It's tough to be coldly rational about this kind of a situation, but sometimes cold rationality can make things clearer.
Weigh the pros and cons. Is it better to keep the façade up, play the game, harbor those dishonest feelings, or is it better to be yourself, not feel fake, and honestly represent yourself?
You can probably guess by my tone what my advice is, huh?
It sounds like the only reason you would stay "in the closet" is to protect the feelings of your family, or to protect yourself from being self conscious around them. You are now an adult. You are in the prime years of finding/defining yourself as a person. Learning to be confident in who you are is a huge part of that process. There is no way to be self confident if you are hiding an integral part of who you are because of what other people might think. Especially when that thing is a positive, good, and remarkable thing. Be you. Speaking from experience, from a family of bible thumpers--my real relationships and some of the self discovery that has come from being out in the open (and proud)--have been WAY better than my teenage years when I was playing the game because it was prudent to do so.
Weigh the pros and cons. Is it better to keep the façade up, play the game, harbor those dishonest feelings, or is it better to be yourself, not feel fake, and honestly represent yourself?
You can probably guess by my tone what my advice is, huh?
It sounds like the only reason you would stay "in the closet" is to protect the feelings of your family, or to protect yourself from being self conscious around them. You are now an adult. You are in the prime years of finding/defining yourself as a person. Learning to be confident in who you are is a huge part of that process. There is no way to be self confident if you are hiding an integral part of who you are because of what other people might think. Especially when that thing is a positive, good, and remarkable thing. Be you. Speaking from experience, from a family of bible thumpers--my real relationships and some of the self discovery that has come from being out in the open (and proud)--have been WAY better than my teenage years when I was playing the game because it was prudent to do so.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
