Danny's Angry Letter

[Submitted to CHAFF and published 12th October 09]

Leah was smart, beautiful, hilarious, cheeky, warm, friendly, generous, outgoing, popular and passionate. She was also gay, and very recently she committed suicide. Her community is devastated, we miss her terribly, and we’re struggling to come to grips with what happened, searching for answers to heal our broken hearts and finding few. I suspect it will be a long time before our hearts heal.

Bernie was gentle, witty, considerate, daring, charming, fun-loving and funny. He too was gay, and he killed himself a couple of months ago. His friends are still reeling from the shock, and grieving the loss.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in New Zealand and around the world are disproportionately represented in suicide statistics. We are more than three times as likely to commit suicide as our heterosexual peers. We live in a world with few visible role models, we often grow up always looking over our shoulders to make sure we’re not being noticed, laughed at, jeered at and threatened. We sometimes experience complete rejection from lifelong friends and from our families when we finally try living honestly and openly as ourselves, and in some towns and rural areas we have no one to share our struggles with. And sometimes, we are the victims of horrific violent assaults.

We live in a world that tells us we’re pathetic, sick, unwanted, un-thought-of, unimportant. We hear you, Girl in the Library, when you gossip with your friends and you laugh about some guy you know, calling him a ‘fucking faggot.’ We hear you, Dude on the Bus, when you laugh with your mates, saying that [insert object of humiliation here] is ‘gaay!’ You either think we’re not there, that it doesn’t matter, or worse, that those words really do mean stupid, lame, disgusting, pathetic and worthless. You don’t go around saying ‘that’s just Maori!’ or ‘He’s such a nigger,’ cos you know that hurts people. So why do it to us? Every time you say it you tell yourself, the world around you, and maybe some lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person who might be sitting right next to you that anyone not heterosexual isn’t worth the same human decency you extend to others.

My 10 yr old cousin Reece is gentle, clever, kind, funny and cheerful, he already knows he’s gay, and his mother tells me he comes home crying from school more often than not.

So stop it. Just fucking stop it, ok?

DR

Do Y'all Get This?

Ok, so I'm really, really pissed off this week, with basically everything about me and my life. People disappoint me, I feel like study, work and hell, even breathing, are a waste of time, I don't want to leave the house or eat or talk to anyone... and when I bring myself to blog about it I just can't seem to articulate it.

What about you lot? Is it easier to write when you're calm and lucid or when you're spitting tacks?

Will you just LISTEN already??

When people learn that I have a mental illness, everything I say tends to be filtered through their existing preconceptions of what the mentally ill can and cannot do.

Let's say I have an argument or an unconventional belief - however well thought out and logical, however long it's taken me to come up with it - it's inevitably seen as a sort of twisted logic, I can't possibly be right. Homosexuality or bisexuality? It's because I'm ill. Polyamory? It's because my illness has distorted or warped my views on love and trust. The right to die? That's my depression talking.

People confuse causation with correlation. My bisexuality doesn't cause my depression and anxiety, neither is it a result of it. Polyamory is not a symptom of mental dysfunction, it's a position I take based on my understandings of human biology and psychology, it simply makes more sense to me than compulsory monogamy. I would change my opinion on it if I found evidence to the contrary. And my stance on the right to end one's own life is something I have come to having witnessed first-hand the misery and despair that failing health often brings. I strongly believe in human dignity, that people should be given the choice to take control of this one last aspect of their lives and that their loved ones should be free to assist them (or not). It’s respect for humanity - not weariness of it - that brings me to this conclusion.

Sure, when I’m deeply depressed I might think of ending my life, and sometimes these depressions last for weeks at a time. But that impulse is coming from a different place than my intellectual stand on the right to die. If I were someone else with the authority to grant permission for Danny’s death, I would refuse it, because I understand that Danny is not capable of making a rational choice at those times.

I think other people’s confusion of causation and correlation with regard to my unconventional thoughts is largely due to their simply not knowing enough about mental illnesses and the people who are affected by them. It’s assumed that my problem with depression and anxiety affects me all the time, people often fail to understand that I have significant periods of lucidity that outlast the periods of depression. In those periods, I have ample time in which to think rationally and clearly, and to reflect on whether my beliefs and understandings are the product of my illness or whether they are actually valid conclusions.

Yes, I probably do have experiences in my life that make me more likely to hold some of the opinions I do and feel the things I feel, who doesn’t? But I get frustrated with people thinking that I am incapable of thinking critically and discerning truth, that I am blind to my own condition and to the thought processes of ‘normal’ people. I think if anything my lapses into illness force me to be more critical, particularly of my own thought processes. I can’t take anything for granted.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that you can’t attribute any observable aspect of my being to another, as such, at least not without a fair bit of investigation. My mental illness is not a symptom of my polyamory, bisexuality or beliefs about death, neither does it cause any of these. It is another facet of me, it may have developed alongside some of these ideas and beliefs as a result of quite unrelated circumstances, and perhaps the marginality of my positions on these issues makes me more likely than most to experience mental illness, but you cannot attribute one to the other. Evidence from studies of other individuals and groups with these beliefs and conclusions exist, and they simply don’t support a causative hypothesis.

Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!!

Off to Wellington now to stay for a few days with Cookie in Petone... should be fun. I have a lot of reading and studying to do, but I hope to catch up with James, Tom, Gavin, Kris E, Antz, Russ, Andrew and Iain.

I've had a really stressful week so I wasn't going to go... but maybe the time out will do me good. In any case, I have to be down there for Tuesday because I have a contact course for my sociology paper about family and domestic life, the first essay's due next week and I need all the help I can get :D

I gave that guy D**** my number last weekend and haven't heard anything, so I guess he's not interested, and that depressed me. I think he's gorgeous... why is it that any guy I'm interested in doesn't spare me a second glance, it's only the ones I'm just friends with who like me that way??

My old boss from Honey Hive, Sandra, rang me last night and I had deleted her number, so that was embarrassing - I didn't recognise her voice!! She was nice, but I often felt she was only being nice because she wants me to open her new store here in Palmerston North next year. I don't want to be involved, but I don't know how to say no.

That's my big problem... I just can't say no. Guys I'm not into ask me out, and I just go along with it because I don't think I'm going to get what I want anyway. People ask me to take on extra responsibilities in the queer community, and I say yes. Someone can't be bothered doing their bit, and they ask me to take it on, and I do, however reluctantly.

I wish I could just tell people no!

Possibly

Possibly.
We'll have to see.
But you don't know
What's best for me,
You don't know
What's in my head
The dreams that haunt
Me in my bed.
I get scared,
You don't see why
There are feelings
That I hide.
Medicate me,
Numb the pain,
Turn off the lights
Within my brain
Leaving me
In darkness, here
Alone to face
My silent fears.
Leave me to
This 'misery'
Is it wise?
Well,
Possibly.

- DannyR 23/05/08

Eight Years

Eight years now I've given and
What have you done for me?
Though I've shown my committment
To this fickle family.
When you needed letters written
I wrote them, signed my name.
When you wouldn't speak up for yourselves
I stood up to be shamed.
You wanted to get married,
I took your cause up as my own
Though I knew I wouldn't benefit
I made your feelings known.
I manned the phones and held the line
Against religious freaks,
I trained to give words of advice
When you were suffering.
I've given up my evenings
And all anonymity,
You fucked me off, I held my tongue,
I didn't cause a scene.
When you were sick I comforted,
I took the time to care -
Though others washed their hands of you
I made sure I stood near
To let you know you're worth it,
That I love you as you are,
But sometimes I have to admit
You make it fucking hard.
You do nothing for yourselves
But it's me that gets the blame
When things go wrong, I'm on my own
To hell with what we've gained
And if I should show my differences
From all the rest of you
You treat me like a lepper,
Words of friendship ring untrue.
Eight years, and now looking back
What have I got to show?
I really did believe in you
But now I just don't know.

DannyR

TAGGED!!

First, post the rules:

- Each blogger starts with ten random facts/habits about themselves.

- Bloggers that are tagged need to write on their own blog about their ten things and post these rules.

- At the end of your blog, you need to choose ten people to get tagged and list their names.

- Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.


1) The first girl I ever fell head over heels for was the biggest bitch I have ever known. She was stunning, her hair was straight and snow-white blonde (not from a bottle, either), it fell to her waist (she never wore it up) and it bounced and swayed as she walked. She was a dancer, so she moved gracefully and was incredibly slim. She was taller than me, and she had freckles across her nose. Her name was Charity, which was kind of ironic, really, because she was unrelenting in her cruelty. Not that she ever swore at me or anything like that, no she was always smiling, and her voice was like honey. Her evil power was in her unerring ability to detect what people were most insecure about and draw attention to it in front of everyone, again and again, smiling sweetly as she did so. She humiliated me all through my teenage years, by saying things like "What on earth possessed you to wear that, sweetie?" and laughing gently at my stature and... other physical attributes... in front of her friends. And I was so smitten that I stumbled over myself trying not to look silly, and making more of a laughing stock of myself in the process.

2) The last time my dad came to visit me in Wellington (a few years back now) I heard him knock at the door and immediately hid under my bed where he wouldn't see me if he looked through the window. I stayed there for nearly three hours, listening to him banging on the door and swearing, hearing him walk around the house and look in through all the windows. Why didn't I just let him in? Because he annoys the hell out of me, showing up unannounced, talking about me to my flatmates as if I wasn't there, saying what he thinks is 'wrong with' me, insulting his hosts and saying every racist, homophobic, chauvanist thing that comes into his Christ-polluted head. Don't get me wrong, he's not saying these things like an ordinary Christian would... he's ANGRY when he says them, and when he gets angry he scares me half-to-death. Ordinary Christians would be horrified, I think, to hear him talking. And he's a minister. Go figure.

