The Shepherd

Today hasn't been a good day. I wouldn't be lying if I said that it's probably been the hardest day I've had in months. It seems like all the stress is piling up and ganging up and attacking me at once, and I've been bottling up things that threaten to come to the surface and I don't know if they'd make me feel better or destroy me if I let them out. My boss called me worthless at work last Saturday even though I bust my ass and try to stock as much as I can, and last night he threatened twice to fire me because he said he knows someone is trying to get away with not stocking by saying things are "backstock" (what we call items that are already full on the shelves). I know this isn't true, but the morning people keep saying it's true about me (I don't know why they hate me so much) and you can say all you want "oh, if it's not true, he won't fire you" but Ive been fired before from a job when I was accused even though I didn't do anything wrong. I'm barely scraping by as it is. Losing this job would be devastating for me. Especially when I work so hard to do my job and do it well, and I'm so stressed out about everything else in my life that my job was the only thing that seemed to be going well. I don't need this stress on top of everything else.

So yeah. Bad day. And I'm so tired of trying to have hope in the midst of a sea of people who keep telling me to have hope like it's easy to do, or like it's not something I'm already trying with every fiber of my being, while I get sicker and sicker and still don't have insurance and still have so much debt and still see people losing hope all around me and giving up and dying, and I want to tell them to have hope, but I know how trite that sounds to me and I want to give them something real, so I try my best only to have people mock my words or tell me I'm a drama queen. I'm about to stab the next person who says something like that to me.

See? Now I'm threatening to stab people. I want so badly to be a good person. I want to be the kind of person I expect others to be. It's so much harder than it sounds, and I'm so tired of trying and failing. When the author Renee Alston wrote in her book "Stumbling Toward Faith" about her husband, her description of him touched my heart in so many ways that I read it over and over and over again to remind myself that there is good in the world, even when I can't see it for myself:

there was so much that was shattered and broken in me. i was distrustful and skeptical, and i pushed love away because i was terrified of it. the thought of being hurt kept me from taking risks, and kept my life protected and safe.

my husband came into my life with great gentleness. he never forced his way in. he never insisted that i give him anything that i couldn't give. he simply sat with me and waited with me and loved me.

i learned from him the wonder of being loved. he has stayed with me even when i have begged him to leave. he has respected me even when i have yelled at him and thrown things at him and refused to respect myself. he has held me when there were no words to be said, knowing that to say them would only trivialize my pain.

he walked with me through the process of intense therapy, of nights when i slept in the bathtub or the closet, too terrified to be with another person; too full of memories to be in my own bed. he has watched me sign "no suicide" contracts and visited me in mental hospitals. he has nurtured the small wounded parts of me and always believed i would make it.

i have held on to his hope for me when i have had none for myself. i have held on to his love for me when i have felt unloved and afraid. through him i have learned that there are places in me that love can reach. through him i have been willing to begin to be loved. through him i have learned the worth of letting people in. because of him i began to open up to others again, to be brave.

he has been the beginning of my ability to believe.

That description tugs at my soul. It reminds me of what I'm trying to be for other people, and for myself, a friend...someone who is there for people and tries to give them hope; and I keep trying to remind myself that even if it seems like it doesn't matter, it does matter. So many people gave up on me. I want to be the kind of person who will not give up on someone else. I honestly don't feel strong enough, like I don't have one thousandth of the resolve I need, and the light I try to shine looks so small in the face of the darkness. I try to remember that it's important that I'm shining a light at all, but it's hard to remember that when all I can think about is what a horrible job I'm doing and how messed up my life is (and how bad my grammar is when I keep putting prepositions at the end of my sentences).

Have you guys ever seen Pulp Fiction? There's this part I keep thinking about, where Samuel L. Jackson's character says this:

There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

Maybe that's it. I'm the tyranny of evil men, but I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd. It doesn't seem like enough, but it's going to have to be, because it's all I've got right now.

We are All Fags Now

Nifty title, huh? I think I have the evidence to back it up though, so please keep reading. Most of the time I rant about movies in this space (or books, from time to time) and I'm going to talk about a movie later, but first, I wanted to say a word about everyone's favorite pop culture icon, Fred Phelps. 'Who the fuck is that?' you might ask. Well, Fred Phelps is the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, that infamous little slice of fundamentalist frenzy that sends its members to picket at the funerals of famous gay people. Yes, I said “picket.” The church members carry signs that say “God hates fags” and “AIDS cures fags” and other fun things. Now as horrible as it might be to imagine picketing a funeral, a time of mourning, and pouring more grief on top of people that are already grieving, a lot of people (especially people in my small little backwoods community) wouldn't think this has much affect on them. After all, those people are many states away from us, so we don't have to see them, and we all know the bible does say something about gays being evil or something like that, so these crazy church people are only practicing their religion. It's not a big deal.

