Let's Try This Again

I'm going to try and start blogging regularly on this blog from now on. I feel guilty for neglecting it.

An update on my life: I just began my second semester at seminary. I am absolutely in love with seminary, and the city, and everything I am learning and all of the friends I am making. Truly this is where I am supposed to be right now.

I started a new relationship with a wonderful human being in October. I have never fallen so hard and so fast for someone. When she looks at me I feel like I am home, no one has ever looked at me the way that Carrie does. She is beautiful both inside and outside, and I love her more than words. She asked me to marry her on December 26th, and I accepted. We will be legally uniting our lives this summer and moving in together on my seminary campus in the fall and we will be formally married on June 22, 2013.

I am going to attempt to blog regularly, and hopefully I can keep that promise to myself. I still have a lot to say. I'm not the idealistic 18 year old I was when I started this blog, but life is so funny sometimes. I need a place to put all of my thoughts, my concerns, my worries, everything. I know a lot about the world, more now than I did six months ago, 12 months ago, five years ago, but I still have a lot of learning to do.

Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself!

Well a lot has happened since I last posted. A heck of a lot!

I graduated from college in May, with honors and all that jazz. I stayed in the apartment with H until very recently, when I found out she was cheating on me again, this time with a friend of mine.

Betrayal bites. But I learned my lesson, I can't be so trusting. And My UHaul days are behind me haha.

Now for the big big news: I am going to SEMINARY soon! (Future) Pastor Rachel in the haus yawl! This is a very exciting, scary, anxiety producing, but mostly exciting, time in my life. I am so blessed, so happy to have these last few weeks with my friends and family before going off to school (another 4 years, but I'll be home off and on).

I have a lot of thoughts on seminary, and on everything that has been going on in my life lately, and this blog is simply too outdated for me.

I've grown up so much in the last few months, probably most especially ever since I graduated in May. I've learned a lot about life, relationships, toxic people, my true friends, and most importantly I've learned a lot about myself and what I am capable of. I am so much stronger, and wiser, for everything I have gone through. When I get to seminary I'll probably send H a postcard thanking her for being the heinous c u next Tuesday that she is, lest I would still be the innocent and naive little girl playing house, giving up my dreams so I could stay with a treacherous snake like her.

Moving on.

All that being said: I am going to start a new blog, and probably link it back to this one but we shall see. I need a nice clean slate. Moving hundreds of miles away, fresh start, fresh city, and a fresh blog for me to write all about my new life.

Hope all is well out there in blogland, sorry I have neglected this sad old blog. But I am so happy now, so content, so grown up and ready for life to truly begin.

Amen.

Finding Love and Acceptance

The coming out process is often very difficult for the individual identifying as GLBT or Q. Sometimes (and in fact, more often than not) it is also difficult for that individual's family and friends. I have been blessed with family and friends who could not care less, and who truly desire only that I be happy. Many people, when coming out, hear family members or friends say that they only want their happiness, but in the end if they cannot conform to their family/friends' picture of their happiness, they become unhappy (or at the very worst, insane trying to conform).

It is a struggle to accept who one is, particularly if one does not fit the bill for the "normal" person (obviously depending upon one's culture, gender, upbringing, etc.) That struggle is only compounded when one can't truly be oneself around the most important people, or when family or friends are perpetually of the belief that in time, one can change. Sexuality is fluid, but not so fluid as to completely alter one's mindset.

What I'm trying desperately to say is that, if you have ever come out, you know how terrifying it can be. You know how lonely is can feel, even though so many people have done it before you and so many will follow. If you haven't come out, or you are struggling, don't isolate yourself from the people around you. They love you and they want the best for you. If at the end of the day they don't make you feel good about yourself, let them know. If they make you outright feel bad about yourself, cut them out of your life as best you can, and make sure they are aware that they are loosing you, you are not loosing them.

