It gets better

I’m not gay.
I’m just different.
I’d say I only experienced a very moderate amount of bullying and teasing at school.
But for a small farm school in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, we had our fair share of freaks & geeks. And gay and lesbian teens. Some of them were my friends. Hiding out together in creative writing and drama clubs, we carved out a little safe place.
I couldn’t guess what happened during the rest of the day for some of my friends. For me, early in high school I was eschewed as a nerd, a freak, ass-kisser, brown-noser, and suck up. Once I started dating, I was mostly referred to as a slut.
I was more or less oblivious to a lot of the commentary, since I didn’t have that many friends to feed me the rumor mill. And the things I did hear, while stinging, I managed to learn to disregard. I was a smart kid, and I got along with my teachers very well, which allowed me a lot of privileges (in that limited high school world). And I was very flirtatious, touchy, and I had sex.
All and all I escaped relatively unscathed.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of kids who don’t.
The media has been full of blips of kids, gay, lesbian, or just different, who have taken their own lives because of bullying and tormenting from their peers and lack of support from those who are supposed to care for them. My heart breaks for these kids.
At a very terrible and low point in my life, I did contemplate its end. It’s not a secret, and my amazing family is the reason I am here, and whole. And happy.
The point is, there are places where bigotry and narrow-mindedness don’t exist. Sometimes you can go there, sometimes you have to make them for yourself. And after you find a place where you can love yourself, and surround yourself with people who love you, it gets better.
Writer Dan Savage has begun an amazing project of compiling inspirational stories of men and women (and everything in between) telling their stories of how their lives have gotten better even though at some point they thought that it never would. Check them out at http://www.itgetsbetterproject.com/
Also, there is an amazing resource for young adults (or anyone) who is feeling lost, depressed, or suicidal. Apparently these people have been helping kids since I was in high school, but they’ve gotten a fresh boost of publicity and attention along with the deaths of the kids they’re trying to help.http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

Take a look, remember that the only way to end bullying and intolerance is to lead and love by example, and help end this tragedy.

The Rules

I’m not sure at what point in my life it occurred to me that I don’t seem to process things the same way that most people (appear) to.
The end results, or mid-results as they may be, are shaping up pretty much the same as the socially accepted construct, but I honestly feel that I’ve gotten here on my own terms.
There are milestones and guidelines set out by the great ol’ American Dream, regarding everything from dating and sex, to marriage and family, and beyond. There are norms like monogamy, feminine nurturing, and all sorts of things that go along with settling down and being domesticated. Some of these are relics from the 1950’s but even with women aligning themselves under the Feminist Cause, much remains the same, except women spending more time in the workplace (and still fighting to get equal pay.)
And in a world where the most common advice I get for my upcoming wedding is “Don’t do it,” it’s no wonder I am still working on writing my own definitions of what my marriage can and will be.
A lot of people have told me over the years that I ‘date like a man,’ insomuch as I don’t have a natural gravitation between sex and love. I think as a teenager, I wanted to believe there was, and when I was very much in love with a very sweet guy, I said and did things that fell well outside the acceptable standards for even a teenager. I spent a lot of time being ashamed about the things in my head and what my body felt.
When I left for college, I took advantage of the opportunity to redefine myself. Plus in college, it seemed more acceptable to be a ‘sexually liberated female.’ On the surface at least. I still struggled a lot with depression and how to define my wants (a family and kids) with my needs (emotional and physical companionship). As I got myself out of the funk, I started to accept that one person might not be able to meet all my needs, and my wants would just have to work themselves out in time. It seemed logical that if I couldn’t sustain a monogamous relationship, who was I to think I deserved the chance to raise a child.
I feel like I’m being vague enough to give off the perception that I cheat, which, physically speaking, is untrue. I’ve lived, more or less, under pretty strict guidelines of ending things when they don’t seem to be working. The few exceptions were by far the worst circumstances I ever put myself in. And the day that I found myself breaking up with/moving out from said relationship and simultaneously hearing him scream at me that he had been planning to propose, I knew that I was not cut out for doing things in a normal fashion.
So I dated, mostly without emotional attachment. I had great friends whom I loved, and all those elements combined, I was started to feel whole.
Enter Brandon. From the first day we met, he has challenged me to re-evaluate opening myself to things I’d written off. He has become my favorite companion, and our wants follow a similar strain. He has helped me break down walls of self sufficiency and even a little hidden distrust for his gender. And so when he proposed to me almost a year ago, I wholly and gladly said yes.
Basically from then on, I’ve been in brand new and very scary territory. Even before our engagement I’d known how much I wanted to be with him, but I never cared much at all for the wedding day. I welcomed the idea of being married, but having witnessed many close friend and family members get married, I felt sick at the idea of planning a wedding. Months before he proposed I started trying to prepare myself to face the dragon. I knew as much as I wanted things to be quick and painless, Brandon has a wicked traditional streak that meant we were going for everything from the poufy white dress to dinner and dancing with all our friends and family in attendance.
So far, I’ve been working it out. I still feel sick thinking about all the money we’re doling out for this blip of a day on the grande radar. Especially when I think about how all that money could be spent getting us closer to being able to start a family.
I don’t even think that the term “baby crazy” fully encompasses how I’m feeling these days about this whole matter. Before Brandon, I had started to write off the possibility that such a blessed and monumental event would ever happen for me. And now, I look out at the next few years with utter dread over my 30th birthday and whether or not a healthy family is still in the cards.
Yes, I am fully aware that 30 isn’t that old. If you’re perfectly healthy and have been so your whole life. But I’m not; I’ve struggled with my weight for almost a decade to varying degrees. I’m back towards the healthier side of things, but still feel that I have a long way to go.
And I’m aware that babies and children have the capacity to fully exhaust a woman of only 20 years. I’m not so naive as to think I still have that same energy and vigor.
So all of this makes me cringe to think of waiting another day, let alone year, let alone 3-5 that Brandon speaks of, before starting to think about conceiving a child. It rattles me to the core, frankly. And when I try to focus my attention on more present things, the wedding financials seem to further irritate my already fried sensibilities.
All of this finally seemed to overflow last night on our way home from Josh & Madeline’s (beautiful!) wedding. Part of me feels like an ungrateful selfish bitch who should be content to have the true and unconditional love of such a great man, who is willing to take on my own past mistakes and messiness in order to have that family that I dream of, at a date to be determined, when it makes budgetary sense. And part of me wonders why we should spend a small fortune on this 30 second blip of a ceremony while my ovaries are already plotting their own demise?!?
Clearly I’m overwrought with my own emotions, but no matter how much I tell myself that fact, tears don’t stop welling up in the corners of my eyes. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m not even convinced there is an answer to be had. For him, the wedding is pretty much as important as it gets, and for me, I’m clearly obsessed with having a family and being the best mother possible.
So now I’m utterly lost in my head, replaying every choice I’ve ever made, wondering which ones I could have made differently to avoid this grief. I wonder what is broken in my head to not be convinced that what has been offered to me is enough. And most of all I worry about hurting the one perfect thing I have going for me.