I'm not just being sarcastic, either. To be honest with you, as much as I wanted to vomit at the thought of someone picketing at a FUNERAL, I didn't think Fred Phelps and his creepy little church had much to do with my life, either. That was before Matt Webber. 'Who the hell is that?' you ask, 'Why the fuck do you keep throwing random names out there? We have no idea what you're talking about.' Well, let me tell you who he was. Matthew Alan Webber was a local soldier who fought in Iraq and died on April 27, 2006. I didn't know him beyond saying “hi” a few times, but in a town as small as this one, whenever local soldiers are overseas fighting, we see their names a lot. Local churches publish their names on bulletin boards and organize prayer chains, and when local soldiers die, everyone hears about it. When Matt died, people would come into work crying, because we all knew someone else who was still overseas fighting, and we all mourned for those who died. As much as it sucks living in a small town sometimes, this is one of the good things. Tragedies can connect us.

Something strange happened around the time Matt died, though. Remember Fred Phelps? Well, his church has decided that since God hates fags so much, that means God hates any country where a lot of fags live, so God hates America too (but...but...that doesn't make sense-hush, you and your logic, just try to follow this train of thought as it derails). So since God hates America (as we've established, because we're all a bunch of “fag enablers”) that means God hates anyone who fights for this country, so God hated the soldiers fighting for the USA, so God killed them, and people mourning the soldiers are mocking God, so they need to be told the “truth” and Fred Phelps and his church need to spread the gospel to those at these funerals. Again, kind of insane, but what does it have to do with us? Well, you guessed it, Fred Phelps showed up at Matt Webber's funeral to picket and protest and hand out “gospel” literature. We got warning about this a week or so in advance, and everyone at work was abuzz with the news, everyone wondering what kind of person would picket a funeral. When they found out that I knew who Fred Phelps was, they asked me about him, and I got to have several variations on the following conversation:

Them: Who is Fred Phelps?

Me: He's a pastor of a church that pickets at the funerals of gay people-

Them: Matt wasn't a faggot!

Me: Yeah, but since Matt Died protecting the U.S., and the U.S. has laws protecting the rights of gay people, Fred Phelps says God hates America, too

Them:..That's stupid.

Me: Yeah.

I have to hand it to people. As full as this city is of small-town rednecks, when Fred Phelps came here, no one took a shot at him. No one even threw a rock at him. The Mecosta County sheriff John Sontag (who knew Matt growing up, since he was Matt's rocket football coach) even said he'd have officers stationed around the high school during the funeral to protect the Westboro Baptist church protesters, saying: “We will protect these people, because that’s what Matt died for. He died so these scumbags can protest.” I personally think that's a laudable attitude, especially since I would have gone apeshit and at least thrown rocks at the protesters if I'd been at the funeral (this is why none of my friends would give me a ride to the funeral; they knew I'd go off on someone). I know, the protesters just want attention, I'd be giving it to them, it would be wrong to assault them, blah blah blah. I would probably have done it anyway. All my logic would have gone out the window the second I saw Matt's mother crying while people were standing across the street holding signs saying that God hates Matt. But no one from my area did that, and I admire their restraint. Score one for the rednecks.

The thing that stood out to me the most about this event was the conversations I got to have with people because of Fred Phelps' visit. Like I said, most people in this area have some idea that the bible says it's a sin to be gay, so on that basis, they can understand some church wanting to go off and preach at people about it, but that stance changes the second you start talking about protesting SOLDIERS. The grand majority of citizens in this area are military families, and we all know someone fighting overseas, so when the issue hits us closer to home, it's harder to be objective. I know people say it's a good idea to always be objective in debates and such, but I don't always agree. I don't think people really understand how hate poisons everyone it touches until they are confronted with it affecting someone they love. The people I talked with were shocked that someone would protest Matt's funeral just because he fought in a war representing a country that had laws protecting the rights of gay people. That's kind of what hate does, though. You start hating something, then you slowly begin to hate everything associated with it, and it spreads. I'm not a fan of arguing for a “slippery slope,” but this sure is the track that hatred seems to take when it infects people. For me, if anything good came out of Fred Phelps' visit at all, it was this: I got to talk to people, and they'd say “I can't believe he's protesting at Matt's funeral, that's so horrible,” and I'd say “He's done this to hundreds of funerals of gay people, too,” and they'd pause for a minute, then they'd say “That's horrible, too.” Yeah, it is. But I'm glad we all could learn something from it. Sometimes, when people are confronted with evil, they shrink away. Sometimes, they take the experience in, and they grow from it. I think the people in my town chose the latter path.

