Cookout, the

Step Brothers (2008) IMDB rating: 6.90 Plot: Two spoiled guys become competitive stepbrothers after their single parents get hitched.

Actors: Ferrell Will,Reilly John C.,Jenkins Richard,Scott Adam,Poston Lurie,Rhude Kellan,Manus Logan,Flory Travis T.,Riggle Rob,Hurless Bryce,Collinsworth Cris,Comedy,

I have a secret, my family's crumbling, and it's me and my mom now, what should I do?
Over the past few years, I’d say since 8th grade things got really bad. Even before then, things were weird, like the day my house was searched for a fugitive or when my step dad had to leave for nine months on a "business" trip.

Needless to say, my childhood was a mixture: a dead biological father, loving step father, overbearing mother that I always saw as perfect, and a sometimes nice ,but mostly selfish brother.

Then, came middle school where I was sent to a new school. Sixth grade I was teased and harrassed, "gay" or "faggot" said directly to my face in attempts of intimidation at the lunch table. I found my ground and backbone, figthing words with words and made my place although, it was tough on the days I’d go home sobbing for my mom to let me change schools.

With all the verbal gaybashing, I started having thoughts. I noticed guys when I should’ve been noticing girls and my family was mostly Jamaica homophobic(a place where gays are run out their neighborhoods and a father can stand by as a mob beats his supposedly gay son).

Even at 8, my parents told me "If you or your brother ever end up gay, we’ll kill you." It wasn’t a threat I took seriously at the time because I had no idea what "gay" was ,but then came the internal battle. The guilt. The nights I spent sobbing to God to make me normal and deep down I was alone. I hated myself. I didn’t want this "thing" inside me.

Then, came that night. The night I was sitting in my mother’s room just watching a movie, my dad had lately gone on a business trip. A knock at the door and in came in some of my step brothers. My dad had been stopped on a highway, he had been caught.

Then, came the Greed wars. His family grabbed for anything he had unsuccesfully as my mother fought like a lion. They came one day while we were at school and robbed us anyway.

Then, came my mother and my brother, the yelling and shouting, his bad grades. Then, the car accident he got in with only a few scratches although the car was totaled. Then, me sobbing in front of the washing machine the day my mother wouldn’t stop yelling at us about chores. I missed my father.

I made it out of middle school scarred, still immensely optimistic and naive although without the belief that everyone in the world was "kind". High school came ,but not without my annual summer visit to Jamaica where my dead father’s side of the family still lived. I love them soo much and I got closer to my cousin.

First year came and went, drama with my close friend and soon she left the school in a cloud of smoke, the police questioning me in the office about what happened to her.

That year, last year, I accepted it, alarmingly it was Oprah who broke down my walls and looked through my soul and said, "Stop fighting it. Love yourself. Love"

Second year of high school, I made true friends, swallowed and my overtaking fear and said those words, "I’m gay" to my first person.

Today, I stand having told 15 people, only three of those family and everyone I’ve told has accepted and love me.

But, there’s still that aching hole in my heart. My mother hates gays, my brother only cares for himself and I have the best friends in the world.

How do I hold onto my mother when she’s so bent on being superior to me because she’s my mother? How can I hold onto her when we have such different opinions on trust and the world?

I want hope, love, and real connections. She relies heavily on family and trusts no one else. She tells me that wanting to be a writer won’t make me happy when I know it will. She tells me if M.L.K. couldn’t change the world, what makes me think I can.

She can be loving ,but she just doesn’t listen to what I have to say, so nothing ever changes when I need it to. We still talk of small things and lately, I just sorta stopped all together. I trust my friends more than her and even if she does accept me, how can I go back?

How I can go back to the boy I was at 10 who didn’t have all these scars? The boy who didn’t love himself totally and completely yet?

Now, I do and I’m wondering. When should I tell her? How do I keep us on decent terms until I tell(I’m thinking the day I leave for college next year when I’m 16)?

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it does sound like you have been through a lot for only being 15.your mom gave you life,i am sure she loves you.look at what you have gone through in15 years.say your mom is 40.she has gone through 40 years of things you will never know about and may have scars of her own.you need to forgive your mother.true she may never want to accept you are gay.don’t bring a boy friend home for sure.let her read this and some of your answers.then you two can discuss this.wish you luck
sunshine | Jan 31, 2010

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Wow. Your story really hit me.

Honestly, I don’t have any good advice, I just wanted to tell you I think you’re very brave, and I think it’s astounding that amidst all of that sorrow and darkness, you’ve found a light within yourself.

Be a writer, you are a writer. I don’t know you at all, but I can tell that much. Keep writing, and you’re going to do something truly amazing.

If I were you though, I’d wait until I was already in college before I told her. You’ll want some distance between you so that she can deal with it without taking it out on you. I’m saying that only because my dearest friend is gay as well, and he had to wait almost fifteen years to tell his parents (his father is a baptist preacher and his mother is very much involved with the church, of course). They did disown him, but it’s their loss because they’ll never see him the way the rest of us do: beautiful, loving, and completely worthy of all the good that life has to offer. By the way, he’s a writer, too. We met in a creative writing course we were both taking in college.

Martin Luther King may have not changed the world, not fully, but he left the door open for others to continue the work. Not just him, but everyone who has tried to bring more beauty and truth to this world. Who is to say that you or anyone else can’t try to do the same?

I wish you the best of luck! Just try to survive this next year– you’ll get through it, I know you will! Keep writing and planning for your future! It’s going to get better! Don’t let her bring you down!
Heather | Jan 31, 2010