The phrase "all you need is love" is only partially true, and perhaps misleading. We all need love, yes, but we also need to love ourselves. If you don't love yourself you cannot POSSIBLY love anyone else, and if you don't respect yourself you cannot respect anyone else. Certainly love and respect come from within, but they are taught from without, and a great deal of learning is necessary when one sees the lack of love and respect in one's life. If you have no love in your life, find it, and find it within yourself before you go looking for it with someone else. We are all very good at something or another, and when you find what it is, cling to it with iron talons.

I'm so grateful to the people who love me, and I know if I told them that they would be glad to hear me say it, but also sad that it is necessary to be thankful for love and acceptance when both of those things should be given freely. I hope that everyone who is struggling to accept themselves can come to find love, acceptance and peace with themselves.

Much Better

I just needed some time. Obviously things aren't 100%, and who knows they might not be for a very long time, but I'm thinking right now I'm at around 50-75%. I can't let it get me down because I need to focus on my life, my studies and my future.

I can't just sit around and wallow all day, nor do I want to. Tomorrow night I'm going out drinking with one of my best friends, Thursday night I'm probably doing the same, and this weekend is going to be a shitshow (the Berlin Fair in CT, if you're in the area you should go, it's a little on the hillbilly side but it's fantastic). I'm 21 years old and I have to do me, and if others try and get me down I just have to cut them out of my life. It's hard because we live together, and because I want to be her friend and so much of me wants to go back to being in a romantic relationship with her, but I can't force anything right now. The only thing I can force is the smile on my face, whether faked or genuine. There are people in my life who need me to be strong and need me to keep trudging uphill, and so that's what I'm going to do. And some day I'm going to get back to the top of the hill, look down and say "I made it home."

For right now I feel like I'm three people trapped in one person's body (not like dissociative identity disorder or anything), and it's kind of funny because it took this huge blow out break up to make me see it. I feel like the person I was before I studied abroad, the person I was when I was abroad, and the person I am not (post-study abroad) are all battling it out to see who will get to control me. I grew up so much when I was abroad, enough to see that some things matter less than others (especially at 21 years). I learned that when you fall, sometimes the only person who can pick you up is you, no matter who tries to grad your hand and pull you up. The person I used to be though didn't know those things, was very dependent and immature. When I was abroad I shined it on like I was brave, but inside I was terrified more often then not. So now I have the kid, the coward, and the adult fighting for the claim over my personality.

The only thing all three of those people have in common is that eventually, maybe not right away but eventually, they all accept what is happening and learn to deal. And if that isn't a blessing I don't know what is.

So life isn't great right now, but it is good and it is real and here and everything wonderful. I believe I've said before that to feel anything, be it pain, anger, joy, fear, or any of the multitude of adjectives to describe human emotion, is not truly the "point" in life. The point in life is to feel anything and everything and appreciate the gift of emotion for what it is. If we are feeling, we are alive.

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?

A History of Immigration

I read a lot of blogs focusing on a wide variety of issues. I read a pro-choice blog, an anti-conservative blog, and anti-racist blog, an anti-tea bagger blog, etc. Mainly they are just ways to pass the time when I'm not busy, ways to have a good laugh. More and more frequently, however, reading these blogs has become very disturbing, for a number of reasons. First, the amount of suggested violence on the part of the "bigots," "right-wingers," "anti-choicers," "tea partiers," etc. is very unsettling. Though I have never seen a "liberal" (or rather a "non-vitriolic conservative") suggest violence on or against anyone, I am sure it has happened. It alarms me that we as a country have apparently completely polarized ourselves. Either we are extreme liberals or extreme conservatives, there can be no middle ground. To me it reeks of civil war, which I am sure many conservatives would be pleased with (go ahead, Texas and Virginia, break away from the Union). When I think of the modern two-party system in America, I have visions of a World War I battlefield, with trenches dug on either side of a muddied field, with decapitated trees and lifeless grass laying immobile surrounded by the rigid bodies of young people sent far from their homes to defend an intangible cause.