I recently watched the documentary “Fall From Grace,” about Fred Phelps and his church and how it got its start and how its teachings have spread, and it's pretty harrowing to watch. I didn't feel qualified to write a review of the movie, because I'd have a hard time being objective (there's that word again) but I thought I'd at least devote a post to the issue, because it's important to me. Watching the documentary gave me an inside seat to how hate spread throughout Phelps and his family and how it spread through their teachings and how it's grown stronger until it became what it is today; a monster that's so strong it even has his family protesting at the funeral of Heath Ledger, because he's an actor who portrayed a gay character. I guess no one is immune from the wrath of this God, because in Phelps' world, we are all fags now (well, at least we all have something in common, then). That level of hate must be difficult to maintain. I would do well to be sympathetic if not to Phelps himself then at least to the idea that it's not a good idea to hate so strongly that it ruins your entire life. So here's to taking baby steps toward not hating people. Here's to all the people whose funerals have been disgraced by Phelps' presence, and here's to Matt Webber, who even in death had a battle to fight against ignorance, and whose funeral helped a lot of people learn something. Even me.

days of inspiration

"To days of inspiration, playing hooky, making something out of nothing, the need to express, to communicate. To going against the grain, going insane, going mad..."

I had to come here and tell you that even though I have a migraine and I haven't slept in two days and I have to work tonight, today was a day of inspiration for me, and I'm so geeked I need to write about it. What was so inspiring, you might ask (you'll be sorry for asking, trust me). Let me tell you anyway, though. When I was in theater class in college ("OMG, shut up about that," cried Lillian's friend list) my professor gave us a quiz one day that was a sheet full of word puzzles for us to figure out, and one of the answers was "Theatre is fun!" and I wrote a little note under that when I turned mine in saying "No it isn't," and when she returned my graded quiz, she'd written "Yes it is [angry face]" under that. Luckily, she never marked me down for my snotty remarks or bad attitude. The truth is, I wasn't comfortable in my own skin back then, though I'd never have had words to say it (or the balls to admit it even if I'd had the words), so theatre class was an exercise in awkwardness and irritation for me every week, with plenty of opportunities for me to embarrass myself and totally not understand why I was even embarrassed in the first place. The worst part is, so much theatre is devoted to the subject of not being comfortable in your own skin, and I would have had a great opportunity to learn from that and grow if I hadn't been too busy being pissed off all the time to notice. Sorry for bringing this subject up so often in my journal, but it's something I think about a lot (I could write a book on the subject...the title "Adventures in Missing the Point" comes to mind, but that one's already taken).

Anyway, now that I've grown old and decrepit wiserha!, I've come to appreciate theatre with a grand, burning passion, and all my readers are paying for that now. So I finally got off my lazy ass and watched the Here! TV production of the 1910 drama "Awakening of Spring" (more about it here and here) because people told me I needed to watch it, and OMG they were so right, and OMG, it was a theatre geek's wet dream, guys. I kept pausing the movie to take notes and write down quotes from the movie (you're only allowed to pause a movie "On Demand" so many times before it shuts off automatically, and this one shut off on me twice because I paused it so much to document my viewing) and I want to share some quotes for you here. Believe me, though the movie has a reputation for containing more than the RDA of "gay," this is far more than just a "gay movie." It's first and foremost an annoying movie for a lot of people...there are virtually no sets, just actors reciting lines standing against a white or blue background, so the star is the dialogue and the performances, because there's nothing to distract from that, and that can be annoying for the non-theatre geeks, but if you can get past that (or don't mind it in the first place) this movie has a TON to say about the culture of repression and what harm a repressive attitude about sex can have on children (and adults, for that matter). Just read these quotes. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. They were genius for me. Exactly what I needed to hear today.

"What good's an encyclopedia that doesn't answer the most important question in the world?" Damn, I want to know the same thing. This was spoken by a young boy who talked about reading the entire encyclopedia without finding any information about sex, which is what he really wanted to read about. That's a frustrating thing, let me tell you.

