Saturday, August 30, 2008

I'm Not Bitter

If I had a nickel for every time I was treated with disrespect because I am (clearly) a lesbian, I think I'd have maybe 10 cents, but that's pushing it. I don't really recall ever being treated differently in any respect because I'm gay, either better or worse.

I guess I never really expected to be treated differently.

All of my friends parents know (basically everyone knows except my mother, but she's not dumb) and they're all cool about it, very cool in fact. When I came out to each of them, nothing in that relationship changed, which is exactly what I had hoped for.

My roommate's entire family knows, and they're basically the best. I love my roommate and her family to pieces. Couldn't ask for a better roommate.

The whole coming out process for me was kind of like "whoa, I got myself all worked up over nothing?"

But then this has to happen, and I wonder to myself "what the fuck?"

The "this" I am referring to is something that one of my very best friends told me the other day. She and I hang out a lot, and a lot of the time we're hanging out with a bunch of our mutual friends. Some of the time we hang out just the two of us, for no reason other than the fact that sometimes it's nice to hang out one on one instead of having to deal with six people all competing for attention. I make one on one time for all my best friends.

Hope you don't mind that I'm telling your story, I know you're reading this right now.

Anywho, so my friend told me that her grandmother (a very old country Roman Catholic) found out that I'm a lesbian (because it was a big fucking secret, obviously) and doesn't want her to hang out with me anymore. "People will get ideas." What the fuck does that even mean? People will get ideas? If people wanted fucking ideas they would use their heads!

I've been friends with this girl for a very long time, I know her family and they know me. AND SHE'S NOT GAY. Does her grandmother honestly think that I'm going to change her? Or that I have any desire to?? And why the hell does she care what people think? The people in this town who know I'm a lesbian, the only people who would potentially talk about it, first of all DON'T MATTER, and second of all wouldn't talk about it because I'M NOT THE ONLY GAY PERSON IN THIS FUCKED UP TOWN.

And then, her little sister who is a friend of mine, basically asked her if she and I were together because we spend so much time together. Are you kidding me? Is this SERIOUSLY happening?

I'm not in high school anymore, I do not need to deal with this sophomoric bullshit.

I don't understand how or why things like this happen. I can't have friends anymore because obviously if I'm friends with a girl it means I'm in a romantic relationship with her? I can't spend time with the same group of girls I've hung around with since elementary school? I would have been a lesbian whether I came out or not, I was always a lesbian. I was a lesbian when I blew out the candles on my seventh birthday cake, I was a lesbian when I kissed a boy for the first time in the fourth grade, I was a lesbian when I walked across the stage at graduation. I have always been and will always be a lesbian. Would society rather that I stay in the closet and continue to suffer? I don't want the answer to that question, and I refuse to believe the truth.

It hurts so much to know that there are people out there who think of me differently just because I'm gay and just because I'm out and just because I am proud of who I am.

I will never regret coming out, I would have died if I hadn't. The pain of leading a life you weren't meant to lead is far worse than the pain of being made to feel "different."

I wish, more than anything else, that I could talk to my mother about this, and that she could tell me it's all going to be okay. But I don't believe that will ever happen.

I'm a damn good friend to ALL of my friends, the fact that I'm gay shouldn't matter.

I just don't understand.

Friday, August 29, 2008

And I Pointed My Dreams North

Packing sucks.

My room started out the summer looking rather like a storage closet, with everything I know piled up all over the place. Getting from the door to the bed or the closet quickly became impossible. I basically lived out of laundry hampers all summer, and never really gave a second thought to having to move back to school.

And here it is, the Friday before I go back, and piled all around me are boxes of clothes, sweatshirts for the Massachusetts winter, baskets filled with God only knows what, pens and pencils, computer stuff, instruments, a cat and a dog.

I wish they could come with me. Kitty has placed herself in the box for my desktop, and scrunched herself down so she is just peering over the edge and watching me type. She knows I'm going again, and she knows I'm probably going for a long time. It's hard to leave your best friends behind. Like most things in life, I wish they could comprehend how very much I love them.

Puppy is laying with her paws under her chin and looking up at me with her big brown eyes. She looks pretty pathetic, I'll admit. If I could find room for them in one of the bins and hide them away in my dorm, I so would. But they are happy here, where they are room to roam around, and all the treats and love an animal could ever dream of. They certainly aren't lacking for anything.

