November 17 2009

Some of you will be aware of what the 17th of November means to me. It's the anniversary of my 'Coming Out,’ the anniversary of the day I told my mum I was gay, way back in 2001. November the 17th is about so much more than sexuality, though.

A lot's changed for me since 2001, I've moved from Oamaru to Christchurch, from Christchurch to Wellington, and from Wellington to Palmerston North. I’ve ditched the ‘gay’ label and moved on to ‘bisexual’ only to drop that for ‘queer.’ I’ve given up on Christianity, become an atheist, then a Satanist, a pagan and finally an agnostic. I’ve been a staunch supporter of monogamy and marriage, an equally fervent advocate of polyamory, and more recently I’ve committed myself to celibacy. I’ve subscribed to beliefs about divine ordination, biological determinism, social coercion, and lately social/environmental/biological interactionism. I’ve changed so much that I scarcely remember who I am and where I came from. I need this day, I need the time to reflect, to try and make sense of it all.

November 17 is about honesty and integrity, about earnestness and accepting responsibility. It’s about facing up to the fact that I create myself, about not laying blame at the feet of others. Every year I commit myself anew to honesty, having lived a pack of lies most of my youth.

You see, I learned to lie, prolifically, convincingly, from an early age. I was so desperate to win approval, from my parents, my peers, my teachers, complete strangers. It’s what I do, I lie, and I lie, and I lie, and I lie. I lie to you all, every time, trying to make myself look better in your eyes. It’s a compulsion. Most of all, however, I lie to myself.

It’s Aaron’s fault, I tell myself, for stealing my stuff and selling it. It’s Mum’s fault for leaning on me too heavily. It’s Bruno’s fault for swinging back and forth and changing his mind. It’s Bryce’s fault for being too needy. It’s Dad’s fault for yelling at me and beating me. It’s Brent’s fault for not telling me the truth. It’s Daniel’s fault for cutting me off when I said I missed him. It’s Scott’s fault for asking me to church. It’s Stewart’s fault, and James’ fault, and Tom’s fault, and Simon’s fault, and Kerry Anne’s and Tamara’s and AJ’s and Eric’s and Seth’s and Glenn’s and everybody else’s fault but my own. I tell myself a history that allows me to live with myself, and I rehearse it so often that I almost believe it.

Almost.

The truth of the matter is, I did this to myself. I brought me here, to this moment, by always choosing the path of least resistance, by avoiding responsibility, by accepting less than I felt I deserved, by doing what I knew would only hurt me in the long run because it was easy or appealing at the time. I have no one to blame but myself.

And I’m still doing it. I’m doing it to you now, right now as you read. There are things I want to say, apologies to be made and lies I want to admit to, but I can’t bring myself even to utter them aloud in the silence and privacy of my bedroom. I’m writing this, leaving out the worst, all those shameful little secrets, all those dirty deeds and most private thoughts.

I live in a world of my own creation, a world where I am the victim, the martyr, who will be one day be vindicated. And yet, some tiny part of me still sees through the falsehoods I’ve spun, retaining enough clarity to wonder whether I could survive being faced with the screaming naked truth, that I am the monster. When the towering edifice of illusion comes crashing down around me, and I see myself as I truly am, will I persist, or will I smash what little remains of my kingdom? Will I wander about in that ruined wasteland, picking up and turning over the fragments, playing my accustomed role though nobody is watching? That tiny watcher in my soul knows the latter is the more likely.

November 17 is for honesty and integrity.

And I fail.

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.

Regrets

I'm actually writing this post on November 17th 2009, my anniversary, a day of reflection and contemplation on my life.

Looking back on 2002 seven years later, I'm struck by how shallow and self-centred my diary entries of the time were, how oblivious I was to the feelings of others, and how utterly clueless I was about relationships and sex. I treated Bryce appallingly in '02, he had been my best friend for a couple of years and I casually discarded him in order to rush into one unsuitable relationship after another.

All that Christian virtue of mine, where's the evidence? I was inconsiderate, selfish and vain, I avoided conflict and in so doing I didn't treat people who had been good to me with the respect they deserved. Perhaps I got what I deserved in Aaron.

I would do anything to go back and change my behaviour that year, but as one of my diary quotes from the time wisely says, "Sometimes more is learned from being wrong, rather than right." Another diary quote says "A clear conscience is usually a sign of a bad memory."

Bryce, Brent, if you're out there, I'm really, truly sorry.