It truly scares me, to know that there are people in this very country who feel enough hatred of gays, liberals, pro-choicers, non-Christians, non-whites, etc. that they would put their lives on the line. Often in the name of Christ.

It's really terrifying, if you think about it. I want to move to Canada so badly some times, but the process of becoming a Canadian citizen (while easier than becoming an American citizen) is daunting, and only if you have a job offer or a family member petitioning for you can you begin the citizenship process. I looked into going to seminary in Canada, but the Lutheran Church of Canada only ordains males and is one of the few Canadian organizations that openly does not acknowledge the Canadian ruling to allow same-sex marriage. As someone who is strongly considering seminary post-undergraduate graduation, and unwilling to switch denominations, it seems as though a move to Canada is out of the question.

Thinking of these things got my blood boiling regarding immigration in the United States. The other day I read an article about a young illegal alien who, driving drunk, killed a nun and injured two others. The nuns' order is ashamed that the killing of this nun by this young man has caused such a political debate surrounding immigration. The young man had MANY infractions against his driving record, he had driven drunk many times and it was not his first drunk driving accident. In 2008 a judge was set to rule at the closing of his deportation hearings, but the ruling has apparently been in limbo for the past two years, as he has not been deported. We religious folk are commanded to be forgiving (hard as it is almost all of the time), and certainly those three nuns would forgive this young man, if they could, though they would also likely want him to pay for his crimes (grant under Caeser what is Caeser's, after all). But the fact that he is an illegal immigrant complicates the situation, to the extreme.

So I got to thinking, aren't we all technically illegal immigrants, besides 100% Native Americans? If you look back on the history of this hemisphere, North, Central and South America have always been populated by native peoples. During the shifting of the continents the native people were separated and lived nomadic lifestyles of hunting, gathering, fishing and worshipping. While in Europe, the Middle East and Asia technology began to rapidly expand (as a result of all of those civilizations being so close together), the indiginous peoples of the Americas survived and thrived in their own ways. In Central and South America the Aztecs and Mayans flourished, creating technology that to this day is neither understood nor appreciated. Spain, in its lust for gold, conquered South and Central America, under the guise of wanting to "Christianize" the heathens they murdered them with disease, raped them and diluted their gene pools, made them slaves, sent them back to Europe to be palace pets for the King and Queen, etc. Much earlier, in the far north of present day Canada, Vikings began exploring the American north-east. To this day there is a native tribe in Northern Canada that bears the lasting effects of the Vikings (recessive blonde hair and blue eyes), though the Vikings ostensibly did not rape and pillage these people but rather integrated themselves with the already existing culture.

England and France, feeling that Spain should not be the sole benefactor of America's gold-rich soil, sent ships to what is today North America. The clash with the Natives in North America was not as violent at first as it was with the Spanish, who more of less destroyed everything in their path. In present day Canada the tribes were preserved by their ability to move across the snow and ice, leaving the settlers without access to their villages, hunting grounds, etc (at least for a short while). The United States, though, was perfect for building, colonizing, stealing resources and land. These "explorers" were no more than murderers, killing anyone or anything that got in their way. Never once did they pass a security check point, where they were forced to present proof of citizenship, or even a passport. No one questioned their authority or identity.

Today if you are driving along the highways of Utah, Arizona or Nevada you will likely see the remanents of the rape and pillage of the American Indian. One room cement and mud shanties, with tin roofs and a dusty yard. Alcoholism, casinos, drug use, a much much much higher statistic for the number of women and girls raped, almost rampant illegal activity, all as a result of "illegal immigration." When someone with brown skin attempts to cross the border into the modern day United States, they might be shot, or deported, or they might live for a few years in their new country, then fall victim to drugs or alcohol and kill a nun. Not many years ago, this was not the United States, Mexico was not Mexico, and Canada was not Canada. There were no borders, besides tribal borders. Individuals were bound to their tribes and their peoples. With the "illegal immigrants" from England, France and Spain came a lack of respect for brown skin, a lack of appreciate for neighbourly love and respect and a complete lack of concern for the sanctity of human life.