But it will be hard for them when I'm not here to go swimming on warm afternoons with Puppy, or lay in the sun with Kitty on my chest, or hold them both close when there is a storm. The three of us get along pretty swell. They grew up together in many ways. They're always growing up with me, and I was there to watch them grow up.

The madre and I will be happy to part ways for a while. She has her life and I have mine. When they intersect for too long a period of time, we tend to argue a lot. There are so many things about me that she doesn't know, and as I get older the things she doesn't know build and build, until eventually I feel as though we're strangers here. Strangers sharing a house, sharing a family, sharing a town and a little life we created. And yet, she is the person who understands me the best in the world. The silence between us isn't defeaning, it's a silence of understanding. We both know each other, but at the same time we understand that there are things about the other person that don't need to be discussed. The mystery in our relationship is good and healthy, for the time being.

I'm sure somewhere in her heart and in her mind she knows. She watched me grow up, she watched me struggle when being a tomboy wasn't okay anymore. She was there for every boyfriend, every failed relationship.

I remember driving in the car with her after I had recently broken up with some little boy. I think it was the seventh grade. I said to her "Mom, I don't think I can date one boy," and I tried desperately to articulate how I was feeling at the time. I always felt lost and confused, like all the girls were dating boys so I should do the same. No one ever even told me that how I was feeling was normal and okay, maybe it wasn't normal and okay. I had no idea that feeling the way I did was just the beginnings of trying to figure out who I was.

Being a kid is so hard. If everyone was just born a girl, or born a boy, and that was that everything would be so much simpler. But people aren't born that way. There is no ideal girl or ideal boy, and there never was. We're all different, whether it is due to nature or nurturing. Why can't people just accept us as we are?

Why couldn't someone just tell me it was okay? Why did I have to abandon who I was and who I would always be, and pretend to be someone I never was and never will be? Does society make us do this? Or do we put that pressure on ourselves?

I'm a firm believer that, at the end of the day, you and you alone are the only person in the entire world who matters. If you don't love yourself, no one can love you. How can we be expected to love ourselves if from every direction we are being told we are fundamentally wrong, we are being told that there is something wrong with us that we have no control over?

This is what I'm thinking about while I'm packing my clothes, my possessions, my memories, into boxes to be packed away in my car and hauled up to school.

It's hard to leave the ones you love behind, whether it's your dog or your cat, your mom, your friends, or the you you left behind so long ago. Some day we'll get there.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

I Want to Believe

I have been a Hillary supporter since the fourth grade, when I cried because another little girl got to be Hillary Clinton when we were doing presentations on historical figures. I got to be Amelia Earhart, and my mom bought me an aviator hat and goggles to wear during the presentations at the army surplus store. Sometimes I still wear them just for shiggles. Miss Earhart is still one of my top three no-longer-with-us heroes (Joan of Arc, Lucille Ball, and good ole Amelia).

I was devastated when Hillary had to concede the nomination to Barack. I sat in the driveway, staring at my Hillary bumpersticker for a while, wondering where we went wrong. Can't a woman be president of the USA? Will it ever happen? Hillary is so perfect for the job. In my heart, Hillary Clinton will always be MY president.

I never liked Barack Obama, and when Hillary lost the nomination I was terribly bitter. I debated not voting at all. I decided, though, that it's unethical for Americans to not vote, and I'm all about ethics.

He has been more in the public eye as of late, particularly with the Democratic National Convention. And it dawned on me.

He's a real guy. He's just a regular guy, living the American Dream. He has a wife, and kids, and a vested interest in the future of this country. He is a young guy, with his own dreams and aspirations. And they all stem from and lead to this American Dream of ours.

I was young when my father died, but I remember him talking about marching with Dr. Martin Luther King. My father was a conscientious objector, and during the Vietnam War when he was drafted, he told the United States Army that he would sooner by shot than shoot another human being, and he was given a different assignment.

When he was young he marched with Dr. King, and shook his hand, and they all marched, and they all sang, and they were all Americans. All with an American Dream.