3) I cannot save money for the life of me. It's not even that I spend it on stuff, when I look at my bank statement it all seems to have gone on food, rent, power etc. But there's never any left over, and it doesn't matter how much I'm getting on a weekly basis. I think I eat too much.

4) I often fall asleep fantasizing about not waking up, wondering who would find me, what they would find, how they would go about packing up my stuff and distributing it among my family and friends or disposing of it. I wonder if anyone knows me well enough to work out what sort of commemmoration or service I'd want, and who would show up.

5) I had a secret world as a kid, more in my head than anywhere in my real life exactly. It was modelled on a quiet inner-city park I'd found one time when my mum had taken my little brother and me to visit my aunt Thelma and her husband Roy. It was over their back fence, and screened off on all sides by tall trees (I think they were poplars). In the middle of it was a fallen tree trunk, it was thick, hollow, and crawling with spiders and bugs, but I sat there on it enjoying the sunshine until I heard my mum calling for me an hour or so later. Aunt Thelma moved when Roy died, and I never found the place again, but it's still there in my head, I can picture it perfectly, and I escape there whenever I just want 'me' time.

6) I always wanted to be a writer... I still do. I have, under my bed, a good 300 pages of a couple of stories I've partly written. One of the main ways I waste time instead of doing my study is by typing what I've got so far. I think I'm very good at coming up with ideas, but quite poor at taking them to their conclusion, and so I guess I'll never write a book. I think it's because on some level I feel like it's not 'real work' and it would be selfish of me to pursue it.

7) I'm really ashamed of the fact that I did dance classes as a kid... ballet, tap, contemporary, jazz... and I got high marks in the exams. I absolutely hated it, but I loved being on stage, and I knew it made my mum proud so I kept up with it until I was fourteen and was just getting hassled too much by other kids my age. I got bullied a lot for it in primary school, so all through intermediate and high school I tried to hide the fact that I had done it, but it wasn't much good. I was getting called 'faggot' 'poof' and 'queer' before I even knew what the words meant. Retrospectively, I can't help but wonder if that has something to do with who I actually turned into.

8) I once pretended to have lost my wallet and driver's license at a party at someone's house, just so I could ask the guy who lived there to look for it and get back to me. He was one of the most attractive guys I've ever met, and of course I knew he was WAAAYY out of my league but it didn't stop me from obsessing over him for months.

9) I feel like I've lived enough, in that many different places, as that many different versions of me, that the one thing I want in all the world is rest, to not have to be anyone or anything, to not have to think or care or feel anything anymore. I'm feel exhausted, worn out, "thin, like butter spread over too much bread," to use Bilbo Baggins' expression.

10) If I could crawl inside a story, it would have to be 'The Last Continent' by Terry Pratchett, or in fact any of his Rincewind stories. I'd love to be just swept away in the insanity, it would be something new, vibrant and interesting. Rincewind's world conforms to no rules, nothing has to make sense, the only certainty being that you don't piss off The Luggage, or you get eaten. 'The Last Continent' is, I think, Pratchett's most ridiculous story, and it always makes me laugh my socks off.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

This song describes quite well how I'm feeling just now, having today resigned from UniQ and resolved to leave Palmerston North and go back to work. It's about turning my back on being cosmopolitan and fake, and returning to the familiar, the isolated and the genuine. A lot of the bitterness, reflected in references to 'Society Dogs' and being set on your feet again by just another couple of drinks, is directed toward Seth, who I feel at this point cares about nobody but himself and his own interests, least of all my feelings.

The Yellow Brick Road, I feel, is quite apt, too.... too long have I chased after dreams, thinking that happiness lay 'out there' somewhere. There is also, implicit in this song for me at least, a rejection of the Gay Community. I have found it to be shallow, superficial and judgemental - serving only it's own interests, readily abandoning those who cannot so easily conform to 'normalness'.

So then, here, in all their bitter splendour, are the lyrics to Elton John's 'Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road':



When are you gonna come down,
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm -
I should have listened to my old man!

You know you can't hold me forever -
I didn't sign up with you.
I'm not a present for your friends to open,
This boy's too young to be singing
The blues.

So goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,
Where the dogs of society howl -
You can't plant me in your penthouse,
I'm going back to my plough!
Back to the howling old owl
Hunting the horny back toad...
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road!

What do you think you'll do then?
I bet that'll shoot down your plane.
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again!

Maybe you'll get a replacement,
There's plenty like me to be found -
Mongrels who ain't got a penny,
Sniffing for tidbits like you on
The ground.

So goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,
Where the dogs of society howl -
You can't plant me in your penthouse,
I'm going back to my plough!
Back to the howling old owl
Hunting the horny back toad...
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road!

by Bernie Taupin, Elton John



Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, assholes!!