"The obsessive way everyone fastens on it you'd think the entire world revolves around the penis and the vagina." Preach it, brother.

"There's something to be ashamed of in having been human without getting to know the most human thing of all." This is so sad. I used to think this, too, back when I thought I was going to die a virgin. But it applies to a lot more than sex (which all of these quotes do, come to think about it).

"I don't know what I've lost..." "Then looking for it won't help." This may be my favorite bit of dialogue in the whole play. The angst-ridden boy talking to the high-spirited girl, and he expresses his frustration and she answers in her matter-of-fact way, speaking one of the greatest truths in the world. Pure genius.

"They needed a scapegoat! They couldn't let accusations to fall on their own heads, so now my child has the misfortune of running afoul of these fogies and I am supposed to finish the work of the hangmen. Heaven forbid." I love this mom (until she becomes a turncoat, but surrounded by such a narrow mindset, it's hard to blame her).

"What can I say to you with an attitude like that? You let yourself be deceived by words." So do I, in more ways than one.

"When we think back in 30 years, to an evening like this, maybe it will seem indescribably beautiful." Ah, young love.

"I wouldn't have known contentment if I hadn't met you." Now this might be young love, but it's one of the most profound statements I've heard about love in general. One of the greatest things about being in love was that it taught me to be content, to be comfortable in my own skin. Of course, you all know that didn't last, but it's what allows me to still look back on those times with a smile today...for once I knew why those damn biblical writers were always going on so much about contentment. It puts you at ease in a way nothing else can, and there's something about knowing that you are valued and cherished that helps you value and maybe even cherish yourself because it helps you see yourself as worthy. Would that I could hold onto that feeling. Perhaps in time, at the end of all my exploring, but at least now I know what I'm looking for, when I didn't before.

"When we look back in 30 years, maybe we'll just make a joke of it, but it's all so beautiful now." Again, young love. But it's pretty profound, when you think about it. We look back and scoff at our young love (as well we should, because it's often immature and flighty and just plain ill-conceived, but at the time, it was beautiful to us, and that feeling is so easily lost in the passage of time when we forget what we ever saw in the object of our affections. It might do us well to remember, even when the feeling itself is gone.

"What keeps me going? I don't even have the strength left to put an end to it. No one ever walked among graves so full of envy." DAMN. Do I EVER relate to this fucking line. I love how he asks this, and I love how he finds the answer eventually at the end (um, not to give away the end, but trust me, I didn't give away much). I know this feeling often, and I keep coming back to the same answers that keep me going, but sometimes it's nice to know I'm not the only one who has felt these feelings (and again another reason why I should have pulled my head out of my ass and discovered this play when I was in college).

"The only sin is ignorance...the only evil is ignorance!" This is so true it hurts.

"We watch the young mistake their timidity for idealism, and the old die of broken hearts before they'll surrender their false superiority." WOW.

"Let's not be sad...it's all so beautiful now." THIS is what I need. Not worrying about tomorrow, or the next day, or even the next minute, but being able to appreciate the beauty in the NOW, even if I know it will pass.

"In years to come, things may go well or badly for me. I may be a different man ten times over, but whatever happens to me, I shall never forget you. I may be an old man with gray hair, but you may still be closer to me than all the women." This reminds me of the words spoken by David (in the bible) about his love for Jonathan:

2 Samuel 1: 26 I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
you were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
more wonderful than that of women.

Most pastors rush to point out that THIS WASN'T GAY THEY WERE JUST FRIENDS GUYS but I don't really care about that. What strikes me is that he was declaring that among all the love he'd ever felt, this love was more wonderful. I know a few people I could say this about, and I've never had OMG SEX with any of them, so I think I know what he was talking about. In point of fact, I think there's a lot of GAY to be found in this passage, but I don't think it's about the gender, it's about the love, and that's what I keep coming back to with this passage because I don't want to let myself miss the point.

So yeah. This play was written almost a hundred years ago (OMG OLDER THAN ME) and it still resonates like it was written yesterday. THAT is good writing, folks. THAT is inspiring. THAT gives me hope. And for that, I'm thankful.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's all hot. Just because I'm not sticking it in there doesn't mean that I don't find it beautiful."

