Gettin' Hitched

It's really funny. I honestly never really thought about getting married or any of that. Lots of people spend their whole lives dreaming about their wedding day, and spend months or years making that day extravagant. But I'm just kind of like meh, if I'm married to Carrie at the end of the day that's really all that matters. Life has been crazy ever since I graduated from college in May 2011. I had been blogging pretty sporadically before then, but after I graduated, and had to abruptly move home that summer, and then I moved to Philadelphia in fall 2011... I just really lost track of things with this blog. I've said it before and I'll say it again now, I am going to make an effort to post here. Because not to toot my own horn but I lead a pretty random, weird, and fascinating (at times!) life. The wedding is on June 29, 2013 in Connecticut. There has been lots of drama surrounding the wedding, but for now I will leave you with some pictures of Carrie and I. As for school, I am in my fourth semester of seminary, loving it, getting lots of hands on ministry experience. I have A LOT to say about being a queer person in ministry, but I will save that for another time. Cheers, and I will be back soon!

Cheater

So Hillary has been cheating on me with her ex boyfriend. She cheated on me "five times" between "February, 2010 and July, 2010."

I am absolutely devastated. I thought she was the love of me life, I thought I would marry her. She is my first real love, and I still love and care about her so deeply. She says she loves and cares about me, too, and that her cheating "wasn't a personal attack on" me but that she was "confused" and didn't think she was "gay enough" for me. But how can someone cheat when they truly love and care about the person they are in a relationship with? Why couldn't she talk to me about how she was feeling instead of sleeping with her ex?

She always told me not to worry about him. He was her first love, the only guy she ever really enjoyed sleeping with, but he never had an interest in her after he broke her heart in high school, and she pined after him like a lost puppy. They were "just good friends" who talked frequently enough. I never met him, she wouldn't allow me to meet him, even though she talked about him enough. So last night she told me that they have been fucking, for lack of a better expression, in our bed, in our apartment.

I am completely at a loss. I had every opportunity to cheat on her, when I was abroad and when I was home, and I never did. AND an ex is an ex for a reason, as I say, and once that drama is over it's over for good.

I haven't slept in over 30 hours and I haven't eaten anything. There was a period of time that I couldn't stop crying. I just kept saying "no, no, no, tell me you're lying." It brought back so many different memories. It reminded me of when my father died, losing a huge piece of myself that would never be replaced. It reminded me of when I was 14 and I was sexually assaulted and I lost my innocence. I was totally violated, and this situation makes me feel dirty, violated and wrong.

Just last Saturday she was holding my hand at a party, trying to pull me into the bathroom with her. She didn't seem too confused then. Why has she been stringing me along all these months just to devastate me now? What if we had gotten married and I learned the truth too late?

She wants my forgiveness, she wants to try and rebuild this relationship and repair my heart. I don't know if I will be able to do that. I am so enraged right now, and so depressed, and so lost. I love her and care about her, but I am entirely unsure as to what to do.

Any advice?

Sister Act

I was talking about the future with my friends at lunch today, and it occurred to me...

I've always wanted to be a Nun, but I've never been Catholic. I've always wanted to go to graduate school and eventually get my PhD. I want to teach at university.

Everyone knows all nuns are closet lesbians, and if the nuns walking around campus at my college are any testiment the validity of that fact... well let's just say it's accurate. (I go to a Catholic College founded and run by nuns.) I would totally fit right in.

And so it hit me: I should become a nun, have the Catholic Church PAY for the rest of my education (masters degree, PhD, etc. etc.), PAY for my living situation, and GET me a job! And then if I feel like it, I can stop being a nun after all that's taken care of. I like doing good deeds for the underserved, I love helping people, and I LOVE being in college. Being a sister would just be awesome, I don't know why I haven't thought it of before...

But I'm not Catholic. And I'm living in sin with another woman (and our two cats). This could get complicated.

If all else fails, I will just have to take our crazy amounts of loan and be in debt until I'm 200.

Funnay Funnay

I didn't really go in depth about the Celine Dion concert, and I really should.

First of all, there were SO many people there. Lots of middle aged men with their mothers and twenty-something year old couples on dates, etc. More little girls wearing homemade "I love Celine" t-shirts than I was anticipating.

And then, there were the gays. Some people might be offended by the term "the gays" because it sets us apart from the rest of society. Well, I'm just using the gays as a term to differentiate between the homosexuals present in the audience and the heterosexuals. Sorry if anyone is offended.

There were SO many lesbians. I was expecting gay men, because it's Celine, I mean come on. Celine, Cher, Barbra, Diana. The gays flock to them like Kathy Griffin on steroids. I was not expecting so many lesbians.

