I've told some close friends, especially the one who's going to be taking care of my cats for me for a week while I'm 236 miles away from home. But otherwise, I've pretty much kept this all under wraps.
I'm very definitely not ashamed of any of this--in fact, despite physically feeling yuck right now due to a sinus infection, I'm still really excited. I just feel this extreme aversion to telling the rest of my family about it, mostly because I'm avoiding having one of my (extremely religious) aunts finding out until afterward.
I decided that I've got better things to do--like getting my left foot sawed off with a rusty hacksaw dipped in feces--than have her emailing me. She's even notified me in the past that she's asking her prayer circle to pray for me (is there any such thing as in-family confidentiality, and if so, why can't I invoke it?). She's also of the firm belief that being anything less than a total vegan and only using naturopathic remedies as a cure for EVERYTHING (including death, I'm secretly convinced) is somehow akin to sinning. I think the word "fanatic" fits nicely in this sentence.
Of course it doesn't help a bit that I'm the black sheep of the family in that I'm an atheist and I'm being offensive if I ask them not to talk about religion to me. Somehow, I'm fair game for constant attempts to reconvert me, but my own reasons for no longer claiming belief in any deity are offensive and irrelevant. This really pisses me off, especially when it has to do with yet another lecture about how my lack of faith somehow caused my obesity.
Yep, definitely irritable today. Maybe I should simply send out a mass email to my contacts list, and then systematically set filters on anyone's email address who doesn't respond in a supportive manner, so that all future email from them goes to my Junk folder. It'd be a good litmus test to find out which family members I want to cut out of my life altogether, permanently.
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