The title of this post is a quote from Adam Lambert in his infamous Rolling Stone article. I read that quote, and I thought it was the most awesome thing OMG EVER, so I wanted to use it somewhere, but the thought crossed my mind that if I did, some of my friends would be pissed off at me. I've been this way all my life, always finding friendships with people who don't respect me, or who put me down all the time, or who just basically treat me like garbage. I don't know why it is. Someone told me that as humans, "we accept the love we think we deserve," and I think that for me, there's a lot of truth in that. Maybe a part of me thinks that I deserve to have friends who cut me off in mid-sentence to mock what I'm saying, or to roll their eyes at me and tell me "that makes no sense" when I speak (even when what I said makes perfect sense, thanks) or who tell me that I look like shit and they don't want to be seen in public with me, or who wait for me to tell a story that I think i s so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes to tell it, and then when I'm done roll their eyes and say "that was stupid." I could go on and on. I seem to have a talent for picking relationships with people who don't respect me (and most of them wouldn't even recognize that they do this if I tried to talk to them about it...I know because I HAVE tried).

Part of being self-aware is realizing that I need to change some things, but the hard part is knowing that I have to work on ME, because I can't change anyone else. I have so many issues that I don't know where to start some days, but until I'm capable of seeing any good in myself, no one else is going to see any good in me, either. So onward I go.

I wrote this message for a friend, and I posted it on a message board awhile ago, but just to remind myself (and because maybe some of you might want to hear it, as well) I'm posting it here, too. I love you guys.

Someone posted this passage from the children's story "The Velveteen Rabbit" the other day, and I haven't read or thought about that story in years, but when I read these words again, they hit me so hard that I cried, because they describe me so well:


"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very nappy. But these things don't matter at all. Because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."


So I was thinking about this the other night, in the midst of about a week without sleep (and with very little hope...it's been a dark week) and these words came to mind, so I started praying them:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Recently, I've started praying the serenity prayer at work. Like I said, I haven't slept in days, and I'm so stressed out and such that it seems that drinking and drugs and razor blades have never been as tempting to me as they are right now. I was thinking how weak I was that the temptation had never seemed to bother me this much in the past, and I'd never been overcome with it like I seem to be right now. Then last night it hit me...of COURSE it seems like the temptation is stronger now than it was before. Before, I always gave in. Now, I don't do those things anymore, so I know what it feels like to struggle against something that used to rule my life so strongly. It seems harder now because I'm fighting, and fighting is always harder than giving in.

I actually cried, I was so relieved to be able to see it that way. I have such a hard time seeing myself in a positive light and seeing myself as strong, because even typing those words seems alien to me. I'm not strong. I'm not anything good or noble or righteous, not the way I should be, because I'm surrounded by tangible reminders of every ugly failure I've ever had. But the thing is, these scars make me who I am. I shouldn't have made them, it was wrong, it was bad, blah blah blah, but even if it was wrong, they're here now, a part of me, and scarred skin may be ugly, but it's also stronger than regular skin, because something about the process of knitting itself back together makes it tougher than it was in the past. I may be ugly, but these marks show that I have lived, and that I'm still here to tell the tale.

So I thought about the things I can change, like my attitude, the things I can't change, like the nasty comments and opinions of others, and how the hardest thing for me has always been knowing the difference between the two, because I want so badly for other people to like me and see something good and worthy in me that I always think if I try hard enough, I will be good and be righteous and people will see that and finally, I will be good enough. It never works out that way, though, and because of this, every negative opinion hurts that much more because it reminds me again how I've failed and how I'll never be good enough. But there again, that's looking at things backwards...if nothing else, people's negative comments should remind me that no matter what I do, someone somewhere is going to disapprove, and I can't live for the opinions of others, I have to live for myself, because I'm the only one who has to be around myself 24/7 for the rest of my life. And as I was musing on the words of this prayer, I started praying it, over and over (I do that sometimes, pray the "Hail Mary" or the "Our Father" because those are the ones I can remember, and they help me focus on God and keep going) and I realized that "The Serenity Prayer" is probably the best thing I could pray to myself at work and throughout my life, when I'm surrounded by other people and their opinions, things I can't change, and motivated by the desire to be whole and accepted more than any other thing. If nothing else, God accepts me where I am, and I'm doing everything I can to put one foot in front of the other and keep going and survive, and I'm feeling every sling and arrow because I don't have drugs or alcohol or anything else to numb the pain like I had in the past. I'm realizing how much pain hurts when you have to actually FEEL your emotions. But this is good. It means I'm still alive, still becoming. All things new.