I was also not expecting them to check me out. In front of my mother. VERY obviously.

I'm out to everyone except my mother/her family. I'm fairly certain my sister knows, and anyone who I encounter who assumes my heterosexuality is quickly corrected.

We were standing in line to go in to the theatre and get patted down or whatever, so I was concealing my guns and my shanks (just kidding of course) when the madre turns to me, very slowly.

"Rachel, can you take your bracelet off?"

I wear an HRC rubber bracelet that has the HRC logo, a heart, and a peace sign on it. I guess I kind of wear it so that if anyone has any doubt when they see me, they will know. But it's very small, and not all that noticeable.

"Why?" I turned to her.

"Because there are lesbians checking you out."

My face turned bright red and I turned around and looked forward, so that the crazed lesbians wouldn't know that I knew they were checking me out. I saw them doing it too, and they were SOO not my type at all. I'm just a wee little lesbian, and I guess I look like a lesbian, but I don't announce it to the world. I was so horrified that they were checking me out IN FRONT OF MY MOTHER.

"Ma, maybe they're not checking me out, maybe they're just looking."

"Rachel, I know the difference between looking at someone and checking them out."

Well, I refused to take the bracelet off, and my mother worried that I was going to be molested by lesbians for the rest of the evening. She said "You have to be careful wearing things like that, you don't want people to get the wrong idea."

They have the right idea, Ma, they are dead on.

Lesson: If you're going to check a girl out, make sure she isn't with her parents. PLEASE. It's embaressing to her AND to you. If my madre was a little more bold, she would have gone up to you and given you a piece of her mind. I do believe she would have done to same to a dirty old man looking at me too.

I laugh every time I think about that.

Eeeek... A MOUSE!

Not just any mouse, but the one and only MICKEY MOUSE! That's right, I'm hanging with the mouse man himself in his very own Floridian paradise, Walt Disney World.

I love Disney World, I've been coming here ever since I was 4 years old, and over the past, eight or nine years we've been coming multiple times a year. I can't even tell you how many times I've been here, I've lost count.

This is, however, the first time I've been here for Gay Days in Disney.

Actually, that's incorrect. I was here in fifth grade for Gay Days. I had a terrible sunburn (story of my very Irish life) and all I wanted to do was sit around the pool and be awesome, so I didn't really enjoy the festivities.

That's not to say I enjoyed the festivities this year, either. I did appreciate this blissful time of year more than I did when I was 10, in any event. Because we are here from June 7-14, we were only here for the last weekend. Right now Gay Days are officially over, unfortunately. But I have interesting stories.

Well really only one interesting story. My mother and I were on the bus going back to our resort from Epcot after Illuminations and a fun filled day of travel (waking up at 4:30 in the morning for a flight is no fun... but when the destination is Disney it's totally worth it). If you've ever been to Disney you know they absolutely pack the buses as full as they possibly can. It just so happens that, among the people in the jam packed bus was a group of lesbians.

Now, understand, I've been working with my mother on her gaydar skills ever since our trip to P-Town several weeks ago. She picked up on these lovely ladies right away. I was just a little intimidated of these women. One was missing a tooth, and they all looked like they went to the gym regularly. When I looked at them I imagined bar fights or wrestling matches.

So my mother, who is friendly but not very friendly at all toward strangers, strikes up a conversation with these fine women.

The girls are looking for their stop, but they can't find it. "We haven't even started drinking yet!" one of them announced. (She's my hero).

My mother asked if they were looking to go to Downtown Disney. They weren't, but then they decided that they would. She told them to go to the last bus stop and get off there and wait for a Downtown Disney bus to come by. The girls asked what we were up to. My mom said "Well I want wine but my daughter here wants beer so we're going to go up to the store and buy some beer."

"They have beer here!" one of them said, and it was decided they would all get beer at the store then go back to the bus stop and wait for the Downtown Disney bus. They were incredibly friendly and nice and I do hope they had a wonderful time at Downtown Disney. I was so exhausted as soon as I sat down on the bed I passed out, having only taken a few sips of my beer.

When we were alone later (actually it was the next morning and we were swimming around the quiet pool) I said to my mother "They were some ruther scury lookin women on the bus last night."

To which my mother responds "Oh they weren't so bad. They're people too, ya know."

Trust me, I know. I would have been intimidated by them no matter what they're orientation. The fact that they could probably tell that I am a young queerling only made me more intimidated.

Anyway I'm having a grand time down here in the Florida and will get back to posting probably on Sunday unless something amazingly extraordinary happens.

Peace out girl scout