a philosophy on crushing

It’s shamefully embarrassing: my first recollection of something resembling a crush was on one Michael W. Smith.
It’s true, but thankfully I’ve moved on since then.
Probably my longest lasting celebrity crush was on Ethan Hawke. I was minimally heartbroken when he married Uma, but sadder still when they separated.
I guess you could say I was always boy-crazy.
My first reciprocated affection came in first grade when James and I would sit in the back of the reading rug and hold hands. I can’t even really remember his face now; just a warm feeling of doing something sweet that people would tell me not to do.
I crushed many a-time after that. Starting in 4th grade it got bad, an in middle school it got worse. I remember writing love letters to Ryan after a summer of drama classes and making googly eyes at each other, but nothing else came of it. Well that’s not true. I was extremely jealous to find he’d taken an interest in a sort of “frienemy” but that too passed so quickly.
I crushed hard on Darin from youth group… I think it had something to do with summer camp, but when I realized that the affection would never be returned, I found another blond haired, blue eyed boy pining after me.
He was to be my first kiss, one of many. You could probably say that Matt and I learned the definition of “making out” during those blissful weeks. I don’t remember how it ended, but it did, of course. And I can’t recall anything significant until high school (though I’m sure there were hundred’s more minutes spent wondering if someone could like me).
Then of course things got serious. Crushing quickly turned to lusting and all kinds of getting into trouble with the parents. Sex was now on the menu and crushing more or less became obsolete.
I guess that’s not entirely true. Maybe a crush and lust are more interchangeable than we think. To me, I might crush on someone I find attractive who also appears to be kind in some way. And in general, I would more or less lust a bit after the same kind of person. I dare not get into the semantics of “why.” Because really, who knows? You can talk pheromones and genetics and relationships with parents till you’re blue in the face, but attraction is attraction.
In the end, I have to say, I still find myself crushing on Brandon from time to time. I don’t think that really played much of a roll in how we came together though. I can’t even remember those first few days of trepidation and excitement, and yes I suppose lust. And it grew from there.
Dissecting all of these moments in my life really don’t lead me to any one conclusion.
Other than:
I was one silly girl.

Still am.

“I love you”

I heard this song the other day… something about loving someone you don’t really know… or thinking you love someone and then finding out you don’t really know them at all.
Kind of an interesting idea. I suppose it’s all dependent on what kind of love you’re talking about, and then how you individually define it. It also brings to mind what it means to say you love someone now more than ever. That original love wasn’t insufficient in any way, before, was it? Not in the least, of course.
How strange.
I guess it’s important to also mention that whether or not a relationship last isn’t even based entirely on love. There are so many extenuating circumstances; and like it or not, we move through our lives alone. We are ultimately accountable for our choices, our feelings and thoughts. It’s easy to say some things can’t be helped. At the outset, that’s probably true. But how we let those things govern the future becomes our responsibility whether we like it or not.
I see people at perilous points in their lives, gifted with either too little joy or too many opportunities, and both bring strain on their relationships with various loved ones. It’s hard to be a witness to it, and to have no valid advice to offer. Hopefully just being here will be enough.