"I didn't know what was wrong with him. I was afraid that he would hurt himself or maybe run away," says the mother about her fear for her teenage son
We're sitting together on a video call and you seem very together, you're laughing not only in very similar physiognomies but also in the same moments. I like the connection I see in you. Do you feel that way too?
Mom: I've always been proud of the kind of boy I raised. He was very good when he was little. He never got angry or made trouble. He didn't fight. He always told me everything.
And then it got worse... (laughs)
Mom: Then your difficult period started (with your son - ed.), and I admit that I didn't know what to do with him.
When did this more difficult period start to manifest itself?
Mom: That was around the beginning of the covid. I thought it was just covid, that we were all angry. We were at home together, even Dad (husband, son's father - ed.) was with us because he couldn't go to work. That was the time when I thought that maybe we would kill each other at home. (laughs) I thought that's why my son was so strange. That he was also fed up with having only awkward parents around him and nobody else.
How did that manifest itself? The fights or the silence? Defiance?
It's just that it was too late for defiance. We have an even older son who already lives with his girlfriend, and he went through the hardest kind of puberty in the sense of talking back, cutting off, whining and being wild, as if he had ADHD, around the age of twelve or thirteen. Then he came to his senses and yes, he fought with us sometimes and had different opinions, but he was easy to talk to then. Younger son here was almost fifteen at the time in the spring of 2020 and suddenly, like waving a magic wand, he went from being a really nice kid to a nasty moron.
Son: I didn't want to talk much, well. I was very much in my room. And my parents were always bugging me about something, crawling in there, wouldn't leave me alone...
Mom: You're my son. I'll never leave you alone.
Did you get any bigger gigs?
Mom: There were a few situations that were very uncomfortable. Remember the broken vase? ( He threw the remote control so angrily because my husband and I wanted to change the channel and he hit it very badly.
Son: I was angry, but I didn't want to hit you, so I just threw it the wrong way. I didn't mean to break anything. I was just really mad.
Why did you feel the need to throw anything at all? Was the situation escalated in any way?
Son: I was really frustrated at the time and everything was bugging me. I felt like I was angry all the time. There was nowhere to vent it. I couldn't hang out with my friends. My mom was very careful about that because my grandmother lives with us and we were all worried about her. So was I, so I can actually understand why that was, but it was bad timing for me.
The interview for LUI was triggered by you. Since you're under eighteen, I only agreed on the condition that it was an interview with an adult in the family - and my mom went along with you in the end. Why did you feel your story was appropriate for the LUI website?
Son. And that in itself was difficult for me. We were seeing each other secretly, even though we were actually classmates. It was very much in the beginning, but it was challenging for me because you can probably guess that the classmate is a classmate, not a classmate. He was "known" but I wasn't, and somehow I wasn't sure myself.
Did the dating itself - not being able to see as much of who you wanted to see or the confusion - affect your behavior?
Son: Both. I wanted to see him, and at the same time it was annoying that I wanted to see him at all. (Laughs) I had a lot of black thoughts that I don't want to talk about in front of my mom, but they were there. I was always thinking about it, even in my sleep I had terrible dreams. I didn't know how my parents or people at school would react if it came up. I was scared and hated myself for what was happening to me.
Mum: You can't be serious...
Son: I don't mean that you'd get me fired or anything, but I didn't know how to start talking about it. It was just really hard for me to imagine. Plus, at school, not that my classmate was laughed at in the bullying sense, but stupid shit somebody had sometimes. Or maybe he was sometimes talked about when he wasn't there, and stuff like that. When it started to affect me, I didn't want to be like that. To be looked at weird or to be bad-mouthed. We live in Moravia, in the country. I didn't even want the neighbors to think anything, or to pry.
Does everyone know about your orientation now?
Son: I told my parents first and then at school. And finally everyone knows.
Mom: It's a good thing you were determined, or I would have had to kill you as you were unbearable! (Laughter; to my son - ed.)
From your point of view as a mother, was the difference in behaviour when your son kept something so fundamental from you so marked?
Mum: I was mainly sorry and hurt that something was happening that I didn't understand. Over time, it started to go over our heads and I blamed myself a lot that I must have failed somewhere as a mom. My son stopped talking to us altogether, and yet, as you can see, he can be quite communicative and talkative at times. (laughs)
When your child changes like that, it's scary. You're afraid that he might hurt himself, that he might run away from home... I've seen different scenarios. I couldn't sleep at night, and I used to peek into his room to see if he was sleeping. My husband couldn't sleep either, worried about money and work. When we weren't sleeping, we'd argue with each other... It was hell.
How did you deal with it?
I tried to just let it go for a while. I was hoping we'd all get through it once the covid was over. But he still hasn't, and he won't stop. There were times when I found my son crying hysterically, but he wouldn't tell me what was going on. He threw me out of the room. You remember? ( I took it very badly. When you see your child worrying like that but not wanting to tell you anything, that's terrible for a parent.
Eventually, my husband stepped in. Probably a little more than he should have... But it helped.
Son: A lot more! (laughs)
Mum: Yes, we laugh about it now, but my husband had really had enough by then. He couldn't work, I was always going from nothing to nothing and dealing with the boy, my son was killing himself... My husband was just fed up with everything, and finally he snapped.
You can read the second half of the interview about coming out to parents and the wider community on LUI on Wednesday, January 25, 2023.
