Sexuality & Mental Health

Hi everyone, I'm having a difficult time. I've been going through this journey of embracing my sexuality a little later in life. Adolescence was full of abuse and trauma, and in a way, sexuality was the least of my worries. I've always known I'm bi or queer or the like, in that I am attracted to both sexes but community attitudes were pretty bad growing up, and the last decade has been enough of a turning point I felt like I could come out. I guess what I've found is that not everyone has caught up with the new attitudes, and I've come up against homophobia.

My mum is "not coping" with my coming out, and has been awful. She's genuinely the most confusing person I know because she's always had this abusive side of her, but sometimes she's supportive. She's said the most nasty things anyone has ever said to me, and I've been in abusive relationships and everything. She imposes herself coming out of town to stay with me once a fortnight as I live in her house (this is the only way I can afford to live alone and with my pet in my city). Because it's her house I can't tell her to not come up.

Since lockdowns, I've been severed from the LGBT community I was starting to join. I found that yes there are negative attitudes, but if you try to tweak around with the ratio of hateful people to loving people you encounter, you can do lot better in yourself. This has been part of my healing and my recovery from serious mental health issues, including an eating disorder (my mother telling me I'm fat since I was 6 years old is partially responsible).

I am at that point in my adulthood and healing journey where I can recognise my parents weren't able to meet my emotional needs as a child, and I've used eating disorder behaviours & others to fill this "void", so to speak. My father has passed away, but he did apologise and try to make amends for what he did during my childhood. My mum is another story. I try to tell her how her comments hurt, I'm speaking about comments such as speculating that my sexuality may be the result of a birth defect or some other biological abnormality, and she basically gaslights me. I don't think it's intentional, she seems genuinely shocked I am hurt by her hateful comments. She has stopped the weight shaming in the past 12 months, which I thought she would never stop, so there's some potential for change, I guess. But I can see I need to accept she cannot meet my emotional needs, and sometimes she just like heightens my vulnerability so much.

I'm struggling without access to my community, and with the ratio of negative and close minded people outweighing the accepting ones. I work in a kind of "ocka" area, and being gay isn't a great thing, let alone the diversity of sexuality I am trying to make people accept/ tolerate by, you know, existing. I also didn't appreciate the ABC poll and the finding most people wouldn't date a bisexual. I know there are people who think negative things about my sexuality, I know that, I've had the shame collared around my neck and weighing me down my whole life, I don't need to learn these things. For me, I need to be with people who are accepting.

For a long time, I didn't see my sexuality as having any part of the mental health hell I've been living in, but I'm seeing my life shift as I dismantle my own internalised homophobia. If I feel rotten to the core, I can't function well psychologically.

I just want to get through this weekend with my mum. I don't know what to do. When I tell people about the comments she's made to me, many people tell me to cut her out of my life or something - like it's that simple. I can't do that, and I don't think I want to. I hold some hope she'll be nurturing and empathetic and kind consistently, I don't know how much of that hope I should extinguish ! But, I wouldn't feel right about ending the relationship, even putting aside the housing crisis that would plunge me into. I'm not sure what to do, I'm feeling really vulnerable.