Coming Out

Someone asked me to post my "coming out" story here, since I keep going on and on about how mine is different. It is. I'm not like most people; I can't say "well I realized that I was attracted to people of the same sex at X age" because for me, things didn't work out like that. Someone asked me to write "What the letters GLBTACQI Mean to You" and this is what came out. I apologize if it's incoherent (and it's going to have more profanity than I typically use in this blog, because it's been the sort of week when I use profanity quite a bit).

Yeah, so when I was younger, I realized that I never fit in and never belonged anywhere, and I blame my mom for a lot of that, because she never let me go to school or get out of the house and socialize and be around other people and learn their language. So anyway, I felt like an outcast, and when I was fast becoming a rabid reader in my pre-teens, I read every book I could possibly find about gay people. I figured I wasn't one of them (since, you know, I didn't want to have sex with women, but then I didn't even know how women HAD sex, and I didn't want to have sex with anyone, even though sex dominated my thoughts as a kid, it was a skewed view of sex as pain and degradation, so even though I felt like it was a part of me, I didn't want any part of it) but anyway, yes, I figured I wasn't gay, but I figured that everyone hated gay people and everyone hated me, too, so we had something in common, so I should read about them. So I did. that's when I discovered Harvey Milk, and how he was the first openly gay person elected to US public office (other gay people had come out and told people they were gay after they'd been elected, but Harvey Milk was elected when everyone knew he was gay, meaning he didn't hide it but he told everyone about it because he was loud and mouthy but most people seemed to like him anyway). I read about him, and I read his speeches, and I became obsessed with him ("yes you did," said Lillian's friends list, "and we're all still paying for that, so many years later") because he talked about hope like it was a real, tangible thing that could keep people going when they had nothing else, and I had nothing else (I wasn't even allowed to leave the house) so long before I discovered Jesus, I discovered Harvey Milk, and I tried to have hope that someday, I would be able to break free from my prison (because that's what my home life was) and live. It took me years, but I managed to do just that, and forgive me a moment of blasphemy, but I'd have done well to hang on more to the message I got from Harvey Milk than most of the messages I got from church, because churches fucked me over and fucked me up royally for years. But anyway, gay people were always important in my life, so it bothered me somewhere deep down knowing that I was supposed to believe that they were going to hell (well, if they had sex and were happy, they were going to hell...if they stayed celibate and beat themselves up over every homosexual thought, they could stand a chance of being righteous one day maybe if God chose to love them more than they deserved or something).

In college I really desperately wanted to go to the gay group on campus, but I was too afraid to go...I went to a few meetings, but I was so messed up that it didn't have much of an effect. The only thing that wore down the stupid walls I had built in my head was years and years of being around gay people (because I stand by this: I always did love them and never thought they should have to change, even when I tried to change myself in later years, even when I beat myself up for my sinful thoughts, even when I hated myself, I never hated them, and I hated myself for not being able to think what they did was sick and wrong like I was supposed to think...how fucked up is THAT?) And after years of being around gay people (and probably convincing every single person in my church that I was gay because I look back on my pictures from back then and I dressed like the biggest fucking dyke I've ever seen...but that was more to cover my body and not ever cause a man to look at me and think about sex, because that was a sin and that would send me to hell...just ask my church...) one day, after I'd walked away from the church and started kind of seeing this guy, I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I'd seen a million times before, when suddenly it hit me that I had a crush on one of the girls in the episode. Just like that. It never occurred to me before, but I think that's because I spent so much time in a screwed-up mindset about sex that I never thought there was anything positive about sex...I thought about it all the time, and I had graphic pictures in my head that nothing could erase, but I knew next to nothing about what sex really was and what it really could be...does that make sense? I saw that I had a guy who found me attractive, and suddenly I stopped thinking I was ugly and sinful and evil, and I stopped seeing my sexuality as something ugly and evil, too. So it wasn't until I had a guy who was sexually attracted to me, a guy I liked who was nice to me, that I could begin to see anything positive about sex, and it was then that I was able to open up to my crushy-gushy feelings about another girl (yes, I'm saying that it wasn't until I was in a sexual relationship with a guy that I was able to see sex with a girl as a good thing, yes, I know how stupid that sounds, this is why I've never said it before, no, I don't know why I'm saying it now...wait, yes I do...blame Dani).

So anyway, after this guy broke up with me, I got my first crush on a girl who I knew in real life, and then I had my first relationship with a girl, and even though it was messed up, I wouldn't trade it for anything, because it made me realize that there was always something missing when I had sex with a guy (I liked looking at him, I still like looking at guys and especially at naked guys but when it comes to actually having sex, I most certainly enjoy having sex with women more). So that's when I finally realized that I don't just empathize with the letters on that alphabet soup list, I'm ONE OF THEM.