Catching Up

I haven't blogged in a long time, so I'm gonna.

Summer is going by EXTREMELY fast, hence the lack of blogging. I was offered three jobs at the beginning of the summer, but then I found out that I got an independent study in Cambridge next year and my honors thesis proposal for the English department was accepted, so I declined one of the jobs so that I could work on getting ready for both of those things. Needless to say, I'm poor, but I'm not unhappy. And if and when I get into graduate school next year, I will be even more poor. So it goes.

So much has happened since I last blogged! I went to the conference for my church, and it was really really awesome I had a wonderful time. Lots of worship, food, time to hang out with my pastor, voting on resolutions (including a resolution to denounce the Arizona immigration initiative).

I turned 21 on June 12. It's not as much fun as it's cracked up to be, but I LOVE being able to buy myself alcohol when I go to the grocery store or the liquor store. In college when you're under 21 you're pretty limited to Bud Lite (if you're lucky) or Mich lite (if you're even luckier), but there are so many more varities to choose from. I'm becoming a beer snob. If you're ever in the Massachusetts area try Wachusett Mountain Blueberry beer, so good.

I'm house sitting for one of my employers while she is on vacation for a month, and she has a pool so it's pretty freakin sweet. She's a really wonderful person on top of having a pool and a yard (I miss having outdoor space, so it's amazing for me to be able to go to her house and just hang out outside), I'm really lucky that she found me and we get along.

We went to see Dave Matthews a few days before my birthday, the concert was really good actually. I thought Dave might suck live, for some reason, but he was really good. Boyd Tinsley, however, Dave's violinist, definitely stole the show. I'd go straight for Boyd, what a looker.

Last weekend was my family reunion weekend, which got ever the complicated by the fact that Hillary and I were going to see Brandi Carlile at the Casino Ballroom in Hampton, NH Friday night, the reunion was Saturday in the Catskills in NY (and my whole family was there from Friday to Sunday at the campground), and we were going to see Lilith Fair in Hartford on Sunday. Brandi was awesome, per usual (if you ever have the chance to see Brandi live, do it!), but we ended up leaving NH around 11 pm, and we drove straight to NY and ended up pulling into the camp site around 4:30 in the morning. We woke up Saturday around 11 and did the reunion thing, which was a lot of fun as it always is (it just always goes by so quickly). Sunday morning we left around 10 am or so and drove to my house in CT, got there around 1 and had to turn around and grab some lunch and head over to the Meadows in Hartford.

I'm going to be real for a second and say that I was a might bit disappointed in Lilith Fair. I guess I just always had this perception that it would be this amazing eye opening chick rock experience, and to an extent it was but on a SUPER small scale. When I think chick rock I think Brandi Carlile, Indigo Girls, Alanis Morisette, Sarah McLachlan, Sinead O'Connor, Sheryl Crowe, Tegan and Sara, the Dixie Chicks, Ani Difranco, Cyndi Lauper, to name a VERY few. As much as Ingrid Michaelson, Cat Power and Sarah Barellis were good (Cat Power to a lesser extent), they don't strike me as timeless the way any and all of the aforementioned artists do. In any event, the Indigo Girls were fantastic live, everything I hoped for and so much more. Sarah McLachlan kind of disappointed me, I won't lie, and 'Ice Cream' almost made up for it, but not really. She just didn't sound the way I expected she would, whereas the Indigo Girls were up there singing dancing and playing their instruments like they were standing in a recording studio.

I'm pleased with my summer, and hopefully I will be in the right frame of mind to blog more frequently between now and September, since I fear that I will drop off the face of the Earth come the beginning of my senior year (I can't f**king believe it).

Hope everyone out there enjoyed June, July and has a very lovely August!