My daddy makes me so proud. I hope that some day I can be even half the person he was. He had so much love, so much love for every person he encountered. Love is really what this life is all about.

I wish my daddy were alive to see this day. A man and a woman, both running for the nomination to go to the election to the most powerful office in the land. An African American man who will, God willing, take that office and make it great again. Equality. It's what they marched for so many years ago. And here it is, knocking on our doorstep. We have so far to go, but we have come so far already.

"One person's struggle is all of our struggle." Mr. Obama, you have my vote. Make us great again.

Spirit in the Sky

I go back to school on Monday!! DEAR GOD I AM OVERJOYED!! I'm going to miss my best friends (Molly, I know you're reading this, love ya!), but I've missed my school friends for nearly four months now. I NEED TO GET BACK TO MY LIFE! I feel like summer sucked my soul right out of me. Well, summer, I shake my fist at you! I'm going back to school!!

I didn't go to church today for the second to last Thursday evening service of the summer, and the last service I will be able to attend until probably Thanksgiving (or Molly's birthday). But I don't feel bad, because I said goodbye to my church family already. And God is always with me. Can't get away from that Guy/Girl/Thing :-P

Here's a little summit I wrote:

When I walk across my college campus, I no longer notice the golden cross on top of the main building gleaming in the sunlight. I don’t stop to read the “have you prayed today?” flyers strewn haphazardly in front of the elevator. No one stops me on my way to class to demand that I go back to my dorm and change out of my “marriage is so gay” t-shirt. I go about my day at my Catholic college with no intrusion from the religious right.

When I have the opportunity to catch up with what is going on in the rest of the world, I find myself disenchanted, more often than not. We are constantly bombarded with war, murder, disease, and all the things that dominate the media.

As members of the GLBT community we are perpetually flooded, externally and internally, by the views of people who have no tolerance for anything that goes against societal norms. It is unfortunate that religion has emerged as the “enemy” of the GLBT community. It is equally unfortunate that the GLBT community is viewed as the enemy to the religious community. Both have something to contribute to modern society, and have contributed wonderful things throughout history.

The purpose of religion has always been all inclusion. Christ didn’t preach love, compassion and acceptance to one generation alone. The 10 Commandments weren’t created solely for the few Israelites who escaped persecution in Egypt. It is impossible to please everyone at any given point in time, which is why the major world religions have stood the test of time. What the modern religious community lacks is the ability to tolerate, not necessarily embrace, anything that goes against their view of "right." My view of "right" as a Protestant differs from a Catholic view of right. The view of someone from the northeast differs from the view of someone from the deep south. All Christians are certainly not the same, just as all Americans are not the same, and no two people are ever the same.

When you are baptized a Christian, the person officiating the ceremony doesn't say "Do you reject Satan? Do you promise to blow up abortion clinics and raise hell for homosexuals?" Many Christian churches (I can't speak for any other body of faith because I am unfamiliar with anything else) preach tolerance. Not only do they preach tolerance, many preach acceptance and embracing everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from. I'm a Lutheran, who goes to a VERY Catholic college, and I'm gay, and I'm out. I have a great relationship with the religious leaders at my school, who have no issue with our difference of opinion on many matters of faith or the fact that I'm openly gay. I can walk across campus holding my girlfriend’s hand and I don’t have to worry about awkward stares or disapproving glances. I’m very fortunate to go to a liberal school, in a liberal part of the country. Many are not so fortunate.

Truly, no one should have a problem with anyone else, particularly for matters beyond their control. There are tons of close-minded people out there running their mouths who say hateful things, but they aren't speaking for the entire Christian family. They are speaking for themselves and their close-minded drone followers. The things they say hurt me more as a Christian than a lesbian, because they give Christians and religious individuals very bad names. Christ never preached hatred of any group or any individual person. Christ invited any person with a desire to lead a good life to believe in Him and be saved. I believe that God gave us all free will for a purpose, and we certainly don’t live in the same times as when the Bible was written. We all have the intellect to choose our own paths and to determine our own right and wrong.

We have so little time that it is wasteful to care about the action or inaction of others. People are bound to dislike each other, for one reason or another. Everyone goes into every situation with preconceptions, something that is unavoidable and human. No one is perfect, and no one can be expected to be perfect. All anyone can ever be the best person they can be. However, everyone’s definition of what the best person is will be different for every individual. Which is why people need to be dealt with on an individual basis. Just because someone is a Christian, or a lesbian, or even a Christian lesbian, doesn’t mean they will share the same points of view as I do.