That's the long answer to the question, of course. The short answer is that "GLBTACQI" means to me that we have WAY TOO MANY letters in our acronym.

This is the Way the World Ends

So some of you wanted to know what's going on with me. Well, for starters, my old campus minister gave me a ride home from the store today.

Those of you who remember my old campus minister might be cringing right now. You'd be right to do so.

I shouldn't have taken the ride, but it was raining, and...yeah, I shouldn't have taken the ride. Pneumonia is better than this. Still, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

His kids were in the back seat (the two oldest, Nate and Sam, and man, they've grown...they're so cute!) so he couldn't get too in-depth, but I know this drill. I used to meet with him for "leadership training sessions" and we'd run into people he's met before, and he'd talk with them, all nice, and as soon as they walked away he told me everything that made them leave the ministry, and all the sad sins that ruled their lives since they left...so I'm sure he had some choice words for his kids after I left. But while we were in the car he just asked me how I was doing, and he said he's seen me around town, and it's sad for him to see people who used to be active in the ministry now involved in things that could damage their souls and the souls of those around them, and he remembered what I was like back when the campus ministry was the center of my life, and he hoped I'd return to God. I said that I was happier and healthier now than I'd been in college. Then he just asked me where I worked, and the conversation was over.

So why am I sitting here seething now?

Because I gave SO MUCH of myself to that church, and I got so little in return. I got insulted, told that I wasn't a good witness, told that I shouldn't cry in church because it ruined my witness, that there was something wrong with me, and that he didn't want new people coming into the church to see me. And even after all that, I still stayed and served and tried to change whatever about me wasn't worthy. I never quite made it.

Well then the straw came, the proverbial one that breaks the camel's back, and some of my friends might remember it (my friend Rachel should remember it, since she's the one who woke me up and made me see how bad things had gotten the night I left the church...I don't know if I ever told her that). See, the campus minister kept giving sermons about how he was proud of this guy in our church for "sharing the truth" and how for the first time in his campus ministry career, he found a good reason to read the student paper. You know why? Because this guy, Aaron, was the editor of the student paper that year, and he had badly written an editorial about why gay marriage was wrong, and suddenly every week, the campus minister found time to have "let's all praise Aaron" sessions, and I was getting tired of it.

One week, someone from my hall, an RA that I knew named Zach, wrote a letter into the paper saying that he didn't appreciate the "anti-gay marriage" rhetoric, because he was gay, and it wasn't just that the article was wrong, it wasn't written very well and the arguments in it were stupid (which they were...gay people can't bear children, gay people don't have sex the way most people do, the bible says it's an abomination and Romans says it's unnatural, blah blah blah please shoot me now). Aaron wrote a "response" in his "letter from the editor" section about how it's sad that people don't want to hear the truth, but that's not his fault, and if they have a problem, it's a problem with God, not with him. So I sat there thinking every week, "Dammit...I hope no one who's gay is sitting here listening to this, because they might think God doesn't love them" (yeah, I was thinking that, never underestimate the power of denial). But it ate away at me, and I didn't say anything, and then I finally wrote a letter to the editor myself, saying that it was one thing to share an opinion, but it was quite another to spout off without any love or respect for those on the other side of the issue. Aaron called me at home after he got that letter, saying it's unfair for me to attack the paper that way, and maybe I needed to talk to my campus minister if I was having problems with God's word. That night, I talked with some of my friends (Dani, Rachel, and Matt) and that's when Rachel told me that she hoped no gay people went to that church, because if they did, they must feel totally alone and unloved right now.

THAT hurt. I thought about that, and turned it around in my head, all through the church service that night. I thought about how before, the sermons were just hurting me, and I'd been hurt enough by this church not to really care anymore, but now I could see the impact their words and message had on other people, too. Zach was someone I really liked and respected, and he deserved better than that. I didn't want him to think everyone in the church felt the way Aaron did. That day, my letter was published in the paper (in spite of what Aaron said in his call) so I was prepared for someone to say something nasty to me at church, but no one did, no one even came up and said "hi" to me, and I had to hold back tears the whole time, because I knew what I had to do. So finally, after the service was over, I told my campus minister I didn't know if it was healthy for us to focus on "Gay = BAD" so much in every single sermon, because it's like we were losing focus on everything else (like, y'know, the gospel and other unimportant things like that). He replied that this WAS an important issue, people didn't realize how damaging homosexuality could be, even if it's genetic, that's all the more reason to fight against the temptation, gays are like alcoholics so why don't alcoholics get a parade. So I threw some really weak arguments at him (let him come at me today, I have way better things to say, but back then, I had nothing, and I ended up shooting blanks at every person who fired at me...I still have the scars, and I bet they don't have a goddamned thing). I told him that I don't think it's helpful to compare alcoholism and homosexuality, since even sociologists recognize that associating sexual orientation with sin can be harmful, and even some Christians believe that perhaps the bible verses used to condemn homosexuality could be interpreted differently, and that even if people aren't "born gay" that doesn't mean they shouldn't have equal rights, because people aren't "born Christian" but our rights are protected...

