November 17 2008

Seven years.

I've been a self-admitted out homo for seven years today. And right now, I don't see anything to celebrate in that.

Being honest with myself and others - that was what it was all about. I believed so strongly that truth was the most important thing in life, that honesty was a force to be reckoned with. I thought I would change what 'gay' meant in New Zealand, I would reconcile homosexuality with faith and spirituality. I would prove that it was possible to be both Christian and gay. I guess I was hoping to change Christianity too.

But I couldn't do it, could I? Trying to make sense of the Bible's stance on homosexuality, I could come to no other conclusion but that the Biblical writers didn't know what they were talking about, and that actually, the truth wasn't really so hard to see. The Biblical writers were just bigots, pure and simple.

It didn't stop there though. I found I could not be selective about what I took from the Bible, it was either all inspired or none of it was. I discarded Christianity, and it was one of the most painful things I've ever had to do. I felt robbed of the world I had invested so much of my life in, my whole purpose and meaning. I guess I've been grieving ever since.

Certainly no 'family,' bological or otherwise, has lived up to the love and community I experienced with the Church of Christ. With my spirituality in tatters, I threw myself into the gay community, hoping to find the same sense of belonging. I didn't find it - I was largely ignored because I was neither rich enough or pretty enough.

But I didn't give up on the gay community, again, I sought to reform, to guide, to support and encourage. I became deeply involved in caring for and protecting queer people - I joined the Wellington Gay Helpline, helped with the Newcomers' support group for gay men, campaigned for gay rights with the Civil Union Bill and wrote to newspapers, even contributing regular articles for Deviant, the weekly gay page in the Massey Student newspaper.

Maybe I got so involved in supporting the queer community because I myself was in need of that support. I always seem to be outside the norm, even within the queer community. My committment to honesty has seen me try to find responsible alternatives to the world of nominal monogamy, first looking at open relationships, then polyamory. I've renamed my sexual and gender identity to have more integrity with who I am, from gay to bisexual to queer, and now genderqueer or possibly even transgender. And it seems that my committment to honesty and integrity actually hurts me more than it helps.

I'm lonely. I am so overwhelmingly, desperately lonley that I spent last night, before this anniversary, contemplating suicide, and actually seeking advice on how to go about it. This isn't a new thing either, most of this year I've felt completely alone, utterly hopeless. What good is polyamory if nobody will love you in return? Why be open about your capacity to love multiple people if not even one person will hold your hand?

And this is the great irony of my life. I've constructed my whole abult life around promoting love and letting people be sexual in whatever way is most true for them, and yet I personally hate my romantic and sexual impulses. I want to mutilate my genitals more than what my parents already have by circumcising me, I want to tear at and scar my body to hide the physical scars left by my ambivalence toward food ands exercise, to hide my ugliness. I want to take apill to forever erase my passions, but more tah that I just want to leave the world I can never be part of - I want to just die.

Because this is me, I'm an all or nothing sort of person. If I can't love you, and that person, and that one, then I want to love no one. If nobody wants to have sex with me, I want to be completely invisible and blind, so that I see no one and no one sees me. I either can't stop eating or I don't eat at all.

Why am I talking about this? Why haven't I just swallowed a bottle of bleach or slit my wrists?

Because that's also who I am - I'm scared. I'm not scared of what's on the Other Side, because I no longer believe there is one. Death is just a blessed release, the end, the light going out. But I'm scared of getting it wrong, of failing and ending up crippled or incarcerated. I'm scared of the pain. I wish someone would do this with me, or for me.

I await oblivion.