it without crying, and she clearly will need a lot of time, but I think it's going to work out.  We're at least going in the right direction now -- even though its clearly baby steps.

Things with Andrew are just fantastic.  It was our 5 month anniversary yesterday and we went to dinner with some friends and then went to Spectrum the gay dance club here.  We danced and got drunk woot!  The previous night he and I went out to dinner with some of my oldest friends that were in from out of town and their mom (one of my "second moms").  It was really nice having Andrew meet my friends.  They all think he's really awesome.  I feel like we've been kind of nicely transitioning from dating to couple-mode the past few months.  I really love him, and expect and hope that we'll be in each others lives for a long long time.  Hearing about other people's relationships and the normal "rocky" stuff that seems to happen so frequently -- its nice that we're not like that.  We still haven't had a fight yet...I don't know that we "have to" but statistically seems probable at some point.  I think as long as we're still "in it" as much as we are now, we won't have any trouble.  At five months, this is now officially my longest relationship ever and _by far_ the best.  I mean its so far from the previous ones-- I never imagined a relationship like this could happen.  Our six month anniversary will be on Christmas eve, which is a neat coincidence!  

Whew... a lot has gone on in the past few months.  Let's let the next few be a bit less dramatic!

Steve