The following is an excerpt from When the Bed Bugs Bite: A Memoir of My Queer Life by Daniel Kelty.Her sickening submissiveness made me speak up. I turned my attention to her during one of my fathers pauses in his rant. In the most sarcastic tone I could muster,Well, I said to her Dont just sit there. Lets do this. Whats your verdict? By all means, dont hold back.I resented her pitiful stare. It was patronizing. Related Radical history & revolutionary predecessors: What queer youth should know about their ancestors I was inviting her to the fight because I knew she wouldnt. It was safe. I didnt give a sh*twhat her verdict was. I was just tired of listening to my dad. It was scaring me. Directing mymounting frustration towards her was a good distraction for me and Dad both. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today As she began to speak, she tilted her head in a passive condescending way and said in awhispery voice, We are so concerned for you. This is not a righteous path, and your dadand I are both worried about your soul.Yes, she actually said that! I rolled my eyes. Jesus f**king Christ, could she BE more self-righteous?! I said nothing back to her because she sickened me to the extent I couldnt find the words. I never had an ounce of respect for her, and this was why. Clearly, I was a kid in her home who was going through something, who was struggling. She could have tried to connect with me in many ways, but what did she do? She judged me. Its all she knew, ironically. One of the many reasons I detest Christianity or at least the version of it that I experienced.I recall that conversation word for word, but I have no memory of what my punishment was, aside from having one mandatory session with a Christian therapist. I stand by the fact that faith-driven therapy is such a crock. Faith, as I experienced it, was nothing but judgment.Therapy, as I understand it, is all about a space void of judgment. I still have no idea why people insist on combining the two. I remember that incident. It exists in a bubble in my mind.I do recall that my father had called my mother and told her about the letter. My mother and her husband had a different approach to dealing with my deviance. They had time to prepare their strategy. They calculated for maximum effect. My stepfather chose this time not to lose his sh*t and break things. He was creepily calm. He also chose not to scream and yell. What they said to me was much louder than screaming. It wentsomething like this:If this is who you are, you need to tell us now. Tell us now so we can go ahead and get you written out of the will, (which was funny because they didnt have sh*t) and kicked out of this house.My mother added, If we see you on the street, we wont turn our heads to spit in yourdirection. It was a threat.My mother actually said that. As long as I live and through all the good times we had in our relationship, she never once apologized for having said that. As the years passed, she justpretended she had never said it, but she said it pretty clearly that day.No one was yelling. They were informing me, giving me information. I sat in silence, terrified it was about to get violent. They werent done. And I hope you get some good life insurance because all queers get AIDS. Everyone knows that.Mom had never been the aggressor. She was often powerless to stop her husband fromabusing me, but Id never gotten this from her directly, and it chilled me to the bone.My memory stops there. That, too, exists in a bubble in my mind, even though I can repeat the dialogue verbatim. That day my parents told me that being a part of the family was very much conditional. Again, I have no memory of a punishment. I think the intervention alone was the punishment. I was humiliated, violated, and completely stripped of any self-respect. Is this how they had wanted me to feel?Being a parent now, I cannot, in any parallel universe, imagine saying things like that to my child nothing in the universe would ever allow me to speak words like that to my child; nothing.I do not recall my exact words, but I remember the message. They were giving me an out. They were giving me the opportunity to lie to them and say I wasnt really gay. They were giving me the opportunity to just stop doing it. Want to know the worst part? I wasnt as angry as I had been with my father. I believed them. I thought myself to be so selfish as to hurt them like that. What was I thinking?I had disappointed them, which was worse than any punch or punishment. I didnt want to get AIDS, and I didnt want to be homeless. I was in no position to lose my family. Abusive as they were, they were all I knew, and I loved them. Even after my mom had just said those horrific things to me moments before. I had always seen her as the victim of her husband. She had never protected us from him; and she didnt now, either. Still, I saw what I had done had hurt her and I regretted it.I wanted desperately for things to go back the way they were before they knew. I hated the way they looked at me now. I hated that they no longer trusted me. They looked at me as something dirty, something shameful. Nothing more was said about the topic and I would spend years compensating to win back their love and trust. My resolve was that if I just stopped sucking d*ck then that means I am not gay. I truly believed that.***In the many years since this story began, Ive been married to my husband Rowan for 16 years. He is not perfect, and our relationship is not perfect, but he would stop time for me if he could. I have seen him grow and evolve when I needed his support the most. He was there when I was falling apart. He was there when I raged and has been present for me in ways many people would not have been. He and I are proud dad and papa to three children. We adopted two little boys who were 3 and 4 years old, respectively. They are now 18 and 19 years old. Our daughter was only a day old when she came into our lives. She is now 7 years old. Every single day, I learn how to be a better dad. I understand that adult children do not owe their parents a relationship because there was food on the table, a roof over their heads, or they loved them. Thats the bare minimum. That adult relationship is earned. It is earned by mutual respect and autonomy. I will always love certain people in my family, but I owe them nothing.Loving them from a distance is only the first step. The most challenging part is holding the fact that love actually magnifies the burden of estrangement.I hold tightly to this lesson as I watch my kids grow. Even now, as my sons are young adults, they dont owe me anything. The respect I get from them doesnt come from my demanding it. It comes froma seed I plant every time I show them respect and listen to how they feel. If they get angry with me, I dont personalize it. I validate it and try to understand it. Their emotions and experiences do not need my approval. My children are my world and I love them with a force that I didnt even know was possible.They will never live in the shadows of my familys rejection. I have not spoken to my parents in over 10 years. Although the grief is an ongoing process, it has come with a peace deeper than anything I have ever experienced.DanielKeltyis a queer father, Navy veteran, and former clinical therapist. After surviving family estrangement and systemic rejection, he rebuilt his life through chosen family, healing, and advocacy. His memoir,When the Bed Bugs Bite, explores the raw truth of growing up queer in a world that demanded silence. Daniel is also the founder ofBoldly Queer, a trauma-informed coaching program that helps LGBTQ+ individuals reclaim their voice and thrive beyond conditional love.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.