Only when we stop viewing people by their “fundamentalists” or “gay” or “Christian” or “Middle Eastern” labels and start viewing them as individuals will the barriers we have built between ourselves crumble and we can live as people, all trying to live on the same planet.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Catcher in the Rye

I'm thinking about the love of my life, the things I want so badly to tell her. But she can't understand them now, and she shouldn't be expected to. I wish she knew she was the most important thing in my life. So, in lieu of actually telling her in some way, shape or form how much I love her, I'll write her a letter she will never read. Here goes nothing.

To My Favorite Girl,

You've grown up so much since I first held you close at the hospital. You were so tiny, and my hands were so big. I felt as though you might break. I felt as though my heart might break, overflowing with all that love. But I held you close, and looked into your little wrinkled face. You looked back at me, and your little eyes were lit up with the same spark so present in your grandfather's eyes. God he would have loved you so much.

It seems like only yesterday that Nana and I drove up to the hospital to see you for the first time. We weren't there the day your brother was born (I think we were in Ireland, there is a good excuse in any event). I never bonded with him the way I did with you.

You're growing up so fast, too fast if you ask me. I can still pick you up and hold you high, and swing you around. I can still hold you close when you're scared, or sit with you in the crook of my arm while I read you a story and you drift off the sleep. I just want to hold your little hand forever and ever, and keep all the scariness of the world away from you. I want to defend you against mean kids, to be at all your games and all your little concerts. I want to catch you before you go over the cliff, I want to save you. I want to make absolutely sure that you are always safe.

But I want you to live. I want you to learn so much that you don't think you could possibly learn any more, until you do, and then you discover that you haven't even scratched the surface. I want you to know all about Shakespeare and James Joyce and write your own epic stories. I want you to learn about quantum physics and things I will never understand. I want you to graduate at the top of your class, get a full scholarship to the school of YOUR dreams (yours and no one elses'), get an advanced degree and an excellent job. Most of all I want you to be happy, and I want you to be free. I want your mommy and daddy to love you like Nana and Grandpa loved me, and I know they do.

There is no distance between us that is too great. I will always be here for you: when you are contemplating a tattoo, when you had your first break-up, when you made your first really big mistake and you can't bring yourself to go home quite yet. I'm here for you.

I want you to know that I love you, more than anyone or anything else in this world. I love you more than my life. When I hear your squeeky little voice on the other end of the telephone, or get a card from you in the mail, or see your head pop over the windowsill at your house, everything is completely right with the world.

I hope you learn so much in kindergarten, and that you make lots of new friends. I secretly hope you discover that you love the violin, and follow in my footsteps. I'm trying so hard to not get ahead of myself here.

Please stay five years old forever? Stay sweet and innocent and young. Love your life, love yourself. Respect your parents, respect yourself.

You teach me something new about life and myself every time I see you. You're one of the most amazing people that I know.

I'll finish with what I said to you when I had to say goodbye to you for the first time: So long kid, see you in a little while.

I love you so much.

- Auntie Rachel

The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me

Why are people so angry? Maybe the better question is why are people so angry in God's name?

I'm not perfect and I never professed to being perfect. God made me the way I am, just like He made you the way you are. We are made in the image of Love, and therefore we should LOVE each other.

The Bible says a lot of shit, and I will be the first to say a lot of it upsets me. I think maybe the best way to describe the Bible is to compare it to a modern day individual who goes around trying to please everyone. You simply cannot please everyone, and that is the Bible's major flaw.

I don't really feel like getting into the Bible's shortcomings. We all have shortcomings.

That is organized religion's major flaw (and I'm not just talking about Christianity here, I'm talking about all of it). Islam SAYS it wants everyone, just like Christianity and Judaism and all of the other major world religions. You don't START a religion for one group of people, just like you don't FOUND a country for one group of people. You don't see people walking around with pointy hats and funny looking pants talking about the winter and the Indians anymore.

