The very same neglect/abusive situation I had to run away from at 16. Both my parents withheld love for me as soon as I was "outed", and the small country community was truly brutal.
Dumpster diving and living as a fugitive under a freeway bridge was preferable to that. I returned 40 years later to help my brother put my dad up in a nursing home, a long, expensive and legal battle. He died fully believing that the Tea Party Patriots would stage an armed revolution to bring back the 1940's with all the racism, homophobia and warmongering alive. My visit to the midwest with all the Obama-hateful bumperstickers on monster pickem-up-trucks was the last for me.
The most ironic of all of such is that most of the community bullying was religion based. My own parents just disowned me, and even in their demise made snide commentary about their "poof" of a son.
I never thought I'd see the day our president would publicly say "It gets better". That most Americans would wake up to expanding their narrow terms of societal acceptance, and finally allow what I wanted all my life, a committed, stable marriage to another man.
I still have PTSD issues that re-emerged in nightmares after my sojourn to help my aging parents. I wish I could say I missed them, but I can't. I can only continue to make up for what was a bad start at adulthood. I can thank many gay friends and one Aunt and Uncle who helped me through college.
I will never, if avoidable, return to the midwest. The well armed "patriotic" sort being inflamed by Fox Noize's bullshit mountain scares me every bit as much as any islamic jihadist, and I will stay where the sort are few and far between.
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