11.26.2008

Reflections::

I’m a child; I am naïve and ill-equipped. I look at myself and hold my maturity at a higher level than my appearance can reconcile. My face is white, porcelain smooth, eyes deep, dark, green and yellow in the center, black on the edges, hair a strawberry -caramel contrasting very fast with the illuminating white of my skin. Tall, lanky in all sorts and not a bit shy of confidence—let me tell you my story.

Homosexuality. It consumes my whole being. I am a gay woman and I love it, I’m no flamer, not an advocate; I’m really comfortable being who I am. And you know, growing up gay is probably one of the hardest adventures to set out a quest on. Around the age of 5 I realized I wasn’t like my best friend Meredith and related more to my guy friends Kyle, Dwight and Chad. SURE I loved the Barbies and Cabbage Patch and Flintstones character dolls but I also loved bugs, dirt, dogs and trampolines. And even in the Barbie realm Skipper and Barbie were lovers and Ken was the jealous by-stander, Ken and Barbie NEVER belonged together and when the manufacturers created the babies Ken was then of importance while the girls still made hot, hot love secretly. The Bratz dolls were the same way, except the fact that there were 5 of them, they all seemed to relate in appearance to the Pussycat Dolls, and they all seemed very, if not seductively close in friendship; ;]

My first girl encounter was with a beautiful girl named Stephanie. We were both 9 I think, it’s hard to remember ages between 8 and 16 because they were all awkward, but non-the-less we were 9 and curious. In simple terms, we touched and experimented and that’s all there really is to it. I don’t think I loved her in the sexual manner but overtime I let myself believe that I loved her for her heart and she loved me for mine. She died as the victim of a driver under the influence of marijuana four, almost five months ago to this date. She was always kindhearted and caring for others and that’s how she went out of this world. I always thought I would be able to call her up some day and joke about how little and silly we were when we were really close and getting that phone call on July 3rd really proved reality to me. It was like a smack to the face. I had talked to her just the day before while we planned what we would do that weekend because I was coming into town for July 4th. We had planned to see a movie and go to China Inn, Steph, Lex, Dylan and I were all going to catch up with one another and instead I was holding Dylan while Lex was holding me at the candle lit vigil and at her funeral. In the end we pushed the plans through for her. We’ll never forget her. When I was 10 or 11 years old my family moved from Missouri to Colorado and at that time I never thought about my sexuality, I was just Me and trying to survive the bitchiness of pre-teen years and all the lovely little gifts that come with it. That’s when I met my best friend who still remains in that position of honor to this very day. We met in the rain and her name was Shannon. She was my only beacon of hope at that time because when I look back on that year it was only Me and Her, she and I, Shan and Bek. She is the straightest girl I have ever met and I am the lesbian-est girl she has ever met, therefore, somehow, we go well together like pink and purple. Before she knew I was a lesbian she used to push her nose up to any gay woman but she was always fine with a gay man. This always made me nervous about coming out to her later on when I was definitely sure of it.

The next year I moved to Texas where I have been for the past 5 years. I’ve done most of my growing here and it’s been the hardest place to do it. I moved here convincing myself that I was straight because everyone at that age saw homosexuality as taboo just like tampons took a girls virginity, if you get the gist of the INTENSITY of that bias [haha]. I was to the point where moving year after year had pushed me into a hard shell of secrecy and no one ever knew what I was thinking, thus I gained the nickname ‘Enigma’ from the majority of my class. Later my guy friends told me that everyone hated me because I had the most gorgeous hair that was never colored, cut or straightened and all of the guys were baffled by my ability to blend in and shelter myself but still stick out like no other girl had done before. That was eighth grade. High school was a whole turn around for me, I was introduced to girls that liked girls and were open about it and there was the key that unlocked my chains. Kate was a very promiscuous straight girl that ‘simply’ found girls really fucking sexy (in her words, not mine), she had an obsession with Paris Hilton and burlesque strip tease so our friendship was established. She was never a girlfriend of any sort but there was always some kind of physical attraction that was never acted on.

And then came my sophomore year! I pushed through the whole year until the last month when a girl took all of my inhibitions away, we dated for 9 months, and she is now my example of a girl that I will never date again. Cheated, abused, used, and degraded me is all she did or did to me. November of 2007 I came out to my parents, I was a junior and ready to accept myself for who I had always been. It was time to let the superiors know. There was never any real plan that I ever came up with, it just clicked inside me that I would do it then, I regret not remembering the day I did it now but all in all the deed is done and everything is smooth sailing now. The initial reaction was heartrending though, I told my mom first in a gush of tears and she wasn’t really surprised. She told me she’d always known somehow and she wasn’t sure about its morality. She branded it in my heart that “it wasn’t normal” based on her religious views and at that time, her lacking knowledge of reality. She was hurt and cried because she thought I would never have her grandchildren, and that’s a whole other story to get to later. My dad was upset for the same reason but explained to me that they both accepted me. He voiced his fears very adamantly about how it would be hard for me to be accepted in society right away or at all. Over the past year they’ve grown tremendously having joined PFLAG (parents and friends of lesbians and gays), supporting me by taking me to YFT (youth first texas) meetings where transgender, bisexual, gay, straight and lesbian teens get together with two other adult sponsors to talk about any issue in their households regarding their sexual orientation or identity. My mom has even helped me and another lesbian, Lauren, start our school districts first ever gay-straight alliance. It just proves how you cant judge a book by its cover because I grew up knowing my parents to be very conservative and outspoken against gay rights when in the end they only feared them and didn’t understand them at all. I think by being their gay daughter I’ve taught them something more valuable than anything a school can teach; I have taught them ultimate acceptance. Not just in a homosexual way but in any lifestyle. They have broadened their humility and graphic designing brains to a level that most post depression babies never know. I am proud to be their daughter, I am proud to be their gay daughter…because I have helped them.

And currently my life is a rotating wheel of horrible girls that like to rip my heart to shreds slowly. I’ve decided that I wont date until I’m out of high school and when I do, it will be with someone worth dating, not the heartless girls from my ‘past’. But in the meantime I will flirt with every beautiful girl I come across and relish every moment of it. The story will continue later…

1 discussions:

KayakMango said...

i can hear you tlaking this to me, i can see you playing with barbies and torturing ken by making him watch. this may seem unfinished but it is because your life is not yet complete