Religions and nations aren't founded for the present time. People are mortal, fallible, ignorant, and only here for the present. We have no concept of time outside of ourselves. God is the ultimate embodiment of time, God has no time constraints and no restrictions.

God wasn't made for black people, or white people, of straight people, or Gay people. God wasn't made for men, and God wasn't made for woman. God MADE all of us, we have NO RIGHT, absolutely NO RIGHT to act as though we understand God in any capacity. We can never understand God. We can't even understand ourselves, how could we possibly ever understand God? That's not to say that speculation isn't okay, because it is. We are human, we are thinkers. God gave us brains for a reason, and if we use those brains to will God away from our lives, that is our prerogative. However, if we use those brains to elevate ourselves above others, we are defeating the purpose of faith: all inclusion. I'm not better than an athiest because I'm a Christian. I'm not better than a homeless person because I'm from the middle class. No one is better than anyone else, because everyone came from the same place, and will eventually return to that place. And we all have the right to our own beliefs and opinions, and should share those beliefs and opinions because that is why we have brains, and that is why we have mouths to speak and ears the listen. We should use our ears more often, maybe we would learn something.

It's so hilariously disappointing to me that we as a world still hold ourselves to the same standard as the people who lived in Biblical times. We don't live to be 600 years old, and then we die. Most of us don't tend sheep for our livelihoods, have 15 kids in the hopes that at least 1 will live on and carry on our DNA.

Not many people these days disclose dicussions with God to the public. If you hear God, and you talk about it, it's probably your ticket to the mental hospital.

Why can't people just look outside themselves for ONE MINUTE and see how small their lives are?

Don't quote the Bible at me and tell me I'm a sinner and that I need to repent. Don't spout your hate at me. Hate has no place in the Bible, hate has no place in ANY body of faith. Faith isn't founded on hate, and it isn't built over hate. God is love, whether you believe God is an actual entity, a living person, multiple people, an idea, or NOTHING AT ALL. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU BELIEVE AS LONG AS YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING.

We ARE a great people! Together we are beautiful and our lives are meaningful. I believe that no matter what you believe, we are all a part of the same family, and we are all just trying to live. We live until we die, and we all die. Is it so much to ask to just be allowed to live?

I can't love you because I'm a woman? I can't love you because I'm white? I can't love you because I'm gay?

This is me saying I will love YOU until it hurts. I will love without anger and in God's name.

The Bible is a book, just like any other. God didn't write the Bible, God never wrote anything. God never said that anything in particular was a sin. We know in our hearts and our minds what is right and wrong. Trust yourself and your rationality and you are trusting God.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Everything I Ever Needed

Music has been my lifeblood for many, many years. It kept me sane on any number of occasions, and pushed me to the brink on others. The adrenaline rush of performance, of being seen and heard, is something I fear and crave simultaneaously. I absolutely hate being in front of large groups of people (or even small groups of people for that matter). It's not that I fear rejection, because I could care less if they didn't like the way I played or the things I had to say. I fear my own interpretation of what I do. If what I do is not perfect in my eyes (perhaps it's not perfect in the eyes of others, but I obviously don't know that unless they tell me) I keep picking at what was, and picking and picking so the scab never heals. It's not just music, it's everything. It sounds kind of OCD, and maybe it is some variation of OCD but it's not terrible. It simply is.

I can live with performing to the best of my ability, to writing to the best of my ability, to being the best friend I can be, etc. I try so hard at everything that I do, and often find myself completely depleted of energy, which makes me kind of useless. So how do I renew my energy? Where can I cut back so that I am not running on empty?

Music is and has been my life. But I just don't see myself playing with my school ensemble this year. I can't STAND how small it is, for one thing. I was always in a big orchestra, well funded, but where every member was still appreciated as an individual.

I need to take some time out and find out for myself where music stands in my life. Does it remain what it is and has been for me? Or do I find a new direction? I can't imagine my life without music, and I don't want to. But I also don't want to put myself through what I went through last year with this particular ensemble.

I guess we'll see what happens.

A life without music is a fate worse than death.

Besides being slightly lost in terms of my musical goals for the coming year, I'm basically ecstatic. School starts in six days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwNSYplomMA

That song describes how I'm feeling right now (and also my lack of ability at posting videos... I suck). Nothing's gonna bring me down.