My parents are homophobic. The trouble is that while they certainly have been overt about it, especially my mother, they've never done anything about it in terms of explicitly rejecting me or telling me not to see them. But I almost wish they had, because the "sometimes" attention I get from them just keeps my hopes up.
I see them maybe twice a year. Occasionally my mother sends me a load of messages as if she wants to get close to me, but the truth is that we've never been close. She's very possessive of me -- or rather, of the image she's had of me in her head basically since she was pregnant with me. She and I never got along even before she had to deal with me being gay. This is just another thing.
I remember as a kid hearing both my parents say very homophobic things. My dad has stopped saying these things since he realised I was gay. My mother hasn't. She asks me to "bring something girly" on the rare occasion I see her. She especially wants me to visit without my female partner, whom I've been with for over a decade. She and my dad know that I'm with this woman, and they acknowledge her when they come to visit us, but they've made no secret of the fact that they dislike her and it seems to be on principle. My mother in particular is mortified by the idea that her older brother might "find out" about me (I'm sure he already knows). I know she's worried by what he might say to her, but God -- get over it! It hurts that she'd choose him over me for the sake of saving face. He's bullied her all her life. The outcome is that I wasn't allowed to bring my partner to my beloved grandmother's funeral; I wasn't invited to my mother's sixtieth birthday party, which they pretended wasn't really happening until I saw the pictures on Facebook.
I know I should go no contact with them because all they ever do is make me upset when I think about them. Occasionally when I see them, I remember happy times when I was ten or so and it was me and my sister and them. I didn't have a terrible childhood. That's what I cling onto. My dad and I, especially, were very close. But what I want from life, I'm just never going to get. I wish I could have had a family wedding and have it be a happy occasion, like lots of my lesbian friends have had. Like normal people! But I couldn't have had that, because my mother would have died rather than show up as "Mother of 'a' Bride" to something like that. It even affects how I think about children: I want to have children, but it's painful knowing they won't really have grandparents. My dad loves babies and would probably adore any child of mine, but I imagine he'd half-pretend it wasn't a grandchild in the normal sense. My mother would probably outright reject it, and especially if I wasn't the birth mother, behave as if it was nothing to do with her. I know this shouldn't affect any decision I might make about children. It won't, really.
But, God, I'm so jealous of people whose parents love them unconditionally. I'm almost even jealous of people whose parents reject them outright. This middle ground of "we love some parts of you" is killing me.