And he just said, "Lillian, it's sad what some people choose to believe" and walked away.

End scene.

Kind of anticlimactic for a conversation that put an end to five years of my serving in and giving all my extra money to his church, don't you think? Is this the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper? I thought I'd at least earned some yelling and screaming, for Christ's sake.

That's how it ended, and this is where it stands now, I suppose. I'm better off when I'm not in an environment like that, because I'll always be a freak no matter where I am, but it still stings (especially when something opens up the wound this way, and in a small town it's hard to avoid running into people who hate me...I know they still hate me even when I can't hear them saying it, but I can at least PRETEND it doesn't exist when I don't have to look at it).

Sigh.

I think a long bath is in order after I finish my laundry. Something to calm me down. I get my test tomorrow, so we'll find out what my cancer is up to in a few weeks. I'll just keep on trudging, I guess.

This is Not You

In further "Synchro-blog" news, I feel like I didn't address this issue in my earlier post so I wanted to do that now. I wanted to share these three images with you. The first two images are of protesters who stood outside the fence at the Grand Rapids Pride festival on June 20th, 2009. The third image is of some similar protesters who stood at the end of the parade route at Lansing Pride just a week earlier. For me, seeing these signs and hearing the things these people were saying through their bullhorns was saddening. I didn't come to Pride because I have any desire to be militant or yell at anyone or "push my lifestyle" on anyone. I came because in my small town, it's hard to find other people who are like me, and sometimes I need that to remind myself that I'm not alone. My "lifestyle" is pretty boring. I go to work, some home, watch The Golden Girls, eat, sleep, play with my cat, watch movies, and read books. That's how I spend most of my time. That I also happen to be in love with a woman is something that certainly makes me stand out in a lot of ways, but when people tell me that they abhor my sinful lifestyle, I have to wonder what they think I DO all day long that's so sinful.

By the same token, I look at these pictures, and I realize that my friends may be very different from me. Some of them disagree very vehemently with the fact that I do indeed love another woman, but regardless of this, MY FRIENDS ARE NOT THE PEOPLE IN THESE PICTURES. Even though we disagree strongly about scripture and how the bible should be interpreted and how it should be applied and what it might or might not be saying, my friends are not the people standing there holding these signs. Too often when we GLBT people complain about Christians, we act as though everyone we're talking about is holding one of these signs and yelling at us through a bullhorn, when in reality, that's not true. We can't ask them to see us as normal people and cry out that they can't put us in a box while at the same time we try to put THEM into a box. It just doesn't work that way. We have to respect them, even if we can't respect some of their views. My friends do this for me. We disagree on a great many things, but I love them, and they love me, and I know this because of their actions. Like the song says, "They'll know we are Christians by our love," and I know that these people love me because they have been there to listen and support and encourage me, and I know it's hard sometimes for them to do that, because they disagree with a lot of what I say. Before I begin to run around demanding acceptance from them, I need to love them even when I disagree with what THEY say. It's difficule (for me and for them) but we have to TRY.

When I was a kid in Vacation Bible School, I learned this song. The refrain goes like this:

"You can have a big box, you can have a little box, but if your god is in the box, your god is very small. You can have a plain box, you can have a fancy box, but if you think that god is in the box, you don't know god at all. you don't know god at all."

I'm smart enough now to at least know that God is never in the box (even when we take great care to fashion a box, with bright edges and narrow definitions and scripture references to back up everything we say, God isn't in that box). I need to stop putting people into that box, too. I wouldn't want them to do that to me.

For those of you who see pictures like the ones at the beginning of this entry and you want to scream and pull your hair out and shout "That's not me!" It's ok. I know it's not you. I know these people don't represent you or your views, and I'll try very hard to keep writing and keep speaking to you with that in mind.