The worst day
Yesterday, I had maybe the worst day of my life? Up there, at least. I have spent what feels like the full 30 years trying to fit into what I was born to be, straight, stable, unoffensive, unobtrusive, taking up as little space as possible, arguing as little as possible. And all it got me was my grandmother quoting the bible telling me how gay people are going to hell, that salvation isn't open to them, that it's sad and she prays for them. That if I wanted to talk to her about anything she would still love me. Are you gay? she asks me, after I've run from the room and had a breakdown, screaming and sobbing in her garage. I've never dated a woman, haven't slept with anyone because I find myself so disgusting I don't see how anyone else couldn't, and still. This is where it got me.
And then later, when my sister hasn't picked up, and I just needed to talk to someone as I'm crying at a gas station, I felt like I had to call my mother, a woman I knew would love me but be ultimately unsupportive and condescending, who would make it about herself, because I had failed to create a community for myself outside of my immediate family. I realized this was what real friends were for, and I hadn't maintained those relationships. And I was right. No matter how much hope I had inside that she would think differently if it was her own daughter, and even though I had tried to kill that hope dead, when I felt like I had to come out as bi, because what if my grandmother called them and tried to blow my life up in order to "save" me, she couldn't handle it. She lived down to my expectations and disappointed my hopes for her. She implied I'd been influenced by the liberal media to feel this way. She couldn't even say it. And she made it about herself and her own issues with her mother-in-law.
She tried to help the best she could, and that still involved discussing it with my father without my permission. She didn't technically out me, and I understand and even agree with what she did, but I had still asked her not to.
All of this to say, I will no longer be afraid of my own shadow. I am maybe the most inoffensive person I know, truly neutral in action if not in thought, and it still led to this. No more. I will live for myself, I will develop a community around me that loves who I am now, and not our shared blood. And if I have to lose others on the way, so be it. I will not apologize to people for having to spend time with me, I will not assume no one wishes to talk to me if not forced to. I will not apologize for my existence